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Chapter Twenty-Two

JOSHUA

I stare at her, waiting for her to say something other than we’re a mistake. Something that tells me that she feels even a small spark of what’s been developing between us.

And then her breath hitches, a glossiness to her eyes that hadn’t been there before.

Blood rushes in my ears as I try to make sense of everything that’s happening between us.

I want to sort this out now, to make the most of the chances we’ve been given.

I want her .

When my fingers skim her jaw, she leans into the touch. It’s just slight, not enough for her to be aware of the fact that she’s doing it, but she does.

And my heart flies.

Skyla looks at me for a long moment before taking a step back. “If you really want things to work between us, you’re going to have to deal with the little girl who came storming into my business, threatening me.”

“If you wanted my help, that’s all you had to say.” I keep my tone light and teasing as I watch her, looking for the twitch at the corner of her mouth that lets me know things aren’t as tense between us anymore.

That twitch never comes.

Instead, she gets as far from me as she can, her arms crossing and that thin little line appearing between her eyebrows. “I’m serious. If you want anything more than this fake marriage and whatever else is going on between the two of us, then you’re going to have to deal with Emily.”

I nod. “And how do you suggest I do that?”

Something cold flashes in her eyes, a cruel smile spreading across her face. “I have thoughts, but you would likely lose your business partnership because of it.”

There’s something about the casual way she talks about killing people that seems worse than the way anyone else does it.

While I don’t mind killing, I don’t enjoy it. Not the way that she seems to, sometimes.

And there’s something about it that intrigues me and scares me at the same time.

I’m still no closer to figuring out what she’s capable of, what she is hiding, even though Andrew has been following her.

I perch on the edge of her desk, giving her the space she seems to want. “I’m not going to kill her. Grady would want my head and then I would lose my importer.”

“There are a lot of different things you could do to someone before they die.” She sits back down, pulling out the paperwork from beneath my hand. “I think you’ll have no problem figuring it out.”

Sighing, I look at the time on my watch. “Well, come home with me so we can talk about this.”

“You just want to go home and fuck our problems away.”

I reach over and snag her car keys from the corner of her desk before grabbing her laptop as well. “That’s true, but I also don’t trust Logan not to be hovering around the corner, waiting for the chance to walk in here and catch us talking together.”

“My team does sweeps every morning. There’s nothing to record us in here. I doubt the laundromat is his final move.”

“You’re loud when we fuck.” I lean down, lifting her chin with one of the keys, making her look at me again. “The sounds you make when you’re coming on my cock are just for me.”

She swallows hard, desire replacing the cold and calculating look in her eyes.

Smirking, I stand and hold out the keys, waiting for her to take them. When she does, I head for the door with her laptop tucked beneath my arm.

If she knows what’s good for her, she’ll meet me back at the house.

Skyla closes the front door behind her, kicking off her shoes, the look on her face distant.

The woman I was with in her office is gone, replaced by the shell that greets everybody when she’s trying to keep people at a distance.

I don’t know if she’s even aware that she shuts down that far.

And I hate that I care she is doing it to me.

She goes to the kitchen and reaches into the cupboard where I keep the spirits, pulling down a bottle of tequila.

“It’s a little early in the day for shots, don’t you think?” I get up from the couch and head into the kitchen just as she takes a large swig from the bottle.

“Well, you want to know the truth about everything, don’t you?”

I take the bottle from her and put it back on the shelf, higher than she can reach. “I do, but why does that mean that you need to take a shot of tequila in the middle of the day?”

Her mouth opens and shuts a couple of times. When her gaze meets mine, there’s nothing but vulnerability there.

She looks like she’s at war with herself as she leans back against the counter and buries her face in her hands.

“Whatever it is, it can’t be that bad.” I rub my hands up and down her arms.

Skyla laughs and shakes her head, looking at me once more.

“You’d think that, wouldn’t you? You look at me and see the same thing as everybody else.

Poor little Skyla. She’s not the kind of person who looks like she’s capable of anything bad.

She just does the accounting. Sure, she kills someone every now and then, but it can’t be that bad, right? Because this is Skyla.”

I don’t know what to say to her. If I agree with her, then I know she’s going to think that I’m infantilizing her. And if I don’t agree with her, then I’m going to be accused of not knowing her once more.

