Page 85 of Unforgiving Queen

Days stretched. Nights tortured.

The weeks since the engagement was announced had slipped by in a whirlwind until there were no more days and nights left. Christmas was a few weeks away, although the holiday spirit was nowhere to be found.

Isla had gotten married and moved to Italy, Raven and Athena seemed to be distracted with their own issues, and Phoenix had been busy with holiday concerts. It turned out my conversation with Maestro Andrea was beneficial. Although it only disguised the tension between us.

My rehearsal dinner was mere days away, followed then by the wedding that I still hadn’t found a way out of.

Grandma had no way of stopping this disaster train. We’d encountered a few roadblocks with invitations getting lost in the mail, my wedding dress disappearing, and everything seeming to go astray. No complaints from me though. Many from Dante. The guy was doing everything to expedite it.

But that was neither here nor there. We had a different—more important—problem on our hands. Getting rid of Angelo Leone’s remains by burning them—apparently.

“I’m telling you,” Isla protested weakly, all of us piled in our apartment’s living room. Athena had her laptop open, getting her words in before her editor could hound her any more. Raven and I had our sketchbooks open in our laps. Isla and Phoenix were the only ones focused on the topic. “Sasha Nikolaev and his brother said only burning a body will eliminate any traces of DNA.”

Isla looked good, albeit tired and healing. She was back in Paris with her husband, none other than Enrico Marchetti, her mystery man. At least someone was lucky in love. After a few obstacles, Enrico Marchetti turned out to be her fairy-tale man.

“Isn’t it sort of a moot point?” Athena whispered, although it was just the five of us inside the apartment. Isla’s husband dropped her off, then stationed two men in the hallway and another four in front of the building to ensure her safety. “We shipped his dick to his family.”

“So they knew not to search for him,” Raven said exasperatedly. “No dick, no life.”

In hindsight, it was a dumb thing to do.

“Well, technically, I think you can live without a dick,” Athena said, taking a big gulp of her mojito and refilling the glass. “I researched it for one of my books.” When we stared blankly at her, she added defensively, “What? I had a scenario where a woman cut off her husband’s penis. I needed to know.”

“Jesus, should we call you Lorena Bobbitt?” Raven muttered.

Athena just waved her hand, unconcerned with her comment. If anyone was to cut a man’s dick off, Raven fit the personality. Athena definitely didn’t.

I took a gulp of my beer, then returned my attention to my ball gown design. It was the only thing that seemed to be going well lately. Every one of my designs seemed to sell the moment my distributors put it up. I had to take a separate order on the side for Tatiana Nikolaev.

What was that saying? The moment one area of your life went well, another went to shit?

And that was exactly what was happening. Isla thought we should go snatch up that damn body and burn it. She even refused alcohol, she was that serious. The rest of the girls had been sipping on mojitos all day. It was one of those days—possibly weeks—that only rum could fix.

“Did you move away from romance to start writing murder mysteries?” I questioned, my tone slightly sarcastic.

She rolled her eyes. “No.”

“I want to know how that guy lived with no penis and two balls,” Raven muttered.

“That’s really something I don’t need to know,” Isla said.

“One less man to fuck around,” Phoenix signed, her shoulders vibrating with a snicker. “Every man should have his cock cut off.”

My sister kept a brave face, but I knew she was hurting, and it was killing me that I had no solution to our predicament.

“Hmm, I have to google that,” Raven said, reaching for her cell.

Isla waved her hand. “Forget penises and balls. Let’s get back to the main point here.”

Grunts echoed through our apartment. Nobody wanted to go back to the catacombs; they were creepy as hell.

“How are we going to do it?” Phoenix asked. “Your husband has bodyguards, and you’re still on the mend.”

A month ago Isla was kidnapped by Sofia Volkov while in Italy. The crazy wannabe Pakhan really did a number on her, leaving scars behind that she was busy healing. It made her husband over-the-top protective, not that I could blame him.

“I’ll just have to do it alone,” I stated matter-of-factly. Even without guards, Isla didn’t look capable of trenching through Paris’s underground. In retrospect, I wished we hadn’t shoved his body in the world’s largest historic gravesite. Even though ithadseemed like a genius idea at the time—put the dead body with all the other dead bodies, may the bastardnotrest in peace—it was now proving to be a logistical nightmare.

The joke was on us.