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He scoffs. “I don’t have any idea who your parents are.”
He’s lying—I know it in my bones. “I think you do,” I say. “I think you know exactly who Molly and Frank Fitzgerald were.”
Marcello
Her question hangs in the air like a bullet frozen in time.
Did you kill my parents?
It’s like a dagger to my fucking heart. No, worse—to my back. I’m blindsided by names I haven’t heard in nearly a decade.
I’ve been Don of the Dellucci mafia for more than fifteen years. I’ve sat across the negotiating table from killers and criminals where a good poker face is the difference between life and death.
And still, it takes every ounce of willpower I have to keep my face neutral so I don’t give away anything to Harper, who’s watching me like a fucking hawk. My jaw clenches, and beneath the table, my fist squeezes the arm of my chair so hard I fear it might snap.
Molly and Frank Fitzgerald.
They were a part of the Irish mob, and I had good relations with them a long time ago.
But after so many years have passed without so much as a word from them, they’re nothing more than ghosts.
And hearing their names sends a shiver down my spine.
Are they really her parents?
Harper? A part of the Irish mob?
No, that doesn’t sound right.
Molly and Frank are dead, and that’s where they ought to remain. Out of sight, out of mind.
But fuck, it makes everything so much harder when Harper is the one to speak their names aloud.
She was supposed to be a private distraction. What is she now? I don’t fucking know. And why did she think to ask me about this? What does she suspect?
Fuck, there are too many unanswered questions surrounding this girl.
It doesn’t fucking matter, I snarl to myself silently. I need to remember what Harper is—nothing more than an expensive toy purchased from an auction.
But even as I say it in my head, I know it isn’t true. You don’t pay a million dollars for a toy that means nothing to you.
“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about,” I rasp after a generous sip of my drink.
Harper widens her eyes at me. For the billionth time since I first strode into her room, I think about how fuckable she looks in that dress. I want to sweep my arm across the table and send all the dishes clattering to the floor, so I can throw her where they were, flip up the hem of her dress, and bury my face in her wet, aching pussy. I want to hear her moans echo through the room. I want to pin her hands above her head so she can’t touch me, so she can only take it as I take her.
“My turn, then,” I say.
She starts to protest, but I raise a finger and repeat myself. “It is my turn. Answer me this, kitten. Do you want me to fuck you?”
I want her to hurt.
I want her to come.
I want her, I want her, I want her.
It must be the whiskey that loosens my judgment and causes me to think these things. But that’s another lie.
The truth is I am burning up inside with the most powerful craving I’ve ever experienced. Her skin, her lips, her tongue—if I don’t own it all now, I fear I’ll crumble to ashes.
Her jaw drops. For one moment between the time I ask my question and the time she begins to answer, the truth is written clear in her eyes.
Her emerald eyes seem to be screaming, Yes, I want you to fuck me.
What a pleasure it is to watch the war rage inside her. She knows enough of who I am now to know she should fear me, yet she wants me anyway. I’m forbidden and irresistible all at once.
Just like she is to me.
“No,” she says, but the word falls from her lips weakly.
“Bullshit.” My voice cuts through the tense air between us. “Tell me the truth. That’s the game, after all.”
My chair screeches backward across the marble floor as I stand and stride over to her. I put one hand under her chin and force her eyes to meet mine.
“It’s either the truth or the whiskey, kitten. You have no other choices.”
She stares back at me, defiant to the end. But as the seconds tick past, her defiance melts, revealing what is behind it—lust.
“I’ll ask you once more. Do you want me to fuck you?”
The war behind her eyes reaches its crescendo. And then, like the snap of my fingers, it is over.
Lust wins.
“Yes,” she whispers. “Yes, I do.”
I don’t know if she’s telling the truth, but it doesn’t fucking matter either as long as that word spilled from her mouth.
Yes.
That’s all I wanted to hear.
All I needed to let go of my inhibitions.
