Page 100 of Devil's Iris
“There’s not much else to tell.” I try to say it casually, but the crack in my voice betrays me. “I couldn’t afford her meds, even though I had started working in the same syndicate as my father.” The Moretti syndicate. Rafael’s father only gave me scraps—low-risk jobs that paid pennies. Worthless.
“She died,” I say flatly. And my father followed a few weekslater. Not from grief or by my hands like I’d so fantasized. No, he got offed on the job.
“I’m so sorry.” The pain in her voice sounds genuine. Water splashes everywhere as she turns in my arms, straddling my hips, her arms wrapping around my waist as she leans her head against my chest.
It’s a strange feeling being comforted by her. My heart becomes tender, my cock hardening beneath her ass, my pulse racing wildly. But it makes it easier for me to continue.
I anchor one hand on her small waist and thread the other through her pretty hair, letting the wet strands fall through my fingers. “Anyways, that case took me back in time. And I thought it was a fucking injustice that there are probably hundreds—no, thousands—of people like that in the city. Desperate for meds they can’t afford. So I pitched another business idea to my brothers: drugs. Not the hard street type, but the medicinal type that people need to survive.”
Rafael didn’t question me when I brought up the idea. None of my brothers did. They all understood immediately. And even though we knew right from the start we wouldn’t make a profit from it, we invested in it anyway.
“It took weeks, but I found suppliers, secured shipping routes, and figured out the logistics. We started bringing medications into the city. Made them affordable and easy to access for people who desperately needed them.”
“He stole the meds?” she breathes, getting where I’m going.
I curl a strand of her hair around my finger, watching the strand gleam red-gold in the bathroom light. “He was a worker in one of my warehouses. It would have been a different ball game if he’d stolen them because he needed them.”
“He didn’t need them?” She glances up at me in surprise, a little frown crossing her pretty face. “Then what did he do with them?”
“He resold them—jacked the price back up to match the bigpharma leeches. The opioids he crushed and mixed with cocaine to create a new strain of crack he distributed to drug dealers.”
“That motherfucker.”
The sharp bite of anger in her voice makes me smile, and without thinking, I lean down to kiss the scattered freckles on her nose, then her eyelids, before tucking her face back against my chest.
“He had to die,” she says into my chest with absolute conviction. “And I’m glad you made him suffer first. He deserved every second of pain you gave him,” she adds savagely.
The words hit me harder than any bullet, and I stare down at her in surprise, rattled to my core.
Not because of her approval—though that affects me more than it should. But because maybe a part of me wanted her to run. Wanted her to finally see the devil lurking beneath my carefully constructed mask and give me a reason to justify keeping her at arm’s length.
Instead, she praises me. She praises my actions and cuddles into me in the water, sighing contentedly. What the hell am I supposed to do with her when she says and does things exactly opposite of what any sane person would do?
My lungs ache with pressure as my heart expands, stretches, and reshapes itself to make room for her. It should be impossible, but I can almost feel the change happening as she forces her way in, carving out space I never knew existed.
I was scared before, but now—I’m terrified.
She tilts her head and presses a lingering kiss on my left arm, over my tattoo. “Thank you for telling me. About your mom and everything else. I know it couldn’t have been easy for you, secretive as you are.” Her voice turns playful on the last words.
But I’m having a full-blown existential crisis, and I’m not inthe mood to be amused. I gently move her head off my chest, lift her off my lap, and climb out of the tub like it’s suddenly filled with acid, splashing water everywhere in my haste.
I wrap a towel around my hips with hands that are definitely not steady and grab another one, offering it to her as she stands.
“I guess now would be a bad time to ask about your tattoo.” She eyes me while opening her arms, quietly asking me to wrap the towel around her. My lungs tighten as I do, and she continues speaking, her breath ruffling my cheek. “I noticed a similar design on Maximo, you know? And I’ve been curious about what it means.”
Despite the pressure crushing my chest, I find myself amused after all, and a deep laugh huffs out of me. “You don’t know when to stop, do you?”
“Not really.” She shrugs sheepishly, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “I can wait, though.” She leans into me, and I chuckle again.
Drawn towards her by forces I can’t control or understand, I wrap an arm around her waist, pulling her close as I press a kiss to the top of her head.
She just might be my undoing.
36
LENI
I wake up with a smile so huge it actually hurts my cheeks.
