Tales of Darkness & Sin - Pepper Winters Page 0,40

not enough to commit a felony to see it early.”

Nothing was a felony when we had the police and politicians bought. I didn’t say this.

Instead, I shrugged a shoulder, leaned against the wall, and watched her move through the space. “We committed a felony for the fun of it, my sweet Lily. You want to be a bad girl. I figured you needed at least one illegal activity on your record.”

Neither of us brought up the murder, which she still didn’t know I’d faked. Sweet, naïve Lily. She’d followed me to hell and didn’t even know it.

Lily snorted, but a small, thrilled smile teased her lips, which told me she loved the edge of danger. “Thanks for looking out.”

I didn’t tell her I knew old man Garibaldi or that he wouldn’t have cared I’d broken in because he was my deceased mother’s favorite cousin.

I didn’t tell her he’d left Tommaso’s ring out ‘for cleaning’ on a velvet cushion, so it would be easy to pilfer.

“What is that?” Lily moved toward me when the ring in my fingers caught the low light from the street.

“Tommy’s gift to you.”

She reached for my hand to lower it but didn’t touch the ring, as if it had teeth and she was in danger of its bite. “God, that’s ugly.”

It was easy to agree with her. The diamond was large, but garishly cut into the shape of a heart on a rose gold band. It was too gaudy, too girly and sweet for my poisonous Lily.

“It’s not you,” I told her.

She looked up at me through her lashes and cocked her head. “If you know me so well, Amato, what is me?”

I moved away to peruse the glass cases and almost immediately found the perfect one. I picked the lock and hid the ring in my hand before walking back slowly to Lily.

“If you were to get married to the man you love and not the man your family wants for you,” I started, stalking toward her, “he would be dark and dashing enough to surprise you constantly, to keep you on your toes. He wouldn’t ask Paolo for permission. He would whisk you away in the middle of the night, stolen straight from your bed, and take you somewhere dark and intimate, say… a crypt or a confessional. He’d fuck you senseless before asking the question just because he couldn’t keep his dirty hands off your tight body, and in your post-orgasm haze, you’d think it was a dream.”

I stopped before her, eyes locked to her dazed, dreamy gaze as I dropped to my knees and produced the ring I’d picked for her. A large, princess-cut black diamond on a white gold band. Simple, dark, and utterly compelling.

Her fingers reached out to touch it, hovering as if asking for permission.

I continued, “You’d think it was a dream because you’re living in a nightmare, where you marry the mafia prince instead of the villain.”

“What are you saying, Frankie?”

I didn’t know what I was saying. I was just giving voice to the impossible dream that seemed to link us like spider webbing, an inescapable and deadly trap.

“I’m saying, he’s not right for you and I’m not either. I’m saying I’m sorry you might die for this.”

Lily stared down at me, transforming before my eyes. Chin tilted, hair tossed over her straightened shoulders, face set to benevolence like a queen faced with her subject.

“Well, then,” she practically purred. “Let’s make sure I go out with bang instead of a whimper.”

Her lips swallowed my dark chuckle. She fell into my arms. We went tumbling to the ground, where we fucked for hours, until her pussy was raw and so swollen I couldn’t fit a finger inside her, until we were glued together with sweat, wet and dried.

We fucked like convicts on death row.

The metaphor couldn’t have been more fitting, because the next day, the day of Lily’s wedding, neither of us doubted she might die.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Lily

I held lilies between my palms.

Papà thought it would be cute.

Poetic, even.

Lilies for my Lily, he’d said, handing them to me before we were set to begin.

They weren’t the poisonous kind, and he didn’t realize I thought of death every time I looked at them, especially as I walked down the aisle in my hundred-thousand-dollar wedding gown.

A gaggle of Vitali and Amato children held my train. Papà’s arm steadied me, more threatening than reassuring. In front of me, a row of bridesmaids I’d barely spoken to in my life stood at the front