Page 48 of Darkest Sin

A strange nagging pulls deep in my gut, and it forces me farther into the room. My gaze shifts over the shelving full of boxes. Some look worn down and tired as though they’re centuries old, while other boxes look as though they were only sealed yesterday.

There’s a big table in the center of the room with paper scattered across it and a half-empty coffee mug that looks as though it was only placed here this morning. My gaze shifts to the papers, and while I’ve never taken the time to look over a police report, I can tell when I’m looking at one.

“What the hell?” I murmur, skimming over the pages as my heart races.

It says something about a massacre at the home of Deago Donatelli, the leader of the Donatelli crime family, and while that name means nothing to me, I’d bet everything I have that it means something to Killian. My curiosity gets the best of me, and I start flicking through the pages, but when I find crime scene photos, that curiosity turns into dread.

Horror rocks through me, taking in the blood pooled on the ground and the dead bodies littered with bullets. There are hundreds of images, one after the other, taken from a million different angles, but when the attention focuses on a different man, everything stops.

This one is different.

He’s not littered with bullets like everyone else, he’s been tortured to death. Deep, precise stab wounds cover his body. This man bled out in agony. His death wasn’t quick or forgiving. It was brutal and callous, just like Killian.

I feel the blood drain from my face, leaving me faint and unsure.

Had I only seen the other photographs, I could have convinced myself that Killian had nothing to do with this, that he only had these police reports out of morbid curiosity for an opposing mafia family, but seeing the stab wounds over the body of the man I assume to be Deago Donatelli, I know it was him.

Killian orchestrated this massacre.

He did this.

Every bullet. Every death. Every last stab wound to that man’s body. Killian was responsible for all of it.

My stomach clenches as fear pounds through my veins.

This is the man I’ve been allowing myself to fall for. Despite his warnings and demands that I fear him, I foolishly chose to believe there was something good buried beneath the darkness. But how could that be true? A man who’s capable of wiping out a whole family couldn’t possibly be capable of love. How could there be anything good inside his heart?

Fat tears stream down my face, and as I take in all the boxes of files around me, I realize they’re all filled with the same thing—horrors of the crimes he’s committed in the name of family. Horrors of the leaders who’ve come before him.

And this man wants me to give him a child—a child who will eventually stand in his place and be responsible for the same demented acts. How could I allow that to happen?

Moving to the wall of screens, the dread begins to drown me, but I can’t walk out of here without truly knowing. After all, isn’t this what he wants? What he’s been trying to warn me about. He wants me to know who he is and what he’s capable of. He wants me to have an informed fear and to know the man I said I was beginning to fall for. This might not be how he intended for me to find out, but isn’t it best I know now before I fall too deeply?

I have to respect his decision to warn me. It’s about as noble as it gets in the mafia world, but now that I’m peeking through the window of his soul, I don‘t know how I’m ever supposed to belong to him.

How can I give myself to a man who’s capable of slaying an entire family line? A man who so unforgivingly can put a bullet through someone’s head simply for existing in the wrong room at the wrong time. A man who shamelessly walks into a human trafficking auction house and is the one they fear?

How stupid could I be?

My hands shake as I reach for the power button at the bottom of the screen, and as the screens come to life, something within me dies.

Each screen is just as horrifying as the next.

The first screen has a naked man hanging from chains, his body broken and beaten. His eyes are swollen, barely able to open them, but there’s no mistaking the tears staining his face.

The next is a frail-looking man in a cell with hollowed cheeks and his whole rib cage visible, even through this shitty camera. He looks as though he’s been there for years, and I bet if he had the option, he would end his misery without a second thought. Though it makes me wonder, someone so frail should have perished long ago. Is Killian giving him just enough nutrition to keep him alive and prolong his misery?

Moving to the next screen, I see a woman strapped to a chair. She’s filthy. Her hands are strapped to the arm rest, and while it’s hard to tell through the camera, it looks as though each one of her fingernails have been pulled out. I can’t imagine the pain, but I also can’t imagine what kind of crime she committed to deserve such a punishment.

The tears fill my eyes to the point I can’t make out the figures on the rest of the screens, but I’ve seen more than I can possibly stomach.

Feeling around the bottom of the screen, I turn it off before stumbling out of the store room, and as my mind becomes trapped by the horrid images, my stomach clenches.

Nausea sweeps over me, and I hurry from Killian’s office, slamming through the door of what I thought was a bathroom, only to come face-to-face with the man. He spins, not having expected anyone to come through the door. His eyes widen just a fraction, and I swallow the nausea as it quickly turns to fear.

He strides toward me, fury in his eyes, but despite his sheer size and his imposing nature, I see past him into the small room to a familiar woman sitting in a stiff-back chair with absolute terror in her eyes.

“What—what are you doing?” I demand, my heart racing as my gaze locks onto the woman’s pleading expression, but the longer I look at her, the more familiar she becomes. She’s one of the wives. I spent the majority of that interaction with my gaze locked on Monica’s, but there were three others. One of them clearly had Monica’s back, but the other two were silent and unsure. This woman was there, but she didn’t have a hand in any of Monica’s bullshit.

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