Page 86 of Black Widow's Kiss

She had a heart attack. I could tell from the frozen look on her face. I had seen it many times before. It was the look I had woken up to more times than I wanted to remember.

“She had come to here to kill you,” I said aloud trying to make sense of it all.

“Yeah, she had.”

“She wanted me to come home.”

“You are home,” Dante said wrapping his arms around me pulling me tight.

As the tears again rolled down my face, I leaned into my husband’s muscular body. He was built like an oak tree, sturdy, solid, and strong. He was reliable and unyielding. The best thing that had ever happened to me was marrying him. And where ever our life together took us, I would follow.

Unlike anyone, he would protect me. He would hold me when I cried and in his arms I would finally sleep.

“Are you alright?” He asked me looking down at me caringly.

Looking up into his tender eyes, the only thing I could think to say was, “Cherries.”

Epilogue

Dante

It wasn’t a panic attack. It knew it wasn’t. I mean, I had my doubts for a while there when nothing else made sense. But the one thing I had never doubted was Kuroi’s innocents.

Having reached his limits, I put Kuroi to bed and disposed of his sister’s body. Kuroi didn’t want to know what I did with it. She had been betraying him his entire life. He needed time to deal with that. And, what my baby wanted, I was gonna give him.

Storing Yuki’s body instead of burning it like we had Uncle Vinny, I removed all traces that she was at our place including making sure she hadn’t bribed the lobby attendant to get in.

She hadn’t. It was a mystery how she had gotten in undetected. I didn’t like that considering others could probably do the same.

The other thing I did that night was save my toothbrush. I needed to know what it was that she had tried to kill me with.

“Wolfsbane,” I told Kuroi days later when my people finished their analysis.

“Wolfsbane is from a flower. She had a garden at the compound. She was always out there taking care of them.”

“Its poison works within minutes and the symptoms can be mistaken for a heart attack. I guess she underestimated my size when she put it in my wedding drink. The stuff is lethal. I shouldn’t have survived.

What makes wolfsbane the perfect poison is that the small amount needed to kill someone usually goes undetected during an autopsy. But the amount they found on my toothbrush was enough to kill a cow.”

“That’s why she didn’t try to save herself,” Kuroi concluded. “She knew she couldn’t.”

“Probably.”

“I understand why she killed all of those people. At least some of them. I think she might have thought she was rescuing me. But, why did she whisper in that guy’s ear about your brother’s friend? That was what lead to me leaving her. She had killed to get me back. Why initiate something that would take me away?”

“She couldn’t have guessed that I would suggest merging out two families.”

“You suggested that?” Kuroi asked surprised.

“Yeah. Did you think it was Sato?”

“He had traded me away so easily before. I just assumed he had again.”

“No. Not this time.”

“So, she’s dead because she underestimated you,” Kuroi said with the hint of a prideful smile.

“She isn’t the first,” I told him thinking of Uncle Vinny and all of the ones before him.

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