I softly caress his cheek with the back of my hand. “Thank you.”
“I would have decorated the Montoni mansion with his intestines if I’d been given the chance. You do know that, don’t you?”
“I know. I’m sorry I kept the truth from you, but I wanted my revenge served cold. For that, I needed Andreas to believe he’d gotten away with it. I wanted the whole of Malus to know that Mom and Dad were forcing me to marry a man who tried to hurt me and was betraying our family to the Sokolis. I wantedeveryone to see that behind their smiles and success and money, they’re monsters.”
Damiano lifts my hand to his lips and kisses my palm. “My beautiful, bloodthirsty woman. How I love you.”
I stroke his cheek again. “I think that’s the most beautiful part. Everyone in Malus knows how much Damiano Barone loves me, and how much I love him.”
He turns his head and smiles at me. “I love you harder than any man has ever loved a woman.”
Pleasure sparkles through my body. Damiano’s ferocious, forbidden love is all I’ve ever craved.
A car pulls out in front of us and cuts us off. I seize his thigh, and cry, “Damiano, look out!”
He slams on the brakes, and at the same time, he reaches across my body and presses me back to my seat. I’ve forgotten to put my seat belt on, and I jerk forward, but I’m kept safe by Damiano. Thank God for his reflexes because, otherwise, my head would have slammed into the dashboard.
Damiano turns to me, his eyes wide and startled that I nearly got hurt. “Shit.Shit. Are you okay?”
I start to say that I am, until I see who’s getting out of the car in front.
I’m not okay.
Neither of us are okay.
“Damiano. Look.”
The man getting out of the car is Cristiano Montoni. There’s a gun in his hand, and his cold eyes are glittering with fury.
18
Damiano
My heart is still pounding in fear that Lucy nearly got hurt, but I follow her gaze. The Montoni don is glowering at us through the windshield with vengeance sparking in his eyes.
I killed his cousin.
Now he’s here to kill us both.
Blood for blood.
“Stay here,” I tell Lucy as I get out of the car.
But Lucy being Lucy means she doesn’t listen to a word I say. As I approach Cristiano, I hear the car door slam behind me and theclick, clickof high heels on asphalt.
Cristiano gives Lucy a contemptuous look as she reaches my side and turns to me. “I don’t care about whatever fucked-up thing the two of you have going on, but you just murdered my cousin, Barone. Your sister threw her engagement ring at his corpse. Tell me why I shouldn’t kill you both right now.”
His gun is still pointed at the ground. For the moment. “You will not hurt Lucy. She’s already suffered enough at your cousin’s hands. If you want your pound of flesh, you’ll take it from me.”
Lucy pushes between us and glares up at the Montoni don. “You will take a pound of flesh from no one, Cristiano Montoni. If you were following what I said in church, you’ll know why Damiano did what he did. Were you even listening?”
She has wrapped my jacket tightly around her, but it’s obvious that she’s wearing nothing but lingerie underneath.
Cristiano presses his lips together and looks from one of us to the other. “I was listening. My cousin tried to rape you, and he was selling Barone secrets to the Sokolis.” His voice is flat, emotionless.
The tension is strung tight in the deserted street. Our lives depend on whether he believes Lucy or not.
“If a man had done that to Adora, you would have killed him on the spot,” I tell him.
