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But I can’t shake the irritation that itches under my collar like a rash. It must be another instinctual thing, just like being territorial over my father’s church. I might not be the biggest fan of Alberto or his sleazy love life, but he’s still family. I’ll wait. Just for a minute.
I freeze, and an icy thought trickles into my brain, slower than syrup. The cliff edge. Is she going to finish what I interrupted? There’s a lump in my throat and I’m not sure how it got there. Or how my hand moved from the steering wheel to the door handle. I’ve seen people kill themselves dozens of times. Hell, I forced some of them to write their suicide notes.
Not my problem—I have enough of those. I’m not getting out the car. She takes a step forward, toward the path that cuts through the graveyard and to the cliff headland. Fuck it, I’m getting out the car.
So, she’s a gold-digger and a thief. She represents everything I hate about this life. To my uncle, she’s nothing but a piece of pretty pussy and something to brag about over a poker game. To her, my uncle is a walking, talking Amex, with a spend limit worth spreading her legs for.
I can't wait for you to eat your own words, Angelo Visconti 🤣🤣
“You don’t realize how lucky you are.” “You marry him, then.” My retort is met by a swift thwack on my head with the back of the brush. I squeeze my eyes shut and mutter a bird-word under my breath.
She’s worked for him so long that she speaks fondly of changing Dante’s diapers. It’s obvious that she’s been in love with him for just as long, too. My guess is she’s bitter that somewhere between all the wives, she never got a look in. Maybe she had the chance when she was younger, but now she’s way past her sell-by date in Alberto’s eyes, and she missed the window.
Bad things, petty bad things, are what keep me from going insane in my new, messed-up version of reality. Little acts of revenge keep me calm. Those, and candy.
“Lurking in dark corners isn’t a sin, but it’s still weird as hell.” His eyes flash with dark amusement.
“You really do like living life on the edge, huh?”
My eyes shift to Angelo, just in time to see him throw his head back and laugh.
Angelo shot Max. Looking down, there’s a red splatter against my dress. I lift a trembling hand to my lips, and sure enough, when I pull my fingertips back, they are covered in blood that isn’t mine.
“The Dip brothers have this hotline. Anyone can dial it and confess their secrets. Max probably called it. Snakes like him usually have a guilty conscience.” No. No, no, no. “A hotline?” I croak. “Yeah, you’ve probably seen the cards around.” Please god, no. “It’s called Sinners Anonymous.” Not for the first time today, my world goes black.
It’s not long before the wind carries in a purr of a car engine. I hear footsteps. The groan of the door. Then my brother’s booming laugh fills the church, a sound that brings me right back to my childhood. “Out of all the churches in the world, you chose this one.” “I was in the neighborhood.”
Westminster Abbey in London, St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican. La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. For the last nine years, we’ve met in a church somewhere around the world on the last Sunday of every month, but never the one we grew up in. Ironic, because it’s this very church where our game started.
A few months after the funeral, Rafe turned up at my London office, unannounced. He was drunk and bleary-eyed, fresh off a jet from Vegas. “I miss us,” he’d slurred, leaning against my desk to stop himself from swaying. “I miss the game.” Sinners Anonymous was all his idea. A bigger, shinier version of the game that forced us to become men. He’d hatched a whole plan as he flew thousands of feet above the Atlantic, fueled by liquor and nostalgia. An “anonymous” voicemail service instead of a church confession booth. A reach that touched all four corners of the globe—not just the cobbled streets
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Life is all about balance, Angelo. The good always cancels out the bad.
Our childhood game shaped him a lot more than it did me. In fact, his whole life is a game—he owns half the hotels and casinos in Vegas and collects protection from the ones he doesn’t. He wins when others lose, and when others win, well, they’d better hope it wasn’t because they cheated. There’s nothing Rafe hates more than a cheat. My brother is a fucking shark. All pearly white teeth and charm, but nobody survives his bite.
“Fuck me, brother,” Rafe barks down the aisle. “Do you own any footwear that aren’t steel-capped boots? You stomp around like the Big Bad Wolf from Little Red Riding Hood.” Gabe looms over us like a storm cloud and scowls down at Rafe. “All the better to kick your head in with, my dear,” he growls.
“What happened to him, man?” Rafe says, more to himself than me. I don’t reply, because, like him, I don’t have an answer. Gabe’s a goddamn mystery. Has been since he came back to the Coast one Christmas, shortly before our parents died, with a whole new personality and a fresh scar running from his eyebrow to his chin. He won’t share his shit. Everything we’ve pieced together comes from Chinese whispers and half-baked rumors. Some say he’s building and testing new weapons out of a Siberian military base. Others say he’s working as a hitman for the Palermo outfit. All we know for sure is that
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“I won’t lie to you.” I just won’t tell you the truth. “I know.” “So I won’t say anything at all.”
“Dad wasn’t the hero you thought he was,” I say quietly. He stays silent, his jaw as hard as steel. “And Mama?” I pull my collar up, dig my hands into my pockets and get ready for the fall chill. “Mama was a fucking saint, and don’t you ever forget it.”
Because there’s one confession in particular that will be enough to get me killed in a heartbeat. And then what’ll happen to my father?
“Would you have your jet flown in all the way from London if you were just visiting?”
“Rafe’s here?” “Well, it ain’t gonna be Gabe. I’m guessing after Sunday lunch he crawled back to his cave.” “I like you Tor, but you know I have no problem dislocating your jaw.”
