Page 9 of The Killer Cupcake (Poison Cherry #3)
THE PRICE FOR PASSION AND PAIN
J aney froze at the bedroom doors as crystal shattered against a hard surface inside.
She pressed her palm to the cool wood, feeling the vibrations of destruction.
Carmine was in one of his black moods—when her sophisticated husband became the beast who'd survived her poison and trapped her in his heart and wouldn’t let her go—no matter her crimes.
She drew in a steadying breath, painted on her most patient smile, and pushed open the door like a warrior woman walking into a lion's den.
Her husband prowled the expensive, imported carpet with predatory grace, despite his silver-topped cane, shards of what had once been a priceless Baccarat crystal tumbler glittering like deadly diamonds around his Italian leather shoes.
"Close the door," he commanded without looking at her, his voice carrying the quiet menace of a man who'd ordered executions with the same tone.
She obeyed, the soft click of the latch sealing them in together—predator and prey, though which was which remained dangerously unclear.
When he turned those pale blue eyes on her, Janey saw the restrained fury of the mobster who lived beneath his cultured exterior—the monster she'd tried to kill with cherry-laced pie, the man who'd refused to die.
Only in moments of severe jealousy and crushing disappointment did that lethal creature surface, emerging from behind Carmine's gentleman's mask like a wolf shedding sheep's clothing.
"Lie to me again, bella ," he said, the endearment dripping with dangerous honey.
"Tell me you didn't slip away to New York like a whore in the night. Tell me that Carmelo boy didn't see you playing your games with the Ricci family and cozying up to another man. A man like me. Lie to me. Say you didn’t do it.”
She lifted one elegant shoulder in a careless shrug, though her heart hammered against her ribs and fear made her cautious. There were times she did worry that his jealousy would join her in her insanity. That he’d take them both out of this world to stop her wanderlust.
"I'm not going to lie to you, cher , but?—"
The silver-topped cane whistled through the air like a deadly serpent.
Carmine swung it with the precision of a master craftsman, shattering the antique mirror behind him into a thousand gleaming fragments.
She flinched as glass rained down like frozen tears, each shard catching the afternoon light as it fell.
He stood amid the destruction like an avenging angel, methodically destroying every remaining piece until nothing but an empty frame remained. Only then did he turn back to her, his pale eyes blazing with barely leashed violence.
"The Ricci’s!" The word erupted from his throat like a curse. "Those maggots! The men are already whispering about DeMarco's death—how strange it was, how sudden. How he bled! It was you, wasn't it?" His voice dropped to a whisper more terrifying than any shout. "Did you fuck him?"
Janey's gaze fell to the Persian carpet, her fingers twisting in the white silk of her dress.
" Did you? " The roar that tore from his chest made the remaining crystal in the room tremble in sympathy.
She raised her head slowly, a sinister smile curving her crimson lips like a blade.
"I killed him." The words hung in the air between them, sharp as winter wind.
"I killed him nice and slow, cher . Crept into his hospital room at night and pretended to care so I could watch,” she whispered the rest: “I watched the light fade from his eyes while he begged for mercy he'd never shown. He hurt my baby girl, Kathy, and that simply could not stand. I would have killed that Don, too, if his wife hadn’t jumped from that bridge.”
Carmine raked trembling fingers through his dark hair, closing his eyes as if the very sight of her pained him.
She kept her distance, reading the dangerous tension in every line of his body.
Though he knew better than to touch her in anger, she knew better than to push him past the point of reason.
Their marriage had been shattered by her methods before—the way she wasn't above using her body as a weapon, seducing her victims with honey before delivering poison.
It had destroyed his faith in her, leaving cracks in their foundation that still ached like broken bones.
But she was stronger now, no longer ruled entirely by the demons that whispered in her head for vengeance.
She would not betray him. Not after the Senator.
Not after everything he'd sacrificed to keep her from the electric chair.
His eyes found hers across the wreckage of their bedroom. "Did you fuck him?" The question came out broken, desperate.
"I already answered?—"
" DID YOU? " The demand exploded from him like a gunshot, but beneath the fury, she heard something else—a plea wrapped in barbed wire, a desperate need to believe she hadn't betrayed him again.
