Page 75 of Bitter Poetry

I let the name jibe go, distracted by the heated look in his eyes. He’s smiling—he smiles easily and often. Not always for me.

“You were going to kill him,” I hiss.

He finally releases my throat and steps back. Where his fingers touched feels like a brand.

Strangely, the ghost of his fingers locked around my throat centers me and keeps the demons of the past at bay.

He shrugs.

No apology.

“You smell aroused. Clean yourself up in the washroom.” He adjusts the cuffs of his suit and smirks. It transforms his looks from handsome to devastating for the female population. His smile should be illegal or, at the very least, come with a health warning. “If word gets out you get off on violence, who knows where that might lead?”

It’s not the violence.

Not only,I correct.

CHAPTER 24

CARMELA

“How was your day?” my husband asks.

Ettore Gallo couldn’t give a damn about my day, but he likes to play the part of a loving husband when the mood takes him.

It’s dinner time, and just the two of us are seated at the formal dining table. A threat has been posed, and Christian is lurking in the shadows of the room just in case a would-be assassin manages to get past the dozen heavily armed men patrolling this fortress of a home.

“What the fuck are you doing back here, babe?”

I’ve been unsettled all day. Watching Christian leave an innocent man covered in blood twitching on the floor of my favorite coffee shop will do that to you.

Babe?Why does he continue to keep calling me that where someone might hear? What does he get out of it?

“It was pleasant,” I say, summoning a vague smile.

“Good,” Ettore says, waving the maid over to refill his wine glass. The bottle is right there within easy reach. He could pour some for himself. My father used to pour his own damn wine.

My father wasn’t a pig.

“And get a takeout coffee for Mrs. Gallo.”

Maybe Christain’s calm during a pressurized situation should comfort me. It doesn’t. They should send him back to breaking fingers or whatever he does when he’s not watching me. He’s dangerous to have around me. Dangerous for my health.

“You smell aroused.”

It was just Christian playing mind games, toying with me, and trying to get a rise. He likes to do that. I imagine he is exemplary at interrogation.

He likes the edge of danger. Thrives on it. Maybe I do.

Or did…

Maybe I’ve reached the point where I might break if I take much more.

“Fine,” I say again. “Other than when Christian put his hands on me.”

I freeze, regretting the words the moment they leave my mouth. Why did I say that?

I feel Christian’s presence like a force of nature where he lurks to my left.