“Rafe would give his left nut for you to return to Dip,” Tor says, cutting through my racing thoughts. Angelo smirks. “He told you that?” “He’s my best friend, he tells me everything. Seems like you’re thinking about it.” “Yeah?” “Yeah. I’ve noticed you’ve been having meetings with my old man.” “Hmm.” “And I saw your Gulfstream fly in earlier.” “Uh-huh.” “Not gonna get anything out of you, am I?” “Nope.”
For the briefest of moments, he doesn’t look like the Almighty Alberto that has me bent at the knees, chained to him with a contract I know he’ll break. For the briefest of moments, I’m not scared of him.
Alberto has the power to ruin my father’s life. Angelo knows all of my sins.
“I’m not a whore.” “You’re not unattractive, either.” I freeze. What?
“Let me see. You’re a twenty-one year old virgin who swears using bird puns. The worst thing you’ve done is steal Vittoria’s necklace, and I already knew about that. And yet, your conscience is so heavy you want to throw yourself off a cliff.”
“Last week, I went into Alberto’s closet and cut a hole in the pocket of every suit.” My eyes dart to his expressionless face. “Small ones, the size of a dime. But big enough for him to lose his car keys four times in the last seven days.”
I have a rule book as thick as my dick when it comes to women, but all rules can be boiled down to one word: Don’t. Don’t stick your dick in crazy. Don’t let them stay the night. And definitely don’t let them leave something they’ll want you to return the next day.
Oh, and don’t ogle your uncle’s fiancee. A bitter laugh slips through my lips. It tastes like disbelief.
Hot, itchy annoyance prickles under my collar like a heat rash. Up until nine years ago, I would have probably started a Visconti civil war on this feeling alone, but I’m different now.
I don’t chase the thrill of violence or dish out revenge that’s way greater than the crime. I don’t explode over barely anything and cause irreparable damage. I am not Vicious anymore.
Through my cell, Visconti Capital goes on without me, and my corner office overlooking Hyde Park in my London Head Quarters seems a lot farther away than just the other side of the Atlantic.
I last three seconds before impatience gets the best of me and I lay on my horn. She yelps, then mutters one of her stupid bird puns, and I hide my smirk behind the back of my hand when she flings open the passenger door and scurries inside. Yeah, you’re real bad, girl.
Looking like that, she could never be a sinner. Her eyes are too big. Each of her pitiful secrets swirls in her irises, which are the color of warm whiskey. Her skin is too pale and perfect. The slightest sin will make her flush a beautiful shade of pink. My gaze drops to her plump, parted lips. And that fucking mouth. The only sound inside the car is the small, shallow breaths escaping it.
And for the first time since we met, I see her smile. I think I like it when she smiles.
As much as I hate to admit it, warmth spreads through the pit of my stomach. Cas is the oldest Hollow brother; I’ve always liked him and admired his business acumen. He’s calm, money-minded, and single-handedly turned Smugglers Club whiskey from “mafia juice” into a global brand. He’s got a few nicknames along the coast, one being The Silver Fox—thanks to his George Clooney-esque good looks and salt-and-pepper hair, and the other being Mister Moonshine. He’s always experimenting with new liquor concoctions, and made men around the world go nuts for it. Owning a special-edition Smugglers Club
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“What’s your type, cugino?” Curly-haired and unavailable. But I don’t reply. Instead, I down the rest of my drink and lean against the bar. I loosen my tie. Since when were the caves so hot? But I’m only fooling myself. I know what’s got my skin burning up like I have a fever—the thought of spanking my uncle’s fiancee. Maybe I should get laid tonight. Find a blond, curly-haired babe and have her mutter dirty bird puns in my ear.
This isn’t about Aurora; it’s just the Coast. It’s always made me lose the plot.
When I look up, one of Rafe’s men has a thick arm around his neck and a gun to his temple. It’s gold, with a dragon etched along the barrel. While everyone in the room jumps up and draws their own weapons, I smirk into the bottom of my whiskey glass. I’d know that ugly fucking Glock anywhere. Gabe’s gruff voice comes from the shadows. “Your cavalry are pathetic.” He drops the man like a sack of shit and shoves the others out the way.
I can’t remember the last time I saw Gabe smile, but I swear, the corners of his mouth turn up before he picks up my whiskey glass and downs it in one. A server hurries over and immediately fills it back up.
No one on this earth hates Dante more than Rafe does, because he swears he caught him cheating at one of his poker games years ago. The only reason he didn’t put a bullet in his head is because he’s Tor’s brother. The feeling is mutual, but not because of that fateful night. No, Dante hates Rafe because he’s everything he wishes he could be. As successful as Devil’s Cove is, it’ll never be Vegas, and as cut-throat as Dante is, he’ll never be as powerful as Rafe.
Rafe’s chuckle is deep and sinister. “Build a Raphael Visconti hotel and casino on your land? You wouldn’t know how to deal with the sudden spike in tourism.”
It’s only rain. And Angelo is only a man. One I don’t even like.
“How would you feel if you found your fiancee in a dark corner, sharing a cigarette with a handsome man?” He stares at me. At first blankly, then his eyes thin. “You think I’m handsome.”
“Every time he makes me kiss him like that, I spit in his whiskey.”
I’m utterly, madly, unacceptably obsessed with Angelo Visconti. My fiance's nephew, near-stranger, and keeper of my darkest secrets. And suddenly, my sin isn’t so funny anymore.
“Like the time Dante told dad you missed a drop-off, so you fucked Dante’s prom date. You’re vicious.” I bite back a smirk. “So that’s why. I couldn’t remember.”
