Page 5 of Bad Bishop

Eyeball in pocket, I leisurely stopped to admire their different torture devices on my way out.

CHAPTER TWO

LILA

The ground shook beneath my bare feet.

A flash of a shadowed figure zipped past me from the corner of my eye.

I snapped my gaze up from the sketchbook in my lap, on high alert. I was sitting on the stone fountain in the courtyard, pouring the shape of the Amalfi Coast from memory onto the page.

I wore my pink satin nightgown and my hair was in a loose, long braid. It was pitch black, save for the amber light spilling from the windows.

My vision had always been good. Compensation for what wasn’t, Mama told me.

I spotted a figure prowling from our entrance door toward a gunmetal Mercedes-Benz G 63 that blocked one of our three garages. An uncommonly tall male, pale as a vampire and equally as frightening, stalked outside. He wore a dark coat and moved like a serpent, gliding through the night with the unnerving slickness of someone who belonged to it.

Look away now, quick, before he sees you, Mama’s voice reproached in my head.You’re not to make eye contact with people, Lila!

But what was the harm?

It was too dark for him to notice me.

I’d always watched people secretly. It was the morsel of normalcy I was still allowed. My loneliness was so intimate, so familiar to me, it became a friend in itself. It was my only companion other than Mama and Imma.

I kept staring, hoping it was Tate Blackthorn. The man who gave me the most wonderful present I’d ever been gifted—a dance. A moment of feeling like a woman.

Not a child, not a disabled person, awoman.

It happened a year ago at my brother Luca’s engagement party, and I’d been playing it in my head every night since. My most monumental moment in my eighteen years on this planet was with a complete stranger who used me as a tool to make his wife jealous.

And the sad part was…I’d let him do it all over again. This was how badly I craved human connection.

My eyes drank in his silhouette—obstinate jaw, chiseled cheekbones, features as smooth and icy as winter frost.

Could he be Tate? Could he give me another dance? Could I be so foolish as to ask for one?

He weaved through the shadows dancing across the pebbled front yard. Stopped. Tipped his head up to the moon. The moon stared back, like they were sharing a secret.

The light from one of the windows caught his hair, tangling into the strands. It burned burgundy. Rusty, like medieval copper. Not the gleaming stygian of Tate Blackthorn.

My solar plexus tightened.

It wasn’t him.

This man looked like he was sprung from fire. His hair tousled like dancing flames. And still… He appeared unbearably cold. I had the feeling I’d get frostbite if I touched him.

The pencil slipped between my fingers.

Hit the cobbled ground with aclinkI couldn’t hear.

The man stopped abruptly. Froze.

Shit, shit, shit.

He heard.

I wasn’t supposed to be outside. Alone in the dark.