Page 8 of Twisted Obsession

“Jesus, woman, do you have any sense of self-preservation at all?” he asks, effectively taking the wind out of my sails when he doesn’t retaliate the way I expect, leaving me off balance. “Do you have any idea where going off like that to the wrong person is going to get you?”

My mouth drops open, and I can’t believe what I’m hearing. Seriously? That’s his response?

Asshole! How did I ever get the idea he was one of the good guys? Rather than making me more circumspect, it just enflames me all the more. “I’m pretty certain I could be as quiet as a church mouse and the perfect little prisoner, and it wouldn’t make the slightest difference how I get treated by Vito Rossi,” I spit. “Do you know what he said to me before you came in?”

I don’t give him a chance to respond. “He told me, and I quote, ‘The other bitch screamed good as I fucked her while one of my men burned patterns into her tits with a cigar.’ He told me how she was a real wildcat and asked if I was going to be the same, and in all that time I never said a word to him. So I’m pretty sure he doesn’t need any provocation.”

Dominic opens his mouth to speak, then closes it again and clenches his jaw. “You told me you were okay,” he grates.

Spinning around, I throw my hands up in the air. Are all men naturally this dense? “Iamokay. Nothing happened!”

Technically—though I keep that to myself.

“But you’re missing the point here…”

“No. I’m not.” The words are harsh and rigid, like every muscle in the man’s body, and it’s then I realize his hands are clenched so tight on the tabletop that his knuckles have turned white. “Now explain yourself. Tell me who this was done to,” he demands.

Fuck. I don’t like talking about Orla. We may not have been friends, and I may have been disdainful of nearly everything she stood for, but thinking about what happened to her, making any attempt to put it into words, leaves me sick to the stomach. No one, not even the Viper himself, deserves to have their life ended like she did.

Well, I might make an exception for Vito Rossi. The man deserves a taste of his own medicine. But then that would make me just as bad as him, so I banish the thought from my mind. It’s not like I’d ever act on it.

Probably.

Instead, I give Dominic some generalities. “Her name was Orla. She was a thirty-four-year-old Irish woman with kin amongst our soldiers. Prior to her death, she and Ciaran were…”

Shagging? Screwing like monkeys? Fucking? Satisfying an itch?

I’m not sure what to say. It’s not like they were a couple, even though it was her association with my brother that got her targeted.

Fortunately, Dominic picks up on what I can’t find the right words for. Maybe that’s a man thing, too.

What am I thinking? Of course it is.

“So, what happened to her?”

I suck in a breath and walk back to the table on shaking legs, righting my chair so I can sit down again. “Everything I just said and worse,” I tell him, hoping he won’t make me repeat it. “I want to vomit just thinking about it.”

“And how do you know Vito was the cause of all this, and not some other enemy?”

“What, you mean aside from the fact that he just admitted it to me?”

Dominic just looks at me coolly. “Vito simply said ‘the other bitch’, how do you know he’s referring to this Orla woman?”

I look him in the eye as I recite what I know to be true. “Because she was found with her lips taped closed and a baby viper stuffed in her mouth.”

A string of curses litters the air at this piece of news, and Dominic’s chair scrapes across the floor as he pushes it back and gets up, his expression closed off and in no way inviting any questions.

Instead, he grabs me by the arm, pushes me back inside the windowless bedroom, and stalks away without a word, and I’m left wondering if I’ve done the right thing by telling him anything.

Chapter

Five

DOMINIC

I’m still cursing myself for treating Roisin so insensitively when I arrive at the warehouse, where I’ve arranged to meet Mika to let him know what I’ve discovered. The things Roisin confided in me change the situation significantly, and knowing she took a chance on telling me, her jailor for all intents and purposes, means I’m feeling guilty for not being a little more considerate of how my actions might be perceived. My guess is she probably thinks it was all a ruse to get her to talk, which was far from my intention, but there’s no time to dwell on that now.

For better or for worse, I’ve arranged for Kaiden and Tommaso, the two who kidnapped Roisin, to be brought along, as I have a hunch they can shed some light on this Orla woman.

---