Chapter 16
Adora
The sterile white walls and fluorescent lighting in the hospital make everyone look half dead.
I sit in a waiting room with Vincenzo beside me, his hand warm in mine.
People passing look surprised at my wedding dress and his suit but quickly avert their gazes when they see my makeup smudged from crying.
Tragedy at a wedding. What an unlucky couple.
Two detectives sit across from us. The older one, Detective Morelli, has kind eyes that don’t match his sharp questions. His partner, Detective Smyth, takes notes and watches like she’s waiting for me to slip.
“Mrs. Vici,” Morelli says. “I know this is difficult, but we need to ask you some questions about what happened tonight.”
I nod, pressing a tissue to the corner of my eye. “Of course. Anything to help.”
“Can you walk us through the events leading up to your father’s collapse?”
I take a shaking breath. “We’d just finished dinner. The toasts were starting. Dad gave a speech welcoming Vincenzo to the family, and then…” I let my voice break convincingly. “Then he just collapsed. I don’t understand what happened. He was fine. He was happy.”
“Did you notice anyone acting suspiciously? Anyone near his drink?”
“There were three hundred people there. I was focused on my guests. I wasn’t paying attention to anything else.”
Smyth leans forward. “Your father had enemies, Mrs. Vici. Can you think of anyone who might want to harm him?”
I meet her eyes with perfect innocence. “My father was a businessman. Everyone liked him. He was the life of the party.”
I’m an obedient daughter who knows nothing, sees nothing, says nothing.
Morelli tries a different angle. “Were there any arguments at the reception? Any tension between guests?”
“Everyone was celebrating.” I dab at my eyes again. “It was supposed to be the happiest day of my life.”
Vincenzo’s arm comes around my shoulders.
“My wife has been through enough tonight,” he says firmly. “If you have more questions, they can wait until tomorrow.”
Morelli exchanges a glance with Smyth, then nods. “Of course. We’re very sorry for your loss, Mrs. Vici. We’ll be in touch.”
A doctor appears in the doorway, his expression professionally sympathetic. “Mrs. Vici? Would you like a moment with your father to say goodbye?”
Every instinct screams no. I never want to see that man’s face again.
But the detectives are watching me closely, and Adora Montoni, the grieving daughter, would want to pay her respects to her dead father.
“Yes,” I whisper. “Please.”
They lead me to a private room where my father lies on a gurney, covered with a white sheet up to his chest. His face is still red, contorted, frozen in the moment of death. I stand beside him, Vincenzo a silent presence behind me, and I feel…nothing.
No grief. No regret. Not even satisfaction.
Just emptiness where he used to live in my head.
“How long do you think before the police give up?” I ask Vincenzo quietly.
“Not long. Days, maybe.” Vincenzo’s voice is low. “No one at that wedding is going to talk to the police. Not a single person will admit to seeing anything. People in our world know better than that.”
“And the autopsy?”
“It will confirm he died from poisoning. But without witnesses, without evidence of who did it…” He shrugs. “These things happen in our world. Powerful men make enemies. Sometimes those enemies act.”
I lean into him, closing my eyes. “Is it really over?”
“It’s over.” He presses a kiss to my temple. “You’re free, doe. Once we’ve talked with Dashamir Dervishi, we both are.”
I reach out and touch Dad’s cold hand. A performance in case anyone’s watching me, nothing more.
“What was it you told me, Dad?” I whisper. “We’re Montonis. We don’t forgive. We don’t forget.”
I take a deep breath and let it out slowly.
“But I’m still sorry it had to be this way,” I say quietly, and I almost mean it. Sorry that he was the kind of man who left me no choice. Sorry that he killed my mother and Lira and God knows how many others. Sorry that he never learned to love anything except power.
But I’m not sorry he’s dead.
“Goodbye, Dad.”
Then I turn and walk out with my husband by my side, and I don’t look back.
The bridal suite at the historic mansion is beautiful. All cream and gold, with a massive four-poster bed and French doors that open onto a private balcony. Clara arranged it. She thinks of everything.
Vincenzo locks the door behind us, and suddenly we’re alone for the first time since the ceremony. Truly alone.
Truly free.
I stand in the middle of the room, still in my wedding dress, and I start to shake.
It starts in my hands, a fine tremor I can’t control. Then my arms. My legs. Within seconds, my whole body is trembling violently, my teeth chattering despite the warmth of the room.
“Hey.” Vincenzo is there immediately, his hands on my shoulders. “Hey, you’re okay. We’re okay.”
“Why am I shaking if I don’t even feel guilty?” The words tumble out between shivers.
