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"You touched her with these. You tried to strangle her to death with these."

“Don’t do this… She wanted it... She’s lying … please.” He sobs harder, tears and sweat carving trails down his cheeks.

“So, I am going to take these first.”

Caruso sets the cutters in my open palm, and the raping cunt in front of me starts to blubber incoherently.

When the cutters pinch the skin around his pinky finger, he starts to really panic. When they slice into his finger and pop the bone in two, he screams.

It goes on for a while as I take each finger and thumb from both hands.

By the time I’ve taken all ten digits, puke and spit and blood dribble down his chin.

I stand and survey my work. Blood runs from the finger stumps onto the concrete, spilling over the severed digits still lying where they fell.

Caruso appears at my side and whispers in my ear, “Spoke with Falcone. She was eight weeks pregnant, but she’s lost the baby.”

I turn away from him and rub the nape of my neck.

She was my employee. She was walking to her car in my parking garage, somewhere she should’ve been safe.

I let the realization settle and wait for the rage to burrow deep where I can control it.

Then I turn back to the dead man in the chair.

I crouch again. Lower this time.

"The fingers were for grabbing her," I tell him, very quietly. Then I grab him by the balls. "And these are for what you did in that underground garage."

He passes out before I begin.

Which is fine.

I don’t need him awake to cut off his cock and balls.

18

SUNNY

My husband is asleep, and I can’t stop staring at his mouth.

It’s utterly ridiculous, given the situation, and I figure I must still be drunk from last night’s champagne.

Ten minutes ago, I woke up to an empty penthouse and a hangover. Thinking I was alone, I went looking for paracetamol. Then I saw the door to his den was open.

Now I’m standing in Dante’s office doorway watching him sleep in an armchair.

He’s still wearing his shirt from last night. It’s wrinkled and half-unbuttoned, and his sleeves are shoved up past his forearms, where dark tattoos disappear beneath the white fabric.

I creep closer to get a better look.

He looks younger like this. Less monster and more man.

“Maybe he is human,” I whisper.

My gaze drops to his open collar and to the edge of the inked writing across his chest.

I follow the line of his neck to his jaw, then his jaw to his mouth, and I stop there because his lips really are beautiful.