Tales of Darkness & Sin - Pepper Winters Page 0,35

of man brings a woman on a date to a crypt.”

My grin sliced across my face, killing my illicit thoughts. “Manuel was my brother.”

She frowned, waiting for me to go on. When I didn’t, she pursed her lips and fisted her hands on her hips. “Sooo you left your dead brother a shot of alcohol and poisonous flowers? Doesn’t seem very brotherly.”

“The combination killed him,” I said with that cruel smile I’d learned from the other made men in my family. An expression of joy perverted by murder and the acts that led to it. “Lily of the Valley crushed into Amaretto.”

“And you’re smiling…” She shook her head, eyes flirting between me and the glass of poison on my brother’s grave. “That’s evil, Frankie.”

“Of course, you wouldn’t understand.”

She hesitated, thumbing the material of her dress between her fingers. “Actually, I understand more than you think. Why did he die?”

I liked her question and the intelligence it spoke to. Not how he died, but why? There was always a reason for death in the life of the mafia.

“He made an unauthorized hit against the Bruno family during a turf war a few years ago. The Council gave him the option between two sentences: death or exile.”

“He chose death?” she asked, an adorable knot in her brow.

The urge to smile while talking about my brother’s death surprised me. Usually, I felt sick with helplessness and frustrated rage, but Lily made me feel… light somehow.

“For a made man, exile is worse than death. What is life without your family, your religion?” I gestured to the sea of graves around us. A sea of men, who preferred death as a made man over death without honor, loyalty, and family. “That is what life is for these men.”

“For you,” she murmured, almost to herself. She studied me and looked out the barred window to the deepening night beyond. “My sister chose death, too. I’ll never understand why. Our cousin Renata would have let her live in America with her.”

So that was what had happened to Carlotta. I’d forgotten to look into it and kicked myself for it now.

My heart clenched at the agony in Lily’s tone, a pain that matched my own and could only be echoed by the death of a sibling.

I’d meant to woo her tender heart with my sob story, but it seemed Lily had one of her own.

“Manuel chose death to make a point,” I found myself explaining, even though I’d never before spoken of it.

“Which was?”

“In death, he could take his life back from the Family.”

Lily paused, digesting that. “Somehow, that makes sense. Carlotta asked my dad to kill her. We spent the entire day together as a family, going to the beach and out for dinner at her favorite trattoria. Mundane shit I’d always taken for granted. That night, when I was in bed, window open to courtyard where they said goodbye, Papà shot her.”

I sucked air through my teeth, shocked that they’d let her witness the killing so intimately. Paolo was known for sheltering his daughters, yet in his haste to right the wrong his eldest daughter had done, he’d exposed his youngest to something she should never have been a part of.

I’d take better care of her, I found myself thinking, the animal in me rearing its wild head, snapping its rabid teeth.

I wanted to kill Paolo Vitali for putting her through that.

A dangerous thought to have.

A surprising one, too.

“What did she do?” I demanded, angry but not with her.

She seemed to sense it. If anything, my outrage seemed to endear her further. She stepped closer until the hard tips of her small breasts pressed against me.

“Carlotta had sex before marriage,” she murmured, voice husky. “With someone who wasn’t her arranged fiancé.”

I dipped my head so my nose could slide against the edge of hers. She smelled like lilies. Of course, she did.

One of my hands found the dip of her lower back and pressed her even closer, so she could feel my semi-hard dick against her belly. The other slid into the silken treads of her hair and the base of her neck.

She gasped when I fisted the locks and tugged her head back, her mouth blooming open for me.

“Maybe,” I whispered, voice rough as sandpaper, “the temptation was worth the price.”

“She was an idiot,” Lily insisted, eyes flashing, but her stare caught on my mouth, and she softened further against me. It was my turn for my breath to hitch when her hand slid up