Killing men he could live with, but a man between her thighs, in her pussy, her giving away what belonged to him, that is where he drew the line.
The sound of his pain made her stomach clench with sick guilt.
Even now, the poison cherry was slowly eroding away at his soul, day by day, bite by bite, he was dying.
He was her heart walking around outside her body, and she hated herself for failing to take better care of something so precious. To hurt him so badly, so often.
She approached him the way one might approach a wounded tiger—slowly, carefully, ready to retreat at the first sign of actual danger. "Are you calm?"
"No." The word ground out between clenched teeth like gravel.
"Then calm yourself, Carmine. Be still for me.
" She stopped just within arm's reach, close enough to see the pain flickering behind his rage. "Look into my eyes when I answer you. You know me—the real me, not the monster. I did not fuck him . I let him taste my pussy, and touch my body, and that was all. I simply invited him to trust me, then I killed him. And I left and came home to you. Izzy told me you went to Butts. Spoke to Mama… Big Mama, you talked to a sheriff. You lied about that to me. I didn’t care. I understood. I came home to you, caro .”
Carmine's eyes drifted shut as if her words were a benediction. She reached up to touch his jaw with her fingers, feeling the tension coiled beneath his olive skin.
"I'm sorry, cher . I have failed you more than any wife should ever fail her husband. I am sorry for causing you so much pain. For not giving you a child.” Her voice broke. "But I am your wife now, truly and completely. I kept my promise and came home. I've been a good girl, haven’t I, Daddy?”
His hands shot out to grip her shoulders, shaking her with barely restrained violence. The rough handling shocked her so completely that she gasped, her carefully maintained composure cracking like ice.
"The Riccis are not the Marcellos!" he snarled, his face inches from hers. "If that boy tells anyone who you really are, what you've done, we're all dead—including that precious niece of yours. Don't you understand that?"
Something cold and deadly flickered behind Janey's honey-brown eyes. "Let. Me. Go." Each word dropped like ice into still water; her voice carried the quiet menace of a woman who'd killed men for far less. "You know better than to ever put your hands on me in anger."
Carmine released her as if she'd burst into flames, stepping back with his palms raised in surrender. He turned away, moving stiffly without the support of his cane, and she could see how the poison had weakened him even as it made him more dangerous.
"Get out," he said without looking at her.
"I will not." She crossed her arms, chin lifted in defiance.
His glare over his shoulder could have melted steel. "I said?—"
"I didn't fuck him, Carmine!" The words erupted from her like a dam bursting.
"That's all you really care about, isn't it?
Not justice for Kathy, not protecting our family—just whether I spread my legs for another man!
I didn't touch him. When I came home to you, I told you it was the last time I'd disappear into that other world.
That I was home for good. Why can't you believe me? "
"Because you are the reigning queen of lies!" His voice cracked like a whip. "An innocent woman is sitting on death row in a California prison cell right now for a murder you committed. The things I've done to cover for you, Janey... the blood on my soul because of your crusades..."
She pressed her palms over her ears like a child, her sophisticated mask slipping to reveal something broken underneath. "Da-da-da-da-da-da..." The childish chant was her only defense against truths too sharp to bear.
The sight of her retreat cut through his anger. Carmine crossed the room to her in three quick strides without his cane, gently pulling her hands away from her ears before gathering her into his arms. She collapsed against his chest, sobbing with the raw desperation of a woman drowning.
"You know I can't help it," she wept against his shirt. "You promised you would fix me, make me whole again. But you never do! You never make it stop. You never do! It’s your fault, not mine!”
"I can't fix you, cara mia ,” he whispered into her hair, his voice gentle as prayer. "I can only love you. And I’m fighting death to stay here for you."
He held her as she cried out eighteen years of accumulated pain.
Carmine stroked her hair until her sobs gentled to silence, then soft humming.
When he lifted her face in his hands, that familiar dazed look had returned to her eyes—the one that meant the killer had retreated, leaving only his Janey behind.
The scared girl trapped in that swamp with that rat cajun bastard, who broke her spirit.
The young woman he'd spend whatever remained of his life trying to protect.
"Are you angry with me?" she asked in a soft and meek voice.