Tales of Darkness & Sin - Pepper Winters Page 0,30

and kneeling to inspect it. He was a large man, tattooed in multiple places with distinctive mafia symbols, but it was his large gold pinky ring that solidified Lily’s question of who her stalker had been.

A ring bearing my family’s crest.

I slid it off his finger, swapping it out for the ring I always kept on my person as a reminder of my brother’s death.

Then, I held up the offending piece of jewelry so she could see my enemy’s insignia. “He’s a Bruno. Fighting with the in-laws so soon, Lily?”

Her face went slack with shock before she straightened her shoulders and zipped her lips closed to conceal it.

“How did you know about the engagement? You don’t strike me as the type to read the local gossip rags.”

“Oh, I’m not. The woman I fucked last night on the other hand…” I shrugged a shoulder and tried not to chuckle at her expression of faint disgust and lustful curiosity. “Or was it the one I fucked this morning?”

“Is that supposed to impress me?” She cocked her hip to the side, gun held loosely by her thighs like it was some designer bag and not a deadly weapon.

I stood up, stuck my hands in my pockets, and rocked back on my heels as I considered her. “The better question, delicate Lily, is whether the murder of this Bruno goon should impress me?”

“Why would I want to impress you?” she countered. “Besides, we don’t know he’s a Bruno.”

I tossed her the ring. “He’s wearing their insignia. It’s not exactly the ring you were expecting from your husband, was it?”

“He’s not my husband.”

“Yet,” I agreed.

She rolled her lips under her teeth, probably an effort to restrain herself from saying something a good Vitali daughter should not.

I nudged my toe against the body and whistled. “To think I believed the rumors…”

“Rumors?”

I smiled as she slid so prettily into my trap. “They say you’re a good girl, but I think this proves otherwise. I think you’re just begging for someone to corrupt you.”

“This was self-defense,” she argued, but her breath hitched when I stepped closer. The air between us went static with electricity. “Not some perverted cry for help.”

I reached out and caught a loose curl that had fallen over her cheek. The strand was soft as satin between my fingers. I wanted to know what all that silken hair would feel like wrapped around my fist while I broke in her virgin pussy from behind.

“Can’t it be both?” I asked softly. Intimately.

She blinked those huge golden-brown eyes up at me, lips parted in a plea her body understood, even though her mind rebelled against it.

“But really,” I continued and released her lock of hair to skirt the backs of my knuckles down the soft slope of her cheek. “Why would a man with more important things to do follow boring little you?”

Instantly, her eyes flashed. She stepped away from me, her lips twisted with hatred. “I’m not little or boring. He was threatening me!”

“Mhmm. I saw the whole thing, poisonous Lily. The poor man was just taking a post-dinner stroll to digest, and then bang! You turn around and shoot him dead.”

“He was stalking me,” she insisted with a stubborn tilt of her chin. “Would you rather see me raped or abducted?”

I clucked my tongue at her. “You’re marrying into the Bruno family. This man was probably sent to protect you.” I watched as the color drained out of her face. In this world, blood could only be repaid with blood, and she knew it. “Now what will you do? Your future husband cares for you so much he sent a man to look out for your welfare, and you kill him? Not exactly an auspicious start to your union.”

“He didn’t identify himself when he had the chance.”

“His orders were most likely to trail you silently and avoid detection. Pretty standard stuff.”

“What the fuck is this?” she demanded, tossing her hair like an angry mare. “An Amato defending a Bruno?”

“Ah, but you see, I’m an opportunist, sweet Lily.” I smiled, leaning so close to her mouth she swiped her tongue along her bottom lip in an unconscious quest to taste my own. “There are consequences to murder, even for a mafia princess like yourself. Especially when a marriage pact is on the line.”

Panic flashed bright as a lightning strike in her eyes. “What do you want?” Her hiss sent amusement through me.

Hook. Line. And sinker.

She was proving herself to be a smart girl and knew this