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“You didn’t open it?” Although the words come out with disbelief, the corners of my lips kick up with amusement. He’s so consumed with Addison he didn’t give a fuck about the one thing I’ve been losing sleep over for weeks.
“Marcus said it was a message of what’s to come,” he tells me as I finally open it. The paper tears easily and inside I’m surprised to find only a one-by-one-inch square photo. It falls into my palm facedown and I toss the crumpled envelope onto the desk, then flip the small piece of photo paper over.
“I went through all that shit for that?” Daniel asks, but I ignore him, too drawn to the picture.
I trace the curve of her porcelain face. I let the rough pad of my thumb run along the edge of the photo as I note her beautiful smile and the way her dark hair is lit with the sunshine in the image.
My heart pounds hard and I can’t hear what Daniel’s saying. I can’t hear anything but the conversation I had with Tony Romano in the basement cellar months ago. The man who I’ve been avoiding, and the man who reached out to Marcus to deliver the message rather than tell me himself.
The dimly lit, cold and dark room was as unforgiving and unmoving as I was when he made his case and I turned him down.
Then he started bartering with things that didn’t belong to him.
With women the Talverys were shipping off. His enemies. He wanted me to help him in a war against the Talverys and he was offering their property as payment. There was no way I’d ever accept.
“What is it?” Daniel presses, barely interrupting my memory.
“The gift from the Romanos.” I don’t know how the words come out strong as I gently place the photo onto the desk. “They want us on their side of this war they’re starting.”
I remember the way the heavy knife felt in my hand as I picked it up from his desk and stabbed it down onto the splintered wood in front of him. The sharp tip struck the paper in front of him.
The photo of the enemy family.
“If you give me any woman to start a war, it better be this one,” I sneered in his face. I remember the stale stench of whiskey and cigars as I turned my back on him, leaving the knife where it was. With the tip of it stabbing the shoulder of the enemy’s daughter. The shoulder her father’s large hand was clenched around tightly.
His pride and joy, and one and only heir.
I didn’t think Tony would ever have the balls to take her and offer her to me.
“A gift?” Daniel questions with his brows raised and then picks up the photo.
“Yes,” I answer him impatiently, quick to hide my depravity.
The photo of the one thing I asked for—Aria Talvery.
“In exchange for a war … she’s mine.”
The End.
A KISS TO TELL
Copyright © 2018 by Willow Winters All Rights Reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations within critical reviews and otherwise as permitted by copyright law.
NOTE: This is a work of fiction.
Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author's imagination.
Any resemblance to real life is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2018, Willow Winters Publishing. All rights reserved. willowwinterswrites.com
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PROLOGUE
Chloe
