Page 21 of Thorns of Death
He almost did.
I gave his chest a pat.Bad move, Isla. The feel of his hard, muscular chest under my palm lit sparks beneath my skin, sizzling me to my core.
“Mr. Marchetti, stop crowding me and annoying the shit out of me,” I said sweetly, pulling my wrist from his grasp. I batted my eyelashes, ignoring the way my body burned. “Or I’ll cut your balls off.Capisce?”
Now that was Italian, I was certain of it. God, where did thatGodfathervoice come from? All I had left to do was scratch my chin and I’d be a shoo-in for the role.
A spark of surprise and a touch of amusement lit in his dark gaze.
Not waiting for his comeback, I turned on my heel and rushed out of there like the entire mafia was on my heel. Probably was.
SEVEN
ENRICO
My heart was doing an odd little twisting thing. Or maybe it was my balls.
I didn’t fucking know, but I knew that Isla scurrying away from me was not how I envisioned this. She was supposed to blush and let me take her home so I could ravish her soft, welcoming body all over again. The caveman in me wanted to listen to her whimpering and panting before screaming my name.
Jesus H. Christ. What the fuck happened?
While I stared after her, the red-haired minx didn’t even glance back. That was fucking unacceptable.
“Ah, I see why you’re obsessed,nipote.”
I snorted. “Listen,vecchio.” I knew he hated when I called him “old man” as much as I hated when he called me “nephew.” We were more like cousins or even brothers, considering my parents had raised him. He was practically still in diapers—or running around naked at five years old, knowing my mother—when I was born, but he still found ways to remind me of our age disparity. “I am not obsessed with her.” Fucking lies. By the look he gave me, he knew it too. As a rule of thumb, I never obsessed over women, but something about Isla intrigued me. “I want you to dig up everything there is on Miss Evans. Fucking everything.”
At least we now had her last name. An identity. Ties to the symphony. Although, it should have been alarming that it hadn’t come up when we searched through guest lists and entrants into my nightclub.
Manuel snickered, a cunning glimmer shining in his eyes. “And you claim you’re not obsessed with her.”
There was something about Isla that was unlike any other woman I had ever met. It made me want to drown in her. Maybe it was her innocence, or the way she shone when she played that fucking violin, but I wanted to let her fill every inch of my soul. I needed her to consume me.
“I just need ammunition to break through her resolve.” I shot him a side glance. “Which brings me to the next concern. Donatella must have gotten to her.”
“Puttana,” he muttered. “I told you we should have killed her.”
And I should have listened.
That fuckwit woman was determined to wreak havoc on Enzo and Amadeo, never mind me. In her delusional state, she thought she could fuck with all of us. Manuel would never know how much I wished I’d ended her that fucking night. I should have listened to him and planted a bullet between the whore’s eyes right after she birthed Amadeo.
“What’s done is done,” I stated matter-of-factly. There wasn’t much point in regret. “The issue at hand is that if Miss Evans talks, there will be a problem. To the world, Donatella is dead.”
He was already typing a message to our contact who’d dig up everything there was on Isla for me. Best part, the contact was a woman, so there was little danger of her being fascinated by my red-haireddolcezza. I could ask Konstantin, but there were certain things I liked to keep private. Like my women. And if I knew the Russian at all, he was slightly preoccupied right now with chasing the wild Tatiana Nikolaev, so he’d be no good to me.
My phone buzzed, and I retrieved it.
“Ah, we have Lykos’s shipment. No deaths. Must be a saint’s day.” I spoke too soon, because another message came through. “Figlia di puttana bastarda,” I cursed savagely. “It seems it wasn’t the Corsicans who intercepted the shipment. It was Sofia Volkov and her men.”
Manuel let out a few curses of his own. “Did they catch anyone?”
I nodded. “Let’s pay a visit to the bastard.”
* * *
After a short flight on my private plane, we arrived at the docks in Le Havre—one of the few docks I owned in France. I found the Russian bastard strung up from the ceiling by his ankles.
After World War II, my great-grandfather bought seaside docks along the French coastline for strategic purposes. He’d had enough foresight to understand the value of its position during cross-Atlantic journeys. This particular dock was beneficial because Le Havre went on to become a UNESCO-listed port city, sitting at the mouth of the Seine. The properties had more than tripled in value.
