Page 52 of The Killer Cupcake (Poison Cherry #3)

He nodded. “You’re right. I confess. Maria looked at me like that when I almost beat Caesar to death with my hammer.

She looked at me like that when she found my room.

She looked at me like that when I made her help us kill Pa.

That’s how she found out about Sandy. Before the accident…

before you knew she knew about Sandy, she did.

She said I was crazy, insane, obsessed, possessed by the devil.

Maybe she is right. I can’t tell anymore. ”

Kathy held back her emotion. It was hard.

She wanted to stop peeling back the layers, but she knew she had to go on.

She wiped at a tear that escaped and kept her spine straight.

“She’s a fucking liar. You’re not crazy.

No more crazy than me. You’re a killer. Our fathers were killers.

Matteo is a killer. I’m a killer, and so is my mother.

My grandmother, Bessie, was a killer, probably better than all of us.

Killers are what we are,” she let go of a long sigh.

“I wrote everything, Carmelo. Every moment, every heartache, every bit of our story I wrote in journals each time I had bad dreams about killing King Redmond and your father, I wrote it down to remember. It’s the way we survived, okay? ”

“I wanted to have everything with you, my first child, my first everything with you,” he confessed. “I almost did. I proved to you that our marriage was legal. I gave you our only child. You took that from me, Kathy. So I did things, bad things, and took things from you.”

Kathy nodded. “I know, Melo. I know.”

“I’m sorry, Kathy. I told you, your love was poison.

That you were killing me, but it was my fault too.

That was the dream I had upstairs. The dream to remind me where it went wrong.

The day I came to New Orleans was not long after I married Maria.

And you said something was different about me.

I should have told you then. Confessed it and been honest. Men died, many men, men you love and who loved you, because I was scared to be honest. I was so scared, Kathy.

I was drowning in the East River, like my mother. ”

“I want to understand…” She took a step forward, and he took a step back. She nodded. “We talked about this many times over the years.”

He nodded. “I know. I know. It’s all in the past. I killed us.

I buried us. I left our daughter behind.

And I’m not sorry. Because, for once, I have you, Kathy.

Just you. I was going to bring her, but I needed my time with you.

I couldn’t leave Nino behind. I had to do it this way.

It was safest. And no one can take you away from me.

I had to get Matteo out of prison. I had to give him and Debbie the life I took from them and the kids.

I had to find a way to save my soul. My soul is you, Kathy.

It’s all I am now. Does that make me a monster? Does that make me my father?”

“It makes you human, Carmelo,” she said. “Let me come closer.”

He shook his head. “I’m tired. Go back to bed. I’ll take you and Nino for a drive tomorrow. Make it up to you.”

Kathy wiped her tears. She shuddered with repressed grief. “I won’t touch you. Just let me come closer so you can be near me.”

She walked toward him in the kitchen, and he watched her. She stopped a foot away from him.

“See. I’m here. I’m not running. I’m not arguing. I’m not pushing you away. We’re not having sex. We’re just here.”

“I’m not sorry, Kathy. I’m not going to be sorry for any of it,” he confessed.

"You live in fear, Melo. The boy inside of you is afraid.

The wolf protects the boy. That room upstairs?

It's your own personal torture chamber—a shrine to your regrets.

And there are other shrines, aren't there?

Other places you go to torture yourself.

For Matteo, Ely, and the war. For Uncle Pete and Daddy.

For Matteo killing José. For Mama Stewart dieing in that fire.

For Sandy's brain injury. For stealing my business, for what you made me become and do to get it back, for everything we did to each other.

But you forget—you tried to fix it all. God, how many times did you try?

You are right for reuniting your brother with his first love.

Look around you: Matteo's free, Sandy's thriving, we're together. What's left to atone for?"

Carmelo's defense crumbled. His head dropped, and tears began to fall. Kathy moved to him, gathering him into her arms as he broke apart completely. The sobs came from somewhere deep and ancient, his grip on her fierce and desperate. She held him steady, hands gentle on his back.

"I've got you, Melo. We're one person now, remember? Your mother drowned, but not you. Not on my watch. Never again."

She felt him cling to her with bruising strength as years of pain poured out.

Her own eyes stayed dry—not from lack of emotion, but from understanding.

This was his moment of release, his reckoning.

She could feel it happening: the terrible weight lifting, forgiveness seeping into the cracks where guilt had once resided.

"I need to take care of you," she murmured.

"Shower first, then bed." She laced her fingers through his, drawing him from the kitchen and up to their bedroom.

Under the hot spray, she washed the grief from his skin.

Afterward, they sank into bathwater tinted purple, then blue, then green, thanks to the dissolving beads.

With her back pressed to his chest, she felt his voice rumble through her as he spoke of federal charges—conspiracy, racketeering, the case they'd built on murder by his hand and command.

