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d had seventeen minutes left to kill me
o old in our marriage that I had stopped feeling it, the way you stop feeling a ring until someone asks you to take it off. The lamp was still burning. Beneath a stack of
LLA M
tapled to the corner, along with a sheet of instructions about where I would be and when, mapped out with a precision that made my skin crawl. At the
rs might rearrange themselves into som
, against every warning I'd been given, started to love. Everyone in Italy knew what Dante Moretti was capable of. His enemies vanished, his rivals surrendered, and the men who defied him regretted surviving long
rd creaked
k hair disordered in a way it never was in public. His face gave me nothing. His eyes went from my face to the page in my hand, and something moved behind them
id you f
he page. "I
th a quiet click that sounded far too
r me f
ou to give
death!" My voice cracked on the last
frightened animal you could not afford to lose. "What
fe when you need a perfect marriage to display, and the
not wha
y what y
t the signature again, then back
N
med before I could see what w
ink I would lie t
ie to me abo
looked away. That was all the confirmation I needed. I backed up a step and pressed th
carpet lay between us, a
you dead," he
an r
tay in this room arguing with me, you
he weapon, and then at him, and something in me went
id through his teeth
t through the window and glass rained across the floorboards, and then his body was over mine, one arm cradling my head, th
ehead against mine. "Whatever ha
an trust him again. Instead I caught myself gripping his jacket with both ha
n, blood spreading through his shoulder. "Boss. The
m, his voice terrifyingly even.
eyes dropped to the page still crushed in my
was supposed to
lungs. "How woul
out of range. "Dante. How do you k
til his voice was barely a breath against my ear. "Becau
hy
ghts w
nst my throat, and a stranger's voice slid into my ea
ckwards into the dark, and
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