Page 63 of Spider Demon's Kiss

“We?” Lorenzo asked losing a shade of color from his face. As dangerous as Lorenzo was, his wolf had never killed anyone. There was a part of me that liked that. Having blood on your hands wasn’t a badge of honor. It was a necessary evil.

If I could protect my little brother from that, I would. It was the least I could do. Growing up the way we did, there were certain things that were unavoidable. Prey needs to know how to survive among predators. But watching as the light went out in someone’s eyes wasn’t anything Lorenzo needed to experience.

“Kuroi and me,” I clarified.

“You and Kuroi?” he said looking back at my husband.

“Yeah. This is family matters. I’m keeping it in the family,” I said sending a message to Lorenzo about who Kuroi was to me.

“Got it. So, do you know for sure that he’s in town?”

“We haven’t gotten that far yet,” I explained.

“I can find out,” Kuroi said to my surprise.

“You? How? You don’t know anything about him,” I asked my deathly calm husband.

“I don’t need to. All I need is his name. Which is?”

“Vincent Ricco.”

“Give me to the end of the day,” Kuroi said before getting up and walking out.

When he was gone, Lorenzo turned back to me and lowered his voice.

“Are you sure you can trust him, Dante?”

“Who Kuroi?”

“Who the fuck do you think I mean?” he snapped.

I stared at him not liking the way he raised his voice.

“Sorry, Dante. But yeah, Kuroi. Think about it. They call him the spider demon. Everyone he’s with dies. Everyone!”

“That’s another thing. I don’t want to hear any more about that spider demon shit.”

“You don’t want to hear any more about it?Dante, you married him and immediately almost died. Do you think that was a coincidence?”

“Do I think that marrying Kuroi pissed Pa off enough to try and kill me?”

“But that’s the thing. Let’s just say that it was Matteo who shot you. How did it go down?”

“What do you mean?”

Lorenzo got up and walked around the room as he thought.

“Okay, you’re saying that when we drove up there, your plan was to talk Sato out of the deal, right?”

“Right.”

“So, there was no way you could know that he was planning on marrying you right then. And if you didn’t know, Pa definitely didn’t know. So, why would he have Matteo follow you with a sharpshooter rifle in case you did something to piss him off?”

“I don’t know. Our father is fucked up,” I explained.

“He’s fucked up. But what’s the reason you needed to take control of the business?”

“Because he’s not strategic,” I realized.

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