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That particular morning, he had been able to think of little else but how much he had wanted to pull the straps of her top down her shoulders and kiss her while she still tasted of wine. He hadn’t bothered to look beneath the surface of the words, or he might have realized what she was really saying. Or not saying. But he was now.
“What do you mean that you killed Johnathan Steel?”
Donni sat on the top step of the sunken living room, settling herself ungracefully. “He was an awful man, Johnathan. During my first movie, he was all compliments. He charmed my mother and made her think I’d be in good hands. But he was just laying the foundation for what was going to come later.” She gripped the floor tightly. “Setting the fucking stage.
“He started criticizing my weight, my height, my appearance. He told me I was too heavy. Too slutty. That I was better off doing porn. He said that’s all I would be good for unless I could show that I could be leading lady material. But what that really meant was doing what he wanted.”
Rafe stopped moving. It felt like he had a loose sparking wire inside him.
(I’ve made a big mistake)
“It went on for years,” she said. “The psychological torture, the bullying, the rapes. Eventually, it almost started to feel normal. Like something I deserved. The price of my career. And I—just tried not to think about it. Johnathan Steel’s movies made money, even though I never saw most of it, and there were a lot of them. So I just kept . . . doing it.”
“Why?” The word splintered from him. “Why didn’t you leave?”
“Because I didn’t want to go back!” She staggered to her feet abruptly. “It felt like a bigger failure to admit that something was horribly wrong than it did to keep going along with him and pretending everything was fine. I know that sounds crazy, but that’s how I felt.”
Her eyes clouded over. “Not that it worked. My career was already dying when I met your father. Which made it far too easy for Johnathan to claim that it was desperation and lies. I almost didn’t go to the gig in Riachuelo but the girl who was supposed to got sick and my agent basically gave me no choice. By then, Johnathan had already moved on to . . . other projects. So I was flown out here by one of the wineries to add a spot of color to their glossy brochures, and then I met your father and I married him. You know what happened next.”
“You got away.”
“I thought I did.”
He watched her, his throat dry as a desert.What was your mistake, Donni?
“When Johnathan reached out to me and said he wanted me to work onDeadly Beautiful, I thought it would be different because I was a married woman. But it didn’t matter. It wasn’t about sex for him, it was about control. He expected things to go back to exactly how they were before, only this time, he said that if I talked, he’d tell Marco everything. That he’d ruin me.”
“You talked,” Rafe said, shocked by his own numbing calm.
“And he did exactly what he promised he’d do. I was in talks for another film that probably would have made my career. It was calledLittle Deaths, about a newly married woman whose husband is slowly driving her insane. An old Gothic. But he scrapped it and fired me, and then he made sure no one else would touch me, either. Not with a ten-foot pole.”
“So you killed him.”
She nodded bleakly.
“How? They said he died of a heart attack.”
Donni rubbed at the back of her hand. “I was at the trial. And when he came out through the crowd, I bumped into him. Hard. Hard enough to pierce him with the needle I’d stuck through my bag.” She let out a ragged breath. “There are forums out there, you know. Forums full of women who are just fucking done. Women who have access to things they shouldn’t. One of them met me in a dark alley one night and gave me two needles full of potassium solution for fifty grand apiece. She told me todo what thou wilt. So I did. I killed him.”
She opened the fridge and pulled out a wine bottle, twisting it open to pour herself a full glass. “I killed him,” she repeated, “and now the only people who know are you, me, and the killer. And the woman who sold me the poison, I suppose.” She took a deep sip of wine, and then another, draining about two thirds of the glass. “Are you going to turn me in? I might even go quietly.”
It was a line fromDeadly Beautiful, delivered in an utterly deadpan tone.
Leaning back against the counter the way she was, almost like she was posing for him in that off-the-shoulder sweater, left him feeling like he’d swallowed down a whole glass of whiskey. She looked bad. The kind of bad that made you want to find out how bad a woman was willing to be.
The natural world was filled with male creatures who were willing slaves to the very females that would destroy them. And apparently, he was no different, because he went to her, putting his hands on her hips to pull her in. “Don’t lie to me,” he said, taking her nearly-empty glass away and setting it on the counter. “You’d fight me and you know it.”
He kissed her neck, biting at the skin beneath her ear. She let out a violent breath but didn’t push him away when he tugged at her sweater with his teeth.
“Didn’t you hear what I told you?”
“I heard,” he said. “You killed a man who hurt you. Good for you.”
“Jesus.” The word came out like a groan. “You really are fucked up.”
“Maybe that’s what it takes for understanding.” Rafe slid his hands beneath the hem of her sweater, craving the touch of skin. “Two souls, made of the same dark shit.” He breathed in against her hair and laughed throatily. “Maybe I saw myself inside of you.”
“Freak,” she whispered, and he laughed again.
