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His eyes fell to the shining pendant on my necklace. “St. Anthony. Saint of the lost.”
I didn’t trust myself to speak, so simply nodded.
“Are you lost,bambina?” His voice was rich.
“I’ve always been a lost thing,” I admitted, letting this man see right inside me, to the deepest darkest corners of my soul.
He took his time measuring my worth and deciding my fate. I held his gaze and didn’t dare to blink.
Finally, he delivered his verdict. “Then, Miss Burke, we have a deal. You keep your sister quiet, and in return…”
“Yes?”
“You’ll do whatever you have to. Whatever I want you to.” He held out a hand to me.
A devil’s bargain.
I had no idea what he’d ask me to do. It might be illegal. It would probably be dangerous. It could be anything. I shouldn’t take that deal. Maybe I was only putting off dying for another day.
Still, another day was another chance to live a little more.
I took his hand and shook it.
5
RENATO
Charlotte rose slowly, her hand cool in mine. It was so slender I could have crushed it with a wrong move, yet she made no attempt to pull away. Much like a misguided little lamb, thinking the wolf might save it from the farmer, she looked at me as though my mercy might just save her from the unfortunate derailment of her life.
Tonight, she had joined an exclusive list of people who had looked to me for mercy, ones who’d put their fate in my hands and trusted me to save them. In fact, she didn’t just make the list. Shewasthe list. She was distracting to look at. Petite with an hourglass shape, smooth velvet skin and doe-like eyes. Her thick eyebrows and pretty bow lips were straight from an 18thcentury painting. She wasn’t trying to look beautiful, but nonetheless, she did. I suspected it was impossible for her not to.
No one in her position had ever gotten down on their knees and offered to make me their god. Especially since she’d just seen me kill two men in cold blood. She was an intriguing mix of contradictions. Good and pure, and mercenary as hell. It seemed there was nothing she wouldn’t do to keep her and her sister safe, and that was interesting. Life had been stale lately, uneventful. Charlotte Burke was a burst of color against a black-and-white background. She was too tantalizing a prospect to pass on.
For now.
Elio’s phone rang as I forced myself to drop Charlotte’s hand. He listened to the caller, nodding, and then hung up.
“Incident in the kitchen. Angelo was burned on the stove,” Elio said.
The code was pretty obvious if you were a De Sanctis man, but Charlotte was just confused. We often spoke in code, even in the halls of Casa Nera. There were spies everywhere these days, just waiting for a good soundbite they could sell to the highest bidder.
I looked at Charlotte.Charlie. “You’re studying nursing?” She jumped, her leftover adrenaline making her edgy. She nodded.
“Then come with me. You can start our bargain right now.” Without waiting for an answer, I turned and walked out of the study. I knew Charlotte would follow, or Elio would make her.
“W-wait. My sister,” Charlotte stuttered.
Lucy lay soundly unconscious between two dead men. “Don’t worry. They can’t touch her now.”
I headed down to the basement level of the property. It housed cells and a makeshift medical room at one end. Many a man had been held down here to be tortured or killed. A few made it back to ground level, but not many. It had seen more use under my father, but I still found it useful at times.
The air grew stale as we descended the cold stone staircase leading to the basement, one of the features of the original house.
Grunts of pain and snippets of conversation could be heard as soon as we reached the lowest level. Charlotte peered curiously in the direction of slurred Italian, peppered liberally with curses.
“This way. I want to see what you can do,bambina,” I murmured to her, putting my hand on the small of her back when she failed to move.
She leapt forward, escaping my touch, and I allowed her. Now wasn't the time to demonstrate what it meant to be mine. Soon, she'd understand that her fate was mine to decide, she was my property, and I'd touch my things whenever I damn well pleased.