One agent called him a serial killer, and he had to explain to her what that meant.

She kept her questions sparse and practical: What evidence? What deal? What options remained?

He told her about the Battaglia crime family in Italy—not Sicilian Mafia, but Camorra, the Neapolitan syndicate that controlled the southern region.

Luciano had made the introduction years ago, bringing him to Don Tomosino Battaglia himself after Mama Stewart’s death.

Now, with all their investments entangled in the mob business, that connection could save them.

Since his father's death, he'd cultivated the relationship carefully, deal by deal.

He broke every rule of Omertà that night, telling her about the Thorned Rose.

The medallion of the Castellammarese—a silver and gold disc where rubies bloomed like drops of blood among twisted thorns.

It tied him to Mama Stewart, and through her to the ghost of Don Emilio Cattano, the young Don.

A Sicilian who'd died wearing it. One medallion, one man: Boss of all Bosses. The ultimate prize that could unite or destroy the Five Families. These were secrets men died to protect, but what did he care? The Mafia had been his means, never his end. Every brutal year in that life had one purpose—to become powerful enough to take her and keep her. He said their daughter may know where it is, but it’s locked in that beautiful mind of hers.

“Wait, rubies? Silver and gold? Thorns,” she repeated.

Carmelo frowned. “What?”

“Oh my God. I know where it is,” Kathy said, sitting upright.

“Where?” he asked. “Kathy! Where?”

“I found it, in bed with Sandy when she was a baby. She was three, I think. It was after our fight. When you had taken her again without my permission, I grabbed her and her things and ran from you. She must have had it on her. I didn’t know.

I thought it belonged to my mom. I thought she got it out of her jewelry box.

I put it up to give it back to Ma, but Ma… Carmelo. I buried it with Mama.”

“You did?” he asked.

“All these years I’ve been looking for it, and Brenda has it? In her grave?” he said.

She nodded. “I put it on her, in her casket, before it closed. Let Sandy touch it. I thought it was something special between them. I put it under her dress lapel so her graver wouldn’t discover it.

Sandy was so excited to see me do it. She said it was a game.

But I didn’t understand what she meant. It’s buried with Mama. ”

Carmelo laughed. “Are you fucking kidding me? I’ve been looking for it for damn near fifteen years, and you buried it with Brenda?”

“You never told me about it,” Kathy said. “We never talk about things that are important. We’re either fighting or having sex.”

Carmelo laughed harder and harder. Kathy smiled and shrugged. He hugged her tight, and the water splashed out of the tub. He kissed the side of her face. “You’re remarkable, Kathy.”

“I’m your wife. You took me to court to prove it, remember,” she teased.

He laughed some more.

"Let me understand this," Kathy said, counting on her fingers. "We rob my mother's grave, take a medallion that makes kings, dodge federal agents and assassins, then convince two crime bosses in Italy and Sicily to bow to Matteo? Simple."

"When you put it that way..." he said with a wry smile.

“It’s the only way, right?” she smiled.

She shifted in the water, creating small waves as she moved to face him from across the tub. She propped her foot in his hands, toes wiggling.

"Be honest—these grey hairs of mine. I could dye them, but you always said not to. Debbie thinks I'm insane, says women our age shouldn't have this much silver hair. Do I look like an old woman to you?"

"Those grey hairs are battle scars, baby. Everyone of them earned in our war," he said, nipping at her big toe with his teeth. She shrieked with laughter, splashing water everywhere as she fought to reclaim her foot.

"Now tell me the beautiful part," she whispered. "The part where we win. Where does our story end?"

"At the beginning," he said mysteriously.

Her brow furrowed. "What?"

"Picture it—a ship leaving New York harbor, cutting through the Atlantic to Spain. We sail through the Strait of Gibraltar, that ancient gateway where two seas kiss. Then... home."

"Home?" she breathed like a woman releasing her last sigh after an orgasm. Her eyes closed, and she listened to him speak.

"Tangier. Morocco. Africa,” he said in that husky, deep Italian voice of his.

Each word was a promise from her magnificent Carmelo, and she could see it. She felt herself transported back in time to the attic, where they huddled in the cold against his body warmth and waited for the ovens to warm them. She listened to his voice.

"Just like we dreamed when we were young,” he said.

“You already arranged it?” she asked.

"Every detail. Paid in gold."

Her eyes opened. His eyes searched hers.

“Sandy comes too, of course,” she said and moved through the water like silk, pressing her lips to his. "A Ricci and a Freeman, allies at last. Who would have believed it?"

His fingers traced her cheekbone with reverence. "Partners, baby. The way we were meant to be. No more lies, no more secrets between us."

"Good. Because I'm running this operation now,” she giggled. “I would kiss the ring, but I have something better in mind.

Before he could ask, she submerged under the water and put his dick in his mouth. Carmelo laughed and reclined into marital bliss.