Tales of Darkness & Sin - Pepper Winters Page 0,42

none.

No one else would have noticed the strain in her delicate jaw. The way her hands strangled the lilies in her grip until the spines snapped and the blooms lilted to the left.

No one else knew what hell she was going through in this holy place, because no one knew Liliana Vitali.

Not really.

Not even me.

But what I did know made me crave her to the point of sin.

My lust consumed me enough to give me a hard on just watching her at the altar in virgin’s white.

My envy enough to spur my imagination to morbid daydreams, where Tommaso’s blood was wet and hot on my hands. A murderous baptism as I plunged a knife into his back.

My greed and gluttony were so acute, my stomach cramped and my hands itched to stalk to the front of the church, rip open her expensive dress with a mighty tear, and gorge myself on her sweet body for all to watch.

And I was proud enough to believe I could have her against all the odds.

As I watched her marry a man who was in every way inferior to her, the only sin I followed through on was sloth.

I sat there, and I watched.

By the time the ceremony ended, my heart had successfully corrupted my more highly evolved instincts.

The beast that lurked in the pit of my belly broke free from its bonds, overriding my humanity. I was an animal with hatred. All instincts. No conscious. Wild and deadly.

When Tommaso disappeared behind a door near the altar, I followed.

He was tall, maybe handsome if you liked men with weak chins and weaker minds.

But he was no match for me.

The shadows were deep between the narrow walls of the ancient church, so he didn’t notice me until I was on him. My arm banded around his throat like a boa, compressing the scream that rose to a soft wheeze.

“Did you enjoy that kiss with your new bride, Tommy?” I hissed into his ear, raised the knife in my free hand to his belly, and played the edge against the thin fabric of his dress shirt. “I sure as fuck hope so, because it’s as close to Liliana as you’ll ever get again.”

“You’re a dead man,” he managed to croak before I slammed him up against a wall.

The tip of my knife dug into his side so hard, it tunneled through the fabric and skin. Red bloomed like a flower over his kidney.

“You were a dead man the moment you put your mouth on what’s mine,” I growled, lost to the dark pleasure of my rage. “Any last words, Tom? Before I stick you like the suckling pig they served at your wedding dinner?”

“Fuck. You.” His weak gasps barely reached my ears.

“I’ll pass. But I did fuck your wife, and trust me,” I paused, angling the knife so it slid beautifully between his ribs, “if I’m dead like you say, it was fucking worth it to see Liliana’s blood smeared on my cock as I took her.”

He dragged in a raspy breath of furious surprise. It choked off into a wet gurgle when I plunged the blade into his body and the tip broached his poisonous heart.

I held him close as his struggles weakened, just to feel the life leave his body.

This was the man who was ready to indenture Lily to a loveless marriage just so he could rise in the ranks. This was the man who was willing to rape her on their wedding night, because he felt it was his right.

This was the man who’d insisted Don Amato kill my brother.

And now, in some Shakespearean twist I knew Lily and her dark heart would relish just as much as I did, he was nothing.

Because he was dead.

It was too easy, really.

I disposed of Tommaso’s corpse in the crematorium attached to the back of the church and snuck through town into the courtyard of the Vitali home I’d been stalking for weeks.

It was tradition for the bride to lose her virginity in the house of her father. A symbol of her passing from his possession to that of her husband’s.

Lily hated the patriarchal cast of our culture. Knowing her and what it was doing to her, I did, too.

Everything I’d ever known and believed in was poisoned by this feeling that bloomed in my chest. Maybe I’d sprung a new organ. One bigger and stronger than the one that had pumped my heart before.

And with each beat of this new pulse, it seemed one