Page 23 of Black Widow's Kiss

“You keep reachin’ for your side. Are you sure you’re okay, Dante?”

“I’m fine.” I told him starting to wonder if what I had was a panic attack. Or maybe the walls really were closing in on me.

“Listen, I gotta get to work. Is there anything else you need from me?”

“Yeah, I need you to break this news to Pa so I don’t have to.”

“Noted.”

“And I need you to reassure me that this whole thing isn’t gonna blow up in your face.”

“Everything’s under control.”

“I hope it is,” Matteo said with true concern. Turning to go, he said, “Maybe you, me, and your new husband should go out for a test run before you introduce him to the rest of the family. You know…”

“…Because we can’t be sure if the rest of the family thinks like us?”

“Exactly.”

“I’ll think about it,” I told him turning my focus to my computer monitor.

When Matteo closed the door behind him, I looked up. The air refilled my lungs like a wind tunnel. Everything about our conversation was unexpected. Out of everyone, I thought Matteo would take me being with a man the worst. He wasn’t exactly known for thoughtful contemplation.

But he had said that no one else could be trusted to think like us. What exactly did that mean? How did we think?

I’ve never known my pretty boy brother and I to think alike about anything. But he definitely meant something by it. The question was, what?

Another question was, how was I going to break it to our father that I had married Sato’s son. Yet another question was, would Kuroi kill me before I got the opportunity

The guy really was insane. Nice to look at, like Matteo had said, but completely insane. He stabbed me during our first night together. For what?

Maybe I just needed to give him some space. This couldn’t have been his idea to get married. Maybe if I gave him a wide berth, he’ll get use to things and he wouldn’t be so stabby next time. Or maybe I should just hide the knives.

How the fuck did I get myself into this? Fuckin’ Matteo!

Having come up with a vague outline for how I was going to handle Kuroi moving forward, I turned my attention to the other matters at hand. First off, someone had tried to kill me. Having failed, they were going to try to again.

Secondly, I couldn’t trust our father to just accept me being in charge. He was going to try something. It was just a matter of when.

Touching base with Lorenzo about what I thought was going on, I left out the part about my new husband trying to turnme into a shish kabab. He suspected that it was Kuroi behind my passing out before the crash. Leaving out that Kuroi had purposefully not killed me, made it hard to explain why I had my doubts about that.

“He kissed you, minutes later, you crashed,” he told me over lunch.

“If he wanted me dead, he could’ve killed me while I slept,” I said even though I didn’t sleep a wink last night.

“Wait, how could he? Does he even know where you live?”

“Of course he does. He moved in.”

Lorenzo froze about to shove a piece of lettuce into his mouth.

“I thought you said you two would live separately?”

“Don’t go puttin’ words in my mouth,” I said playing off anything I might or might not have said.

“I’m not tryin’ to put words in your mouth. I just thought you said it.”

“Well, I didn’t.”

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