Which isn’t wrong. But I want to fix that. That is the main reason for me to want to know her secret. I need to know the real her. The woman I’m…

In love with?

I shake myself out of it.

I could tell anyone who asked what music she likes to listen to when she’s making dinner at night. I could tell them that she does this divine little roll of her body when she really likes a song.

But deep down? Who is she? What is her deepest, darkest secret?

I decide to test the waters, hoping that butterfly knife doesn’t find its way into my neck. “All right. Why don’t you tell me what it is that I don’t know about you, and we can sort through this entire mess together?”

She smirks and shakes her head, looking at me like I’m an idiot. “This is going to change everything. I hope you know that. You’re never going to be able to look at me the same again.”

Fuck. What is she hiding? And will it really change how I feel about her? Because as I see it, nothing will ever make me want to be away from this scary but irresistible woman.

Time to find out.

“You don’t know that until you tell me what it is I should know about you.”

With another little shake of her head, she pushes off the counter. She strides down the hall with her hands in tight fists at her side and makes her way into the guest room that she locked me out of last night.

I take a deep breath and follow her.

What is so bad that she would think I would run from her? Because if she thinks there’s anything that would send me running at this point, she hasn’t been paying attention.

But maybe that’s on me. Maybe I didn’t make this clear enough for her. Maybe the moment this marriage stopped being fake to me was when I should’ve told her how I was feeling.

Of course, that would mean knowing the exact moment those feelings shifted, and I couldn’t tell even at gunpoint.

She’s a slow-drip poison, seeping through my veins, infiltrating every single part of my body and mind. Consuming me.

I follow her into the bedroom like a man possessed, pausing only when she steps in front of me with the butterfly knife open.

The sun streaming through the window catches the blade, making it glint in the brightness.

Is this the moment she kills me?

Instead, she kneels on the ground and stabs the knife between two floorboards. She pries one of them up, shifting it to the side and tossing the knife onto the bed.

As Skyla moves another floorboard out of the way, a box comes into view.

She pulls it out and slips her hand deeper into the hole, digging around for something.

When she produces a key, all I can do is stand there and watch her.

Without a word, she unlocks the box and stands, holding it out to me.

For a moment, I consider not taking the box. I could decide that whatever she’s hiding doesn’t matter.

Because as far as my heart goes, it doesn’t.

But if we are doing this, making this relationship work, it does matter.

This might be what gets her killed, and I’ll be damned if I don’t take every precaution to avoid that. Even if it means learning something about her she clearly doesn’t want me to know.

I take the box and sit on the bed, opening it while the weight of her gaze burns into me.

As I open the lid, I try to prepare myself for anything.

Newspaper clippings sit in the box. Endless ones that seem to start nearly twenty years ago.

KILLER IN RHODE ISLAND STALKING MEN TO THEIR HOMES AND LEAVING THEM FOR THEIR LOVED ONES TO FIND

SUSPECTED SERIAL KILLER STALKS THE COAST OF OREGON

STUDENTS GOING MISSING AFTER PARTIES ON GREEK ROW IN SOUTH CAROLINA

I look up at Skyla before looking back down at the pile of clippings. “What are these?”

“Every major article that’s been written about me and the people I killed.”

She says the words without a hint of remorse. If anything, there’s pride in her voice when she stands tall in front of me.

Skyla eyes the box like it’s the crown jewels.

I pause, looking down at the pile of articles I still haven’t gone through. “You would’ve been thirteen at the time these stories started being published.”

“Yeah.”

There aren’t enough tequila shots in the world to be able to process this right now.

I’ve been sleeping with a serial killer. Not just a woman in one of the biggest mafia families in the States. Not someone who kills out of necessity.

She kills for fun.

The woman standing in front of me right now stalks people and kills them. She treats it like a sport, hunting her victims down like animals.

Is that what she did with the man in Martina Esposito’s house?

Skyla sits on the bed beside me, the mattress dipping with her weight. “I told you this was going to make you see me differently.”

“You did all this.”

She nods. “Starting from the time I was thirteen.”

“How many people?” I swallow hard, hating the way the words taste bitter on my tongue.