The woman had dropped a glove she’d been carrying between the rows of pistachio trees. I picked it up, and the closer I came to her, the better I could smell her in the air. The scent of her would forever be tattooed on my memory—more permanent than the ink on my skin.
“Signora,” I called out, my voice low but still loud enough to hear.
She stopped but didn’t turn. The girl, Calogera, stuck her tongue out at me. I did the same. She laughed a little, and I grinned.
Finally, the woman turned, looking up and meeting my eyes again. I lifted the glove and told her in Sicilian that she’d dropped it. She nodded once, reached out, and I allowed her to grab it. When she went to take it back, though, I held on. She pulled a little, but after she realized I wasn’t letting it go so easily, she stopped. We both held on.
“Grazie,” she whispered. The longest fucking lashes I’d ever seen on a woman fanned when she blinked.
“Prego,” I said.
She took the glove then, turning her back on me again, moving even faster to keep up with the other women and children.
Angelica—yeah, that didn’t fit. She wasn’t the princess. She was Alcina, the sorceress, luring men to her magical island.
No wonder Junior never took a picture of her. It would never do her fucking justice.
7
Alcina
“What are you doing?” my sister jumped into the quiet kitchen and shouted the words at me at the same time. Her boots hit the ground with a slap at the same time my heart lodged in my throat.
I jumped back from the window, my hand over my chest. I was going to pull her hair out by the roots. “What amIdoing?” I screamed back in Sicilian. Most of our conversations were in a mixture of our native tongue and English. The longer we were in Italy, though, the less English we used.
She laughed, going to sit at the kitchen table. “You have been staring out of the same window for an hour. It is dark now. He has already gone to his place.” She wiggled her eyebrows at me. “He is nice to look at, ah?”
“Nice.” I rolled my eyes. “He is trouble.”
The moment I saw him, I knew.
His dark amber eyes would hypnotize.
His full lips would speak the most beautiful promises.
His body? Made for pleasure. He was tall, his shoulders wide, his legs long and lean.
Everything about him was perfect. On the surface.
But if he thought that he could fool me into thinking he was a good man, he was wrong.
The moment I saw him, I knewthe truth.
Those eyes hid his poisonous heart.
Those lips were vessels of deception.
That body? Made for inflicting pain.
He wasn’t sent from heaven. He was sent to drag me back to hell. The hand with the scorpion tattoo—between his thumb and pointer finger—would be wrapped around my throat. The one he had on his neck wasn’t as obvious, but it didn’t need to be.
I knew men like him. Fast-talking New Yorkers who had some Sicilian to spare. They came to the old country to hide when they had prices on their heads.
Been there. Done that. Was still dealing with the aftereffects ofthat.
I would rather sacrifice myself to Mount Etna than to have another one ofhimin my bed.
Him.
