Page 65 of Isle of Beauty

I take a step toward her, lifting her chin with a finger. “Don’t fucking lie to me. Bad things happen to people who lie to me.”

I cast a glance toward Eduardo, the threat clear. It’s shitty of me but I want her to cower and be filled with regret and self-hate. Just as I am now. Ain’t no way she’s eighteen. And ain't no way she’s the first either.

Disgust turns into anger, my face heating up, the need for violence slowly taking over. I have a switch-blade in my pocket, I might make use of it and cut my husband to pieces. The idea pulls a half smile to my face. It probably makes me look unhinged. The brunette whimpers her age.

With a calm I didn’t know I could summon, I turn to Eduardo who doesn’t even look regretful. “You fucked a fifteen year-old?”

“She’s turning sixteen next month,” he exclaims as if it will absolve him of his crime. Bile rises in my throat and the nausea gets stronger as I look at the man I thought I could love. All I see is a stranger. A deviant. Because he knew. She told him her age and he did not care enough. He fucked her anyway.

“Get the fuck home, Eduardo, and don’t let the team see you,” I say coolly. I’m not yelling, I’m not throwing a tantrum, and maybe that’s what stuns him most. I’m the picture of what a good mafia wife would do if she caught her husband cheating. I’ve never been that rational in my life but I know very clearly what I need to do.

“I’m going to take you home now and I’m going to have your house watchedday and night. You’ll never see me. And you’ll never see him ever again. Do you understand?” I ask the girl.

“But I love him,” she protests and I wince.

If she thinks she’s in love with him, it’s not the first time they fucked. I want to vomit all over the floor and cut his dick to feed it to him, not necessarily in that order.

I exit the club after telling Serena something came up and I would come back tomorrow.

The girl is now pouting like the child she actually is. She’s pretty, with almond-shaped brown eyes, golden unblemished skin, a long mane of chestnut hair. And these youthful full cheeks that betray her age.

“You don’t love this piece of trash, girl,” I admonish her. “And even if you do, I don’t give a shit. You’re going to go home, go to school, and forget him. But never forget that I’ll be watching you. I’m going to pay for therapy as well. You’re going to talk to someone about this. Eduardo is a fucking forty-six year-old man and you’re barely sixteen. You might not want to hear it but you’re a child.”

“I’m not a child!” she objects loudly and I have half a mind to backhand her and beat some sense into her. But this is not her fault and violence does indeed not resolve everything. I’m trying so hard to invite compassion. It’s fucking hard.

She’s a child. She fucked my husband. He fucked her.

Both realities exist at the same time and I fucking hate it. She doesn’t deserve any hate. She deserves to forget about this and to heal, when she’s ready. But I deserve to rage, and to grieve and to hate her and to hate him.

I breathe in deeply and exhale as long as I can, trying to get the stale air I breathed around the office out. But it sticks. Like a poison in my lungs, in my blood. The rage is in the air I breathe, the water I drink and I’m sure it will be in the food I eat when I’m ready to actually do it.

We arrive at her house and I can read the defiance all across her face. Making a quick decision, I grab her by the collar. I hate myself for it but it’s necessary. “Look up who’s the Moretti Family, girl. And remember, I’ll be watching,” I menace. She starts to tremble and promises she won’t do anything else but go to school and therapy.

I leave in a flash, setting up surveillance on her and a weekly appointment at a children’s therapist specialised in helping grooming survivors. I also call Julian to get more surveillance at the clubs I’m responsible for, doubling security cameras and asking him to discreetly hire new security staff to protect the people working there and the ones who come and go, not affiliated with the business. Next, I call Giulia and put her in charge of compiling files on every single one of our Garcia Hotel Management employees and their families, and connect with Julian for discreet securities in homes where young girls live.

That fucker won’t touch a single hair on any of my people.

On my way back home, I retch on the side of the road. It won’t be the last time I do that over the next year but I know what I have to do. I can’t get enough air in my lungs. My eyes get teary but I force myself to get it all out, stand up from my crouched position, shoulders and chin high and walk back to the driver’s seat.

When I arrive home, the daffodils at the front of the house catch my attention. My garden is filled with them. The last piece of the puzzle clicks into place.

They say poison is a woman’s weapon and I would hate to disappoint by getting more creative.

Ihear the tick of Pierce’s jaw at my last confession. He moves my body up so I’m back to facing him. His hands frame my face, his eyes are locked on mine, intense and burning with fiery rage. He doesn’t utter a word and he doesn’t need to.

He crashes his lips to mine, pouring all his anger into our kiss, all his outrage at my pain and what my first husband did to these young girls.

His eyes never leave mine. “I worked hard to be a different man than my father Lana. But I’m coming to understand I’m more like him than I thought. If he weren’t dead, I’d kill your ex-husband with my bare hands. I might dig up his corpse and tear it to pieces just for good measure.”

I already knew I was not fully sane but what he says just confirms it because that warms my heart even more. Knowing the length he would go to for me is what allows me to fully let go and give him everything. Every piece of my dark heart belongs to him.

“What if I told you, you could?” I smile.

Pierce’s laugh echoes in the room around us and shakes his entire body, his head thrown back. The column of his throat is right there for me and I can’t resist licking the length of it up until under his ear and sucking until I leave a mark. His intake of breath and growing erection against me is a healing salve.

He’s staying, laughing at murder. Maybe he’s as fucked up as I am after all. What a power couple we make.

“I shouldn’t like the idea of murder so much but I love every single thing about you, mo cara. When violence is doled out by you, I’ll admit gladly that it makes me hard.”

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