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Chapter 1
It was difficult for Beatrice to pinpoint the exact moment when everything fell apart. As she looked into the vacant eyes of her husband, who was bleeding onto the hotel floor, the memories leading up to that point blurred.
She should have felt something. Maybe happiness? The motherfucker was dead after years of abuse. She should at least feel relieved. The old her would have been giddy over justice being served.
The more realistic person she had become wondered how long it would take for the Albanians to kill her now. She wasn’t even in her city, where she could run back to her father. Not that he’d have taken her back. She’d already tried that during the first year of her marriage.
Business was most important to those in La Cosa Nostra. Santino Lucchese held to that truth more strictly than most.
It was almost fitting that she would die in an upscale Vegas hotel room with no one in the family anywhere near. She’d almost died in a hotel room once before. Her wrists twisted at the reminder, letting the bangles her husband had bought her shift over the scars, a reminder of her lowest point. Even with nothing to lose, she’d been too afraid to slit her wrists. She’d only managed to make hesitation marks with the razor by the time her husband had found her. His brown eyes had lost all warmth as he finished what she had started.
Not that his eyes had ever been warm. She’d known they never would be the first time she’d stared into them, during her wedding to the wrong man—not the man she had lovingly given herself to, but a stranger whose presence her father had decided would strengthen the family more.
Her Albanian mother-in-law was the one who hadn’t let her bleed out. Not because she cared for her. No, the dragon of a woman hadn’t wanted her to escape that easily.
Spilled coffee dripped onto the carpet, the muffled splat breaking into the quiet of the room. She hadn’t noticed the way the tipped cup had spread. Dark brown mixed with the red of blood. And those goddamn eyes that had always seemed dead when she’d looked into them continued to stare at nothing.
Eye contact had been important to her husband. He wanted her to stare deep into his eyes as he fucked her raw. It was the moments she looked away that made things worse. That was when she was slapped or choked or beaten bloody. She’d known better than to look away.
But moments before, when he’d torn her underwear so he could shove his cock into her, it had hurt, as always. He’d meant for it to hurt her, and she hadn’t wanted to give him the satisfaction of seeing the pain in her eyes.
Beatrice had really tried that night. She’d dressed appropriately, in a modestly cut dress, long-sleeved, of course, to hide her scars, but with enough of a glitter to hint at her husband’s wealth and status. She’d served him and his guests and remained quiet, the perfect little wife. There’d only been one moment she’d slipped—the moment when the Vegas family’s head had mentioned her father. Her eyes had almost flicked to meet his.
Meeting any man’s eyes besides her husband’s was considered flirting. She’d learned that lesson early on, but the damage was done, and her husband refused to see her as anything besides his whore after her mistake.
Her eyes had flicked toward the head of the family during the meeting in Vegas, but she’d quickly dropped them again. It didn’t matter how swift she had been. Her husband had not been pleased.
She hated that his cum still stuck to her thighs. Her gaze found him on the floor. The old her would have spit on his body. Her mouth was completely dry.
He’d choked her as he came inside her. Her body had gone longer and longer without air, and she’d felt the beginning glimmers of a throb because her body was a betraying bitch like that. She should have let herself orgasm, but instinct made her flail against him. She’d chopped him right in the throat, and he’d released her to grab his own neck as he jerked back.
Her legs had felt numb when she followed up with a kick. The heels he preferred she wear, the ones she used to prefer herself, had jabbed into his stomach. And he’d fallen.
Who the hell decorated a hotel room with statues anymore? And ones with some type of spear that stabbed right into the neck? The decorators were responsible for him dying, not her.
He’d looked surprised as he gurgled, shoving himself to his feet. Blood had gushed from the wound, and his hand tried to stem it as he staggered her way, death in his eyes. His own death had come first, though, and he’d fallen into the table where she had set up the carafe and poured his coffee, like the dutiful wife he’d trained her to be.
Beatrice had dreamed of killing him. That it was a fucking accident was a cosmic joke. She should have at least had the satisfaction of stabbing him with her own hands.
If she had to face her own demise for his death, she deserved some goddamn satisfaction.
Her feet ached in her heels from standing and staring for so long. There was no fixing things. There was no understanding God’s answer to years of prayer. She likely had only hours left to live, and she wouldn’t spend them staring into dead eyes.
The only thing she took from the room was the gun her husband had set aside so both his hands would be free to choke her.
Montrell Coronella had never been the sort to second-guess his decisions, a personality trait that had gotten him into trouble over the years. It had gotten him out of it as well.
The hit on the Albanians had taken forever to plan. He’d gathered most of his information through the Di Salvos, information that had spiked his fury and made it hard to wait. He’d already waited too long. That Montrell had to fly to fucking Vegas added to his frustration, but it also eased some details.
Everybody expected things to get fucked up in Vegas.
And marriage was simpler to achieve there.
He told himself again to wait for Vespa to check in. She’d travelled with him even though she still had a bullet wound in her arm. His enforcer and childhood friend would never listen when he asked her to leave his side. She was annoying like that.
When she clomped into his room—Vespa only knew how to clomp—he expected her to be excited. Spilling blood always excited her.
He never expected her to look worried. That expression was foreign to who she was.