“Come here.” He guides me to sit on the edge of the bed, then kneels in front of me, rubbing warmth into my cold hands. “It’s the adrenaline. Your body’s been running on it for hours. Days, probably. Now that the danger’s passed, it’s crashing out of you all at once.”
“I don’t feel bad that he’s dead.” My voice cracks. “I thought I would feel happy at least, but I don’t. I feel…empty.”
“That’s normal.” His thumbs trace circles on my palms, grounding me. “You’re trying to process everything that’s happened. It’s a lot, Adora.”
The shaking intensifies, and tears I don’t understand start streaming down my face. “I’m not sad. Why am I crying?”
He sits beside me on the bed and pulls me against his chest, wrapping his arms around me. “Just let it happen. Let your body do what it needs to do. I’ve got you.”
He’s quiet for a moment, his thumbs brushing away the tears on my cheeks.
“I’m scared,” I whisper.
“Of what?”
“That this isn’t real. That I’m going to wake up in that house, and I’ll still be expected to kill you, and none of this will have happened.”
“It’s real.” His voice is fierce. “We’re real. And I’m not going anywhere.”
“Promise?”
“I promise, doe. You’re stuck with me now. For better or worse.”
A smile spreads over my lips despite my tears. “I’m so happy to hear that.”
“Good.” He starts working on the buttons at the back of my dress, his fingers deft despite his healing hands. “Because I plan to remind you you’re mine. Every single day, for the rest of our lives.”
The dress pools around me, leaving me in nothing but white lace lingerie and my wedding jewelry.
I reach up and start unbuttoning his shirt, my fingers steadier now. He helps me push the shirt off his shoulders, and I trace the faded bruises on his ribs, his jaw, the still-healing marks from Dashamir’s torture. The evidence of everything we survived to get here.
“I can’t believe we made it,” I whisper, my fingers tracing the ink on his chest. “I can’t believe we’re really here.”
“I can. You’re stuck with a killer who’s obsessed with you, doe. And I don’t share.”
He lays me down on the silk sheets, and I look up at him, my beautiful, dangerous man.
“No one’s taking you away from me.” He settles over me, his weight warm and solid and real. “You’re mine, Adora. Always and forever.”
I pull him down into a kiss, pouring everything I can’t say into it. All my fear and hope and desperate need for this to be real.
He kisses me back with matching intensity, his hands sliding into my hair, down my throat, tracing the line of my collarbone.
“I need you,” I whisper against his mouth. “We said we would wait until we were ready. I’m ready. I want you now. Do you want me?”
“Want you?” His voice drops to something dark and possessive. “Doe, I’ve wanted you since the moment you walked into that laundromat. I’ve wanted you every second since.”
Heat floods through me. “Then make me yours.”
His mouth moves to my neck, teeth grazing the sensitive skin there. “First, I’m going to unwrap you like the gift you are.”
His hands slide around to my back, fingers deft on the clasp of my bra. The lace falls away, and cool air hits my heated skin. He pulls back just enough to look at me, and the hunger in his expression makes my stomach flip.
“Beautiful,” he breathes. His mouth closes over my nipple, and the sensation shoots straight through me, a direct line from my breast to the ache between my legs.
I thread my fingers into his hair, holding him there, and he takes his time.
He sucks hard enough that I feel it everywhere, then soothes me with his tongue.
His teeth scrape over the sensitive peak, and I gasp.
He releases it with a wet pop, and I can see it’s darker now, swollen from his attention.
When he finally releases me, I’m panting.
“These need to come off.” His fingers hook in the waistband of my panties. “Lift your hips. Good girl. Now spread your legs for me. Wider.”
I obey, my face burning. “That’s it. Let me see what’s mine.”
He slides them down torturously slow, and when I’m completely bare, he doesn’t just look, he stares like he’s memorizing every inch.
“Fuck, Adora. Look at you.” His hand grips my thigh, pushing it open further. “Your pussy is glistening and pink and perfect. I’m going to ruin you for anyone else.”
“There won’t be anyone else.”
“Damn right there won’t be. If you even look at another man, I’ll kill him.”
His eyes travel over every inch of me. My flushed face, my heaving chest with its reddened nipples, down my stomach to my sex.
“Your pussy is glistening for an assassin. I’m getting my unworthy hands on a perfect mafia princess.”
“You’re not unworthy.” I reach for him. “You’re everything to me.”
“I’m a killer, doe. Violence and darkness. And you’re…” His hand traces the curve of my hip. “You’re light and beauty and too good for someone like me. But I’m keeping you.”