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Previously in Tears Like Acid
Corsican Crime Lord, Book Three
Banished to a house Angelo’s family vandalized and abandoned at the far end of the property, Sabella finds herself isolated and alone in a country she doesn’t know. Heidi convinces Angelo to let her take food, clothes, and bed linen to Sabella. The kind housekeeper is Sabella’s only ally in her new hostile environment.
To her horror, Sabella wakes up with lice. Her only option is walking to the village at the bottom of the valley and asking the pharmacist for help. From the inhabitants’ reactions, she soon realizes that her husband is despised in the village.
On Angelo’s instruction, Heidi brings Sabella back to the old house while the new house is fumigated and cleaned. Angelo has Sabella locked in her room to prevent her from snooping and gathering information she can give to the police while he entertains guests at home. Unable to stay away from his wife, he visits her room after dinner. In the aftermath of the sex that follows, he tells her he wants an heir. When Sabella refuses to bring a child into their turbulent world, he tells her that he won’t give her a choice.
The following morning, Angelo leaves for Marseille to recruit an informant. He wants to know what transpired between Sabella and Lieutenant Lavigne when Lavigne arrested Sabella on false charges. While Angelo makes full use of his wife’s respected name to further his own business, the cuts on Sabella’s feet and knee heal.
Heidi takes Sabella back to the new house where she meets Fabien, Angelo’s personal shopper, who refurbished and decorated the house. They immediately take a liking to each other. When Angelo returns from France that night, Sabella greets him like he ordered—naked and on her knees. She decides to give him obedience and her body but never a child or her heart. Bitter about the fact that he told her she’s not worthy to say his name, she vows to never speak it again.
Sabella continues her secret excursions to the village, sneaking away during the day, and finds a few casual jobs. Her objective is to pay the pharmacist and to stash away a small emergency fund. Slowly but surely, she befriends the locals. When she returns from the village one day, Fabien is waiting with a gown for a fundraiser she has to attend with Angelo. Angelo gets the wrong idea when he walks in on Sabella and Fabien where she tries on the gown in her bedroom. His jealousy erupts. The only reason he doesn’t kill Fabien is because he knows his personal shopper prefers men to women.
After discovering signs of trespassing in and around the house, Sabella manages to lure the person who helped himself to her food from the woods. To her surprise, she discovers that the dirty boy dressed in rags is a girl. On top of that, she’s not just any girl but Angelo’s niece. Sophie tells Sabella that she and her brothers stayed behind when their ‘grandfather’ moved back to his camp in the valley. The children live in a cave and survive by stealing food from the village.
Angelo is shocked to discover Sophie with Sabella. He goes in search of her brothers and find them at the camp with Grandpa, his maternal grandfather. As their parents disappeared, the grandfather agrees to sign over custody to Angelo. Sabella and Angelo disagree about Sophie’s future. Angelo wants to send her to a boarding school in Marseille while Sabella believes it will be a mistake to send the little girl away. Sabella makes a deal with Angelo, promising to help him put an important deal to bed by using her name and influence if he’ll give the local school a try.
At the fundraiser dinner in Paris, Sabella achieves her aim. The shipping company owner agrees to the deal with Angelo. Angelo moves Sophie’s brothers in with him, but it’s not smooth sailing. The three boys are a handful and difficult to handle. It doesn’t help that Angelo feels the strain of constantly being on his guard around his wife. She remains a threat to the family, something his uncles remind him of at every opportunity.
As punishment for his uncles’ suggestion that Angelo kills his wife, he orders them to kneel and prove their loyalty to him as the head of the crime organization. He orders his cousins to guard the new house. The babysitting duty is a demotion designed to put them back in their place.
As Angelo’s cousins don’t inform him of Sophie’s presence at the new house, he realizes that they’re either not doing their jobs or purposefully emitting some facts. He orders his guards to watch his uncles as well as his cousins.
During a walk, Sabella and Sophie stumble upon a graveyard with three gravestones. Sabella instantly knows who were put there to rest. Angelo shows up with Heidi. The fact that Angelo knew where to find them tells Sabella her husband is having her watched.
Furious that Sabella is trespassing in his most personal grief, Angelo orders Heidi to take Sophie to visit her brothers while he drives Sabella home. Intent on punishing her, he abandons the idea when she apologizes for what her family did to his. He’s equally moved by her apology and despondent about their future. Believing that Sabella is scheming with Lavigne to betray him, his only option is letting her live in isolation, far away from the old house where she can get her hands on incriminating evidence. But that poses a problem for their living situation when, one day, there will be children. Angelo sees no other way than separating the children from their mother, letting them live with him in the week while giving her weekend visitation rights.
Even though the prospect of living like a divorced couple isn’t ideal, Angelo decides to tie Sabella to him in blood, making it unlikely for her to run from him and impossible to leave the country without his permission. With no other solution in sight, Angelo flushes away Sabella’s birth control pills.
Kisses Like Rain
ChapterOne
Sabella
The slamming of the front door announces my husband’s departure.
I’m familiar with the sound. The brutality and finality that resonate in the echo are recurring themes in our lives.
We’re not a normal couple. Angelo Russo isn’t just any average man. There’s nothing mediocre about him. He’s the head of the most powerful crime organization on the island of Corsica, and I dare say also the most despised.
Who can like a man who rules his kingdom like a devil from his throne? Who can love a man incapable of compassion?
After the violent scene that took place when he discovered me in his family graveyard, he brought Sophie home like he promised. Nothing changed from earlier. I opened my heart, made myself vulnerable, and apologized for what my family did to his. Instead of mending what’s broken between us, my apology made it worse. Yes, he didn’t punish me as he set out to do. But closing himself off as if I’m nothing to him and leaving me cold and alone hurt more than any punishment could. Taking that first step of saying I’m sorry took tremendous courage. Rejecting my compassion and trampling on my heart confirm what I didn’t want to face.
We’re irreparably damaged.
It’s just me now. I alone am responsible for my happiness. There aren’t two people in this marriage equation.
I always knew that. Then why does disappointment sink in my belly? Why does my stomach bottom out?
The answer catches me off guard.
Because, deep inside, I kindled a spark of hope for us. Because I wanted him to like me. No, it’s time to stop watering down the truth. I wanted him toloveme. Stupidly, I craved what most women want from a marriage, knowing very well that was never my destiny.
If going down on my knees and apologizing for my family’s sins didn’t break through my husband’s defenses, nothing will. Why did I even try? What does it matter anyway? He doesn’t trust me. He’ll never give me the benefit of the doubt. There’s nothing to fix here, nothing less ugly than hate in the cards for us. He’ll always be my dad’s killer. The blood of the family that murdered his will always run through my veins.
