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Previously in Love Like Poison
Corsican Crime Lord, Book One
On Sabella Edwards’s sixteenth birthday, she meets the enigmatic twenty-year-old Angelo Russo who shows up uninvited at her party. He’s dark and breathless like the ocean, the one thing she loves most in the world. Their attraction is instantaneous, but her father, Ben, orders her to stay away from Angelo. Ben claims that Angelo is from a bad family. Little does she know that her father promised to marry her to the powerful crime lord and that Angelo traveled across half of the world to meet his future bride.
Angelo manipulates Sabella’s mother into letting her keep a rescued cat. This gift means more to Sabella than the priceless gold and diamond bracelet the Russos offered her. During an intense farewell the following morning, Angelo tells Sabella that all her firsts are his. He orders her to wait for him, asking her to be patient, but refrains from telling her about the marriage contract.
When Ben refuses to acknowledge the oath he made, Angelo sets out to claim what’s owed to him, including not only a portion of the shares and voting rights in Ben’s company, but also the woman destined to be his. In order to bend Ben to his will, Angelo schemes to steal a book that contains evidence of bribes Ben made to high-ranking criminals and government officials.
Angelo gifts Sabella a phone that she keeps secret. During the next year, they have regular contact. A solid relationship develops over the distance. One year later, Angelo is back on the day of Sabella’s birthday. She lets him into the house when her family is asleep. In exchange for her first kiss, Angelo gives her his signet ring and instructs her to never remove it. When Sabella dozes off, Angelo uses the opportunity to steal the book.
Sabella is devastated when she learns the truth. She confronts Angelo at his hotel, only to discover that Angelo is having her watched. She throws his ring back at him, telling him she never wants to see him again, but he threatens to brand the insignia on her skin if she doesn’t wear the ring. No matter how hard she tries to escape the dangerous Corsican, her efforts are futile. Even though Angelo returns to his home thousands of kilometers across the sea, he effectively controls her life.
Deciding that Angelo was bluffing, Sabella flirts with an older boy at her friend’s birthday party, only for Roch, the man Angelo employed to keep an eye on Sabella, to throw the young man into the pool. The web spins tighter around her until she’s consumed with anxiety and fear.
On her eighteenth birthday, she suggests losing her virginity with her best friend and neighbor, Colin Taylor, but Colin and Sabella have grown apart since Colin hooked up with his girlfriend. Colin rejects the offer, informing Sabella he’s no longer a virgin. Her isolation from her friends and her slow withdrawal from the world is complete. A little intoxicated during her party, Sabella finally reaches a breaking point and flushes Angelo’s ring down the toilet.
The same night, Angelo shows up to claim another first. In a spiteful effort to even the score, Sabella lies about having given her virginity to someone else. The sex that follows is angry and vengeful but no less explosive. To punish her for removing his ring, Angelo renders her unconscious and brands her with his family emblem.
Sabella is woken to incredible sex and a permanent brand on her skin. Despite Angelo’s insistence to go public with their relationship, Sabella doesn’t want her family to know that she betrayed them not once but twice, first by allowing Angelo to steal her father’s book in order to blackmail him into signing over his shares, and then by sleeping with their enemy. She returns the Ferrari Angelo gives her for her birthday, inviting his irk.
While Angelo returns home and finalizes the planning of his marriage to Sabella in the European summer, Sabella enrolls into university to study marine biology, still unaware of Angelo’s intentions.
The Edwards family goes through an eventful period with the birth of Sabella’s nephew as well as her sister’s wedding. Sabella’s sister falls pregnant shortly after. Her family is far from perfect, but, despite the growing tension between her parents and her father’s preoccupied behavior, Sabella feels a sense of belonging when they gather for her brother’s birthday celebration. For once, everyone seems happy.
In the meantime, in the Russo household, the preparations for the summer wedding are in full swing. The garden has been transformed and the wedding dress delivered. On their way to sample the wedding cake, Angelo’s mother and his twin sister are killed in an accident when his mother loses control of the car and drives off a cliff. Angelo knows his enemies are behind the accident, their real target having been his father.
As a part of him dies, a new part is born, a part that is more monster than man. Angelo swears vengeance, and promises that the guilty party will suffer the wrath of hell.
Hate Like Honey
ChapterOne
Sabella
The library is quiet. Most students are gone for the holiday. I revel in having the space to myself. The gray winter light that sifts through the windows catches the dust particles in wedges. The smell of leather, paper, and ink reminds me of my dad’s study, a place where I felt secure and loved.
Yet something is off. The long lines of shelves crammed with books form an ominous labyrinth. The aisles between them are hiding places where danger can lurk. I don’t like that I can’t see between them. The lamp throws a ring of light around my books and laptop that doesn’t reach farther than the edge of the desk. The corners of the hall are cloaked in darkness.
A creak sounds overhead. I jerk my head toward the upstairs landing. There’s no one. It’s probably just the wooden floorboards expanding or shrinking due to the changes in temperature. A shiver slides down my spine. I pull my cardigan tighter around myself as I prick up my ears, focusing on every sigh and groan of the old building.
The medical section with its priceless oil paintings and precious antique books displayed in glass cabinets is my favorite room. For some reason, the faces of Hippocrates and Pasteur stare menacingly at me from the wall today. I should go back downstairs to where the librarian has her desk. I can do with the comforting presence of another human being.
My mind made up, I gather my books and notes. Just as I slide my laptop into my bag, the door squeaks open, cutting a triangle of chalky light into the space. I jump. Footsteps fall hard on the floor. Like in a bad dream, I’m frozen in place, watching with growing dread as the form of a man takes shape in the darkness.
The hair in my nape stands on end, and my palms turn clammy. My mind screams at me to flee, but my body is paralyzed with fear. I inhale deeply, fighting for reason. I’m being silly. Students come here all the time. It’s not unusual for a man to walk into the room.
Like a ghost manifesting from thick, black fog, he advances toward me. Life finally returns to my limbs. I push back my chair, ready to bolt, but then he passes in front of the window, and the grainy daylight illuminates his shaved head and meaty hands.
Roch.
I’m simultaneously relieved and scared. He walks to me with determined steps, each falling like a warning on the floor, and stops next to me with his hands balled into fists. From close up, I can make out the angry light in his pale eyes and the furious strain in the hard angles of his face.
It’s unreal to see him standing there. The man my tormentor pays to keep an eye on me hasn’t showed himself in months.
I look up at him, swallowing away the tightness of my throat. “What’s wrong?”
His nostrils flare. He inhales. Exhales. “They’re dead.”
