Page 43

Kept him human.

My father loved my mother enough to die of it. They put her in the ground, and the grief carved him out from the inside until he finished the job himself, with his own gun in his mouth.

That's what love does where I come from. It doesn't soften you.

It just shows your enemies exactly where to aim.

And I have no intention of giving them that chance.

22

DANTE

For someone who usually spends most of his time in the casino and very little in his penthouse, I’m not sure why I am riding the elevator home at only seven p.m.

I tell myself it’s to check on the wife I acquired overnight.

Although, I’m not quite sure it’s for the reasons it should be.

I hear music as the private elevator approaches the penthouse.

It’s Mel Tormé’s Comin’ Home Baby.

What the hell?

The elevator opens, and I don’t just hear the loud music, I also smell garlic.

I pause in the doorway because garlic means cooking, and cooking means Sunny is in my kitchen. Sunny doing anything voluntarily in my penthouse is cause for suspicion.

Loosening my tie, I step inside, and as I approach the kitchen, I come to a sudden halt when I see the juiciest ass in a tiny pair of panties bent over, moving in time to the beat of the music.

It’s my wife and fuck … she’s wearing one of my shirts.

She’s rummaging through a bottom drawer completely unaware that I am there.

She keeps swinging her luscious ass in time to the music, and every cell in my body flips in on itself as all my blood goes straight to my cock.

Fuck me. This little devil is going to be the death of me.

Which I am certain is her plan.

Retrieving a large salad bowl from the back of the drawer, she straightens and turns around.

“Oh,” she says, surprised to see me. Her hair is twisted into a messy knot with loose strands falling around her face.

She flashes me a big sunny smile, which only makes me more suspicious.

Only days ago, this woman called me a bully, a thug, and a monster. She told me I was misogynistic and informed me I would need to buy a wife because no sane person would volunteer for the position.

Now she's in my kitchen looking like she’s happy to be here.

"What are you doing?" I ask.

"Cooking."

"Why?"

"Because it's dinnertime." She places the salad bowl on the counter. "I’m making cannelloni."