Page 30 of Trust Me

“Are those my Louboutins?” she snapped, hands on her hips.

Katarina had brought along her backbone tonight. I respected it. I gave her a mental high-five and held back the part about it being her fault that I’d had tremors all day and had already given myself permission to drown myself in whiskey. It looked like my best option given the circumstances.

The spiked heels fit—puffy ankle and all—and raised me to Katarina’s eye level. “No clue. Care to swap?” I nodded at her feet, clad in a pair of sensible runners.

She scowled and stomped off. I envied her right to do so without consequence.

Raphael’s bedtime story last night had left little to the imagination.

I was a dead girl walking.

I didn’t know which had left me more vulnerable—Lucifer’s betrayal or my naivete.

After a sleepless night, I’d come to only one conclusion: letting my guard down around Raphael carried terrifying repercussions.

There was a twisted comfort in Raphael’s confession that he wouldn’t snuff me out before we were bound in holy matrimony. To do otherwise would tank his overseas business before the first ship loaded with black-market goods had left the dock. Aiden was fucked in the head, but that didn’t make him dense. Even if Raphael crafted the most compelling and convincing “accidental death” on my behalf, Aiden would see right through it. Therefore, I’d been granted a grace period.

The justice I’d planned to enact once I figured my shit out was still in play.

The clock struck seven. Raphael manifested from his study and walked toward me looking like he’d been lifted from the cover of GQ.

“Willa, darling.” His gaze fell to my ample cleavage spilling from the sweetheart neckline. His accent was thicker than usual—laced with lust—a stark contrast to last night’s reminder that my life was his to take on a jealous whim. “Don’t you look delicious?”

When Raphael’s eyes found mine, they held an intensity that made my blood turn to ice.

All day, I’d vacillated between calling a spade a spade or keeping up pretenses when an audience called for it.

I still hadn’t settled on a tactic when I muttered, “Ah—thank you ... I guess.”

Raphael frowned.

I decided that keeping up pretenses was the way to go. After all, it’s what good Mob princesses did after being dealt a life sentence that could only end in death.

“You look very handsome this evening.” I squeezed as much flattery into that statement as I could stomach. In my predicament, self-preservation meant everything and self-worth meant nothing.

Raphael’s stunned gaze studied where my hand rested on his chest as though he couldn’t make sense of how it’d landed there. He raised his head slightly. The shadow of his thick brow concealed anything his eyes might have given away.

I scraped together enough courage to face the fact that I was about to be alone with Raphael and his men. They were about to whisk me away from the mansion to an undisclosed destination. When Raphael announced that our first date would be dinner at a restaurant he’d been meaning to check out, I found myself able to breathe a little easier. Public settings typically implied a casualty count of innocent civilians that even an immoral crowd such as ours tried to avoid.

Liam drove while a young soldier—my new chaperone, Grifin—rode shotgun. Sosanna had introduced me to my part-time personal guard that morning as I’d eaten my breakfast.

I’d been so focused on trying to catch and translate every suggestion in Raphael’s body language and tone while on the way to our mystery dinner—an exhausting venture if I ever knew one—that I hadn’t so much as glanced out the window of the Rolls Royce during the drive. It wasn’t until we’d stepped under the red and gold awning that I recognized the Brighton restaurant that my fiancé wanted to check out was Russian owned and operated.

“Are you insane?” I hissed. “You brought me here?”

Either he had no idea I’d killed one of these guys last night or he had a sick sense of humor.

“Pipe down. I’m positive they’ll have a potato and cabbage dish your Dublin palate will find more than satisfactory,” he chided in his cocky way that most women probably found charming.

I did not.

“You’re fucking mental.” I threw out the bashful widow act in the same breath I’d used to speak such bold words.

Raphael placed a hand on my lower back and brought his lips to my ear. “We may be Irish, but I won’t hesitate to put you in your place like a fucking Italian goomah if you continue to disrespect me.”

I stiffened.

He smiled against my temple, his voice full of gravel. “I’ll have to tell Lucifer that Cillian was correct.”

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