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“Fuck, you’re beautiful.” I hadn’t meant to say that aloud. Guess death softens your insides, and liquid shit is coming out of my mouth too.
“Please don’t shout at me, I cry easily.”
“It was a pleasure, Wren, but it’s about time that I …” He tugs back the cuff of his shirt and glances at his bare wrist. A look of contempt flickers through his expression.
She’s laughing at Arben, of all fucking people. As if he’s even funny. As if he doesn’t have a Glock in his waistband, a taser in his pocket, and the strongest chokehold I’ve ever seen.
I suspect his sudden change in demeanor has something to do with red hair and a smart mouth.
I’m not usually one to judge a book by its cover, but since that book make himself at home in my living room and threatened me, well, I think have every right to assume what that book is about.
He. Doesn’t. Yawn. Back. Oh my God, he really is a psychopath.
I squint at the bar behind them to see if I recognize the redhead Rafe is talking to. Oh, it’s Penny Price. She used to live down the road from me.
Rafe, well, I don’t know who he’s looking for. His face is sullen and taut, and he’s scanning the treeline obsessively.
“You know, I try to see the best in people, but with you, I really have to squint.” “Don’t squint too hard. I’ll take your eyeballs too.”
He’s talking into his watch, like he’s Inspector Gadget or something.
“Thank you for the offer, but I don’t need a ride. I’m more than happy to walk home.” Irritation tightens his gaze. “You get in the front or you go in the trunk.”
“What the fuck are you doing?” he growls. “Playing dead,” I whisper.
If it happens in the dark, it didn’t happen. It’s not even close to the craziest thing he’s said tonight, but it stuck. Not just because it’s a creepy thing to say, but because of the way he said it. It held a different weight to his other threats, like it wasn’t even a threat at all.
I swear, he popped out of his mother with that fucking expression, and I couldn’t count on both hands how many times my fists wiped it off his face during our childhood.
He’s right, all my men are strays. Rescued from all four corners of the world, nurtured back to health, put to work. Angelo hates them, Rafe even more so. But they don’t understand—they weren’t born to have the misfortune to understand—the thread that ties us together.
Then I drive my knee up into his balls. A humorless smirk touches my lips as I shut his bedroom door on his screams with a quiet click. That was for calling Rory a gold-digging whore.
“You’re a walking target. A sitting duck. And what the fuck were you thinking, putting your location on Instagram?” My spine straightens, and I come to an abrupt stop. Curiosity and surprise spin me around. “You looked at my Instagram?”
“You’re stalking her Instagram? How? You can barely use a phone.”
I’m the fucking consigliere. I was put on this bastard earth for one reason—to keep my family safe. Finding out more about her isn’t something I can avoid, it’s a job requirement.
But now that she’s my sister-in-law, she entertains me in other ways. Like bringing me moodboards with her latest inventions, and in my spare time, I bring them to life.
“I’d need to hit you with a frying pan to make us anywhere close to even.” “Don’t think that’d fit in your little purse.”
“If I ever get kidnapped, I’ll let you know,” I bite back, thumping my fist on his back in frustration. “Won’t be long, I’m sure,” he mutters.
“You really promise you won’t hurt me? Because I swear if you do, I’ll never talk to you again.” A dry amusement sweeps over his gaze. “You trying to convince me or deter me?”
“Why’d you teach me how to get out of a trunk?” “Because you piss me off,” he bites back, too quickly.
I’d fired the first shot because the thought of another man seeing what I was seeing made me feel violent. The second shot was at the light because I wasn’t worthy of seeing it myself.
It’s just not the name of The One. Doesn’t have the same ring as Wren and Gabe, either.
“But to meet The One, you’ve got to wade through The Many.”
“If my asshole boss doesn’t schedule me for a shift, sure.” She glances at Angelo and grimaces. “Oops, don’t tell him I said that.” “Nothing he doesn’t already know,” he states with dry amusement.
“I thought he wasn’t as scary as he looks?” Angelo pauses, then turns his head just enough to reveal the hard set of his jaw. “He’s worse.”
“One more comment about my wife, and I’ll shove this controller up your ass sideways.” “According to your wife, ass play is more your thing—”
I know the exact number of seconds it takes for her heat to bleed through my shirt and warm my skin. I could pick out her fingerprint on its texture alone because it’s etched onto my bicep, the hollows of my cheeks, the scar on my face.
“You touch every man like that?” She doesn’t miss a beat. “Only when they ask me out.” My lungs squeeze. “What?” “Only when they ask me out,” she repeats slowly, as if I’m hard of hearing. I suck in a breath and clamp my jaw shut, tensing every muscle in my body. If I move, it’ll be to go back inside and slit that scrawny asshole’s throat.
“You know, if I didn’t know any better, I’d say you have a crush on me.” My shoulders snap into a tight line, and I run my tongue over my teeth, still tasting her. “Good thing you know better, then.”
“Who were you just texting?” She stops and glances at me over her shoulder. “Oh, just some guy I’m going on a date with.” My body turns to stone. I was right: something bad is about to happen. Just not to me.
Penelope Price has got him fucked up. He’s convinced she’s the reason that his fortune is bleeding out of his asshole. I don’t know about that, but I do know she’s the reason he’s taken first place on my fire-starting dickhead list tonight.
It’s making me consider dragging her out of here by her silk ponytail and flinging her far away to some distant sunny place, where darkness and panic attacks and other men can’t touch her. I’d keep her as happy and as perfect as the day I met her.
With an odd sense of calm, I finally understand why Rafe blew O’Hare’s brains out, and why Cas is thirty seconds away from going nuclear. Visconti men don’t need to love something to hate seeing it in someone else’s hands. Guess it’s just not what we were born to do.
“You’re kidding.” “Nope.” He scratches his beard before adding, “And their ‘homemade’ carrot cake is from Costco.”
The people-pleaser in me hopes it’s to hide a smirk. The thought of making the Boogeyman smile, or dare I say it—laugh, injects a dose of delirium into my bloodstream.
“Do you invade every man’s space?” “Do you want to hear it’s just you?”
“I knew you had a crush on me.” It comes out in a breathless, frantic whisper. “Oh, my God. I knew it.” “Do I look like the type of man who’d have a crush on a girl who has a lip gloss for every day of the week?” he grunts.
“Why? Trying to figure out when I have space in my schedule?” He tugs on my bottom lip so hard my thighs clench. “So I know when to free up my own.”
A cold realization grips my neck and tugs me backward. The dark doesn’t just hide all sins; it makes you forget what fear is supposed to feel like. Standing there, dripping in the color of blood, Gabriel Visconti embodies it.
“Cancel it.” They drag up my spine like a match, threatening to reignite everything the light just extinguished. “And if I don’t?” I croak. His pause is dense. “Then I guess I’ll see you there.”
“Gabriel Visconti,” I announce, loud enough for the entire restaurant to hear. “You have a crush on me.” He barks out a laugh laced with unease. “You’re out of your fucking mind.”
“Say it,” he growls. “Say you won’t date.” “Say you’re jealous.”
A roomful of Good Samaritans. None of them are me.
He wants me. Gabriel Visconti wants me. It never left his lips, but I saw it between the cracks of his galvanized demeanor, and catching sight of it was the worst, most dangerous, irreversible, soul-ruining thing I could have ever done.
