Page 13 of Captured By the Mafia Boss
“Yeah.”
Tea. Exactly the shade I prefer, milky. I take a sip and find it has half a sugar. When I meet his eyes over the rim of the mug, they’re implacable. He knows how I drink my tea.
What else does he know? Hopefully not how he makes my blood heat, or that I have a knife hidden in my shirt sleeve.
His shirt.
Whatever.
“I really thought you’d have a better story, King. Something with sharks would have been more believable.” I look back at the sunset.
He nods. “I’ll bear that in mind next time I’m accused of a murder I didn’t commit. Sharks.”
“Big ones. White teeth.”
“Noted.”
I fiddle with the handle of my mug. So ordinary and yet not. I’ve never done this before—well, I’ve drunk tea of course, I’m a Brit, I was born drinking tea. But not orgasms and lingering eye fucking and asking things likely to get me killed.
Not the shirt wearing, either. Henry might have been my fiancé, but it was a political arrangement and we never did anything like that. My father was old-fashioned, and until I realised how vulnerable I was without him, I toed the line as a good girl. Pure. Sweet. Innocent.
Not the sort who would kill with a poisoned knife.
I turn back to where King is pouring a glass of wine, setting out flatware, and plating up our food like I’m his guest for dinner.
I screw up my courage and ask the question he is waiting patiently for.
“Why would Henry kill his mother?”
6
KING
This is not the conversation I thought we’d have. I imagined she’d first want to know why I’d kidnapped her, but she’s taken that as given. As though being snatched away from the life she built is simply what she expects from life.
I suppose it should be. She was due to be the wife of the heir to Camden before she disappeared. But there are so many questions she could ask.
“Henry was angry with her.” That’s the simple truth.
She rolls her eyes and sips her tea. I love seeing her wearing my shirt. It hangs loosely over her and allows me to fantasise she picked it casually up after I discarded it, so she’d be surrounded by my scent. She chose one of my favourites, and it’s even better to kid myself we have tastes in common. That maybe she’d like my life here, away from London.
“You need to talk more if you’re going to convince me not to kill you, King.”
“Says the woman who was begging me only an hour ago. You don’t bite the hand that makes you come.”
“Praying mantis.”
I laugh, because I believe it. She’d eat me alive, and I’d let her.
So, much as I don’t want to explain this, I do. “Henry thought Trudy was a whore. Told her so repeatedly. Simple misogyny.”
There’s a flicker of recognition in Olivia’s eyes. He’s said this to her, too.
“Because she and I worked closely, he assumed we were sleeping together. And he despised that she would be with anyone but his father.”
“But he was dead.”
I shrug. “Some men think a woman should throw herself onto a funeral pyre. Henry seems to be one.”
