Page 23 of Killer Love

I’d nearly forgotten about this part. The Zappia blood ritual is yet another outdated, barbaric custom but at least they’ve done away with the tradition of consummating the marriage at the back of the chapel directly after the ceremony.

“My blood is your blood,” Gio says, repeating after the priest, word-for-word, as he readies the knife’s edge against my thumb. “My flesh is your flesh. From now through eternity.”

I wince as he presses down and my blood drips out into the white, ceremonial basin.

He hands the knife to me. I smile again, more than happy to make him bleed.

“My blood is your blood,” I say as poke him. Hard. He flinches while the rest of them chuckle at his oh-so-adorably nervous bride practically stabbing him. “My flesh is your flesh. From now through eternity.”

He bleeds into the basin, his red mixing with mine. The priest pours a few drops of oil on top of it and ignites it with a candle. I watch as our blood burns, signifying that I’m not only a Zappia in name, but in flesh, too.

Good.

The finest killer of flesh is a virus. One that eats you apart from the inside out.

It’ll start with me. It’ll start with the life hopefully taking hold of my womb at this very moment and it’ll end with the destruction of the Zappia family.

Gio takes my hand and slides the wedding band onto my finger, along with the diamond engagement ring.

I smile again.

I’ll keep smiling until he’s a miserable, broken, old man.

I am a Zappia woman, after all.

Chapter 8

Luka

Three Years Later

“It’s happened again.”

I yawn, just barely opening my eyes to stare at Markov. “What’s happened again?”

He gestures for me to follow him and walks out of my doorway.

“Markov—”

“Follow me.”

I sigh and grab a sweater to throw on before trailing him down the hall. It’s three in the morning. Whatever he dragged me out of bed for, it better be important.

We enter his workshop across the estate and he beelines for his desk. “They’re back in Moscow.”

“Who’s back in…”

I pause, my brain finally waking up and answering the question before I even finish asking it.

The kobra.

Tracking the kobra has proved to be more difficult than we thought it’d be. Markov was right. Blood leaves a trail, but the blood he collected three years ago from the hissing man turned up nothing. Since then, a string of murders has plagued Russia, one every few months or so, each one more confusing than the last — and each one prompting the same lecture from my father.

Leave them be.

Luckily, Markov disagreed. Not at first, of course. His loyalty to my father is too strong. It wasn’t until I mentioned vengeance for my mother, for the grandmother I never knew, did Markov change his mind. The agent who killed Katerina Starkova is long dead, but Viktor never found out why she was targeted in the first place. The two of us have been quietly tracking the similar killings throughout Europe ever since.

There’s no pattern, no connection between the victims. Just dead bodies with two bullets in their eyes but someone, somewhere out there, is profiting from this. If there’s anything that leaves a more potent trail than blood, it’s money.

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