Page 29 of Heartless Sinner

Yeah, it fucking pissed me off. And I suspected I was going to be doing a lot of protecting Marla, at least to start out. But I had to be calm about this. And I had a feeling that Marla was also fully capable of defending herself from gossip.

“So you want me to look into Dmitri’s pals, his habits,” Toby said, bringing me back around to the real conversation at hand. “What about the father? There was that sniper.”

“Yeah… a sniper who got unlucky.” I pondered that. “You ever heard of a sniper getting unlucky?”

“No sir. Snipers don’t believe in missing a shot. Just ask ours. Although they will bitch about the damn cross breezes if you give ‘em half a chance.”

“Find out all the snipers who are free agents and could be low enough down on the totem pole to agree to a job that’s taking out a minor target like Preston.”

The sniper community was small, everyone knew everyone, and if you were good enough then you didn’t bother with small potatoes like the Preston family. There had to be, by my off-the-cuff calculations, only about five guys who’d end up fitting the bill. We’d look into them and see what turned up.

“You got it, boss.” Toby nodded, then paused. “You, uh, want us to look into your lady, too?”

“Marla? Why would you look into her?”

Toby threw his food wrappers in the nearby trash. “Well, sir, y’know I don’t want to bring trouble into it, seeing as you seem to really like her and all. But you said it yourself, she’s smart. And marrying you is a real boost for her. But could she really have finagled that marriage if her family wasn’t in danger?”

Well… not really. I knew about Marla Preston, but I might not have considered her for the role of my wife if she hadn’t shown up and then told me why every other woman wouldn’t work for me.

“She wouldn’t kill her own brother.”

“Wouldn’t she?” Toby pressed.

“She didn’t even want the marriage,” I told him, remembering how resistant she’d been. “I had to persuade her.”

Toby arched a brow. “And all it took was one fancy date and some sex—no offense boss but just how good can your dick be?”

“Real good, thanks, want to try it out?” I snapped, irritated.

Toby didn’t snap back. It was why we got along—he never rose to the bait when I lost my temper a bit.

More seriously, he said, “I’m just saying, she caved easily.”

“Because she was desperate and had just lost her brother,” I said. “What other choice did she have?”

“A few. She could’ve gone to other families, same level as hers, negotiated alliances that way,” Toby said, his tone even. “Gone to an even more powerful family and offered up her family’s allegiance or set herself up as someone’s mistress. You weren’t her only option.”

“But I was the easiest,” I pointed out. “Her family owes me allegiance.”

“Yeah, and you’re the one who’d marry her,” Toby said, then sighed. “The truth is people have been talking about how you’re thirty five and not even close to getting married. Your old man had a good reason for telling you to hurry up and get yourself to the altar. It’s not totally out of the realm of possibility to think that Marla heard the rumors, realized she had an opportunity to climb up the social ladder, and…”

“But her brother’s beating?” I shook my head, unable to imagine Marla doing something so horrific. “I mean, Marla’s strong but come on. And how could she stab her own brother multiple times?”

My brothers could drive me nuts sometimes, and honestly, with Dante wanting out of the family… I had sometimes, in darker moments, wondered what would happen if I was ordered to kill him. I’d wrestled with myself, wondering if I could do it or not, should I do it, or not.

But even if I did, I’d never beat them and stab them like that. I loved my brothers. I didn’t want to kill them but I sure as hell wouldn’t want them to suffer like Dmitri had.

Toby got quiet. “I mean… you’re good guys, you Russo’s. It’s a pleasure to work for you. But not everyone’s like that. Some families have real dark skeletons.”

Or Marla was just that ruthless, that heartless. She’d already shown remarkable self-control. She was determined, and smart. Could she have let me seduce her? Could she have played me, made me think that I was in charge when really she was the one pulling the strings the entire time?

Fuck. The possibility made my stomach churn. “Okay,” I told Toby. “Look into her.”

If Marla Preston was playing me, she was going to get hellfire rained down on her like nothing she’d ever seen before.

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Chapter Fourteen

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