“You’ve been stressed, haven’t you?” he asks.
“I’ve been so stressed,” I admit. “About the wedding. The confession. Everything. And now…”
“Feel better?”
“Yeah. I do.” My body is loose and languid and my mind is finally quiet. For the first time in days, I’m just here. Safe. Held.
“Good.” His thumb brushes my cheek. “That’s what I’m here for. To make you feel good. To give you a break from carrying all of this alone.”
He kisses me deeply. I can taste myself on his tongue, and something about that intimacy makes fresh heat pool low in my belly.
I’m shaking in the aftermath, boneless and overwhelmed and completely undone.
“I didn’t know it could be like that,” I whisper against his mouth.
“Now you do.” He settles beside me, pulling me against his chest despite the pain it must cause his healing ribs. “And we have a lifetime for me to make you feel like that again. And again. And again.”
If I can get the confession from my father.
If we both survive the next few weeks.
Too many ifs. Not enough time.
The package arrivesfive days before the wedding. It’s an elegant cream box with a white satin ribbon. Expensive and beautiful, exactly the kind of gift you’d expect for a wedding.
When Matteo brings it to me in the living room, I actually smile.
“Oh, how lovely,” I say, taking it from him. “Someone’s sent an early gift.”
The box is luxurious. The ribbon is real silk. Whoever sent this has exquisite taste.
“There’s no card,” Matteo says.
“It’s probably inside.” I pull the ribbon loose, already imagining what it might be. Crystal, maybe. Or silver. Something elegant and expensive that I’ll have to write a gracious thank-you note for.
I lift the lid. Inside, nestled on white velvet, is a dead scorpion.
The stinger is raised, the scorpion’s black body frozen in death, perfectly preserved and pinned to the velvet like a specimen in a museum. No note. No card.
I know instantly who it’s from.
The box lid slips from my hands and hits the floor with a dull thump.
Matteo is across the room in two strides. He sees the scorpion and goes very still.
“Fuck,” he breathes. “Dashamir.”
“The wedding is in five days,” I whisper. My voice sounds distant to my own ears. “I still don’t have Dad’s confession.”
The room feels too small suddenly, the walls pressing in.
Matteo studies the scorpion with a grim expression. “He’s not a patient man. He expects you to understand the message without explanation.”
“Time’s running out.”
He puts the lid back on the box. “Do you have a plan?”
I think about the wedding. My father surrounded by his peers, drunk on champagne, ego, and the satisfaction of watching his enemy marry into his family. He’s expecting me to kill Vincenzo at the wedding. If I don’t have his confession by the time he raises his glass to toast us, he’ll know I’ve switched sides, and Vincenzo and I are screwed. Dad will kill Vincenzo, and Dashamir will start his chainsaw and cut me into pieces.
