Page 110 of Guilty as Sin

And my ten years of hard work to become a doctor aren’t going to waste. Stitching up Brady turned out to be a refresher course in trauma wounds. The other night I sutured a through-and-through in an O’Sullivan man’s upper arm, a ricochet accident.

My hands were steady the whole time.

Off-the-record bullet wounds bring me all the excitement of the operating room, with none of the paperwork. This is where I’m meant to be. Like Connor, I’ve realized the job I’m best at isn’t legal.

At the mention of my brother, Pete looks at me in the rearview mirror.

“He’s doing alright. The other recruit’s giving him a run for his money.”

Both Liam and Brady chuckle at this.

“Good,” I say. “He could use the challenge.”

We don’t say anything more about it in front of Brioni.

When we pull up in front of my husband’s Michelin-starred restaurant, he holds the car door open for me and Brioni again. As soon as he’s on the sidewalk, I see him reach to button his suit jacket. It’s a very sexy rich guy habit. But he falters when he realizes he’s only in his fitted white shirt. As I get out of the car, I swish his jacket at him like a flirty dress, flaunting the fact that it’s mine now.

“Shameless,” he says, shaking his head.

“Unrepentant,” I agree.

Jennifer, Lucy, and Finn meet us at the restaurant. Jen brought Dave, but Lucy’s dateless for the night, as is Finn. This evening, Brady’s occasionally volatile younger brother is a complete gentleman. He’s attentive to my quasi-single friend, without overstepping into flirty territory.

The restaurant’s private back room feels a little large for just the eight of us, but we fill the extra space with laughter. Liam, as the best man, gives a rousing toast that includes oblique references to my husband’s stubbornness and all the trouble it earned him in their younger years.

“Our Brady has always been a bit of a hardhead,” Liam concludes. “Which is why I’m so damn glad to see that he’s finally met his match.” He lifts his champagne glass to his brother and me. “To Brady and Cora,” he says, and the room echoes him.

My heart is so full as we all sip from our flutes. I feel the red splotches on my cheeks get even warmer as the evening progresses. The champagne flows throughout every course, and classical music backgrounds most of the night. When “I Only Have Eyes for You” comes quietly through the speakers, Brady and I look at each other. We both know we’ll dance to it later.

In private. And preferably naked.

I know we’d both like to dance to it right now, any excuse to have our hands all over each other. But I don’t want the non-couples at our table to feel any pressure to dance, including Brioni and Liam.

This morning, when she was styling my hair, Brioni requested that the four of us at City Hall not be treated like a double date. According to Brady, Liam wheedled the same promise out of him.

Neither the eldest O’Sullivan son nor their next-door neighbor wants to ruin their lifelong friendship by doing something so foolish as date. And so, Brady and I refrain from dancing so the two childhood friends feel no obligation to dance with each other.

But several drinks later, it’s Brioni who stands up, pulling me out of my chair to dance with her. We hold each other’s hands and waists and sway exaggeratedly back and forth. We’re not at all in time with the soft piano music, but it’s ridiculously fun. Lucy jumps up to join us, surprising everyone with a high-energy jitterbug, a talent I didn’t know she had. Jennifer laughs so hard that she snorts. She covers her mouth in embarrassment, but by then we’re all laughing.

I collapse back into my chair, breathless with joy. As my husband leans over to kiss me, I realize this is the happiest I’ve ever felt in my life. Cora Muloney grew up mafia, but it was under the shadow of female subservience. Samantha Greene achieved the independence she wanted, but at the cost of real human connection.

Cora Muloney O’Sullivan flouts the very idea of being a subservient mafia wife. She sacrificed the lonely part of independence in favor of belonging to a world filled with love, as well as to an underworld filled with danger.

The best part is, I’m great at both.

* * *

My husband carries me across the threshold of our honeymoon suite. It’s the same luxurious set of rooms we stayed in for our first wedding night. After he kicks the door closed behind us, he sets me on my feet and whisks his suit jacket off of me, draping it over a chair.

Just like before, he kicks off his shoes and pops the champagne cork clear across the room. Just like before, he whistles “I Only Have Eyes for You” cheerfully to himself. But this time, I accept his offer of champagne. This time, I slide myself into his arms as we dance to our song, slowly removing each other’s clothing until we’re dancing naked, my husband’s cock stiffening against my belly and my pussy getting wet in response.

This time, I spend the night with him in our plush honeymoon bed.

There’s another bottle of Dom chilling in a silver stand in the bedroom. But more interestingly, there’s also a silver tray of strawberries in the middle of the bed. Brady lays me down gently beside it, and I raise a silent eyebrow in question.

“I like watching you eat strawberries,” he says, with an unashamed shrug.

Languidly he settles himself next to my legs, lying on his side with his head propped on his fist. He runs his fingertips along my knee as he waits. I can see how hard his cock is, and yet he’s stroking my skin absently, in no hurry at all.