Page 59 of A Game So Reckless

I watch with a grim, palely beating sort of satisfaction, knowing I’d be feeling a whole lot better right now if I could have done more than just let him drown. Anger is like a living thing inside me. This doesn’t soothe it.

It doesn’t even come close.

Connor tries and fails to get purchase on the board. The water’s too cold. His limbs are too weak. His wrist is too broken.

He goes under and he doesn’t come back up.

Once I’m sure that the motherfucker’s dead, I start the engine and turn the boat around. As I approach the shore, I see a figure standing on the end of my dock.

It’s Valentina.

Rage, like the rage I just tried to drown by drowning Connor, comes frothing through my body. An acidic tidal wave.

She didn’t go home like I told her too.

“What did you do? Did you kill him?” she hisses quietly, her eyes scanning the boat and seeing Connor isn’t in it.

“Of course I did,” I respond tightly as I direct the boat to the side of the dock and secure it. “What?” I ask, my voice sharpening viciously when I see her rear back. “You’re shocked by that? With a da like yours? Not to mention I threw your fucking fiancé off that roof.”

I haul myself onto the dock, towering above her, gazing down into the haughty pride shaping her beautiful features. Where the hell does she get off being so pissed? When she’s the one who made mistakes tonight?

“You didn’t have to do anything to him,” she snaps. “I didn’t need you to save me!”

“Save you?” I almost spit the words. “Come on. I know you would have clawed that fucker’s eyes out before he got what he wanted with you.”

Some of the anger in her ebbs, melts into confusion.

“Then, why?”

“Because,” I mutter, taking her chin in my hand and lowering my face closer to hers, as if I can breathe or burn my words right into her, “anyone who touches what’s mine ends up at the bottom of a goddamn lake, Valentina. Figured you would know that by now.”

“You’re crazy,” she breathes.

“So I’ve been told.”

“Are you going to kill my next fiancé, too? Papà will likely have me marry someone else soon, you know. And a husband is going to want to do a lot more than grab my arm and whine at me.”

She says it, and even though I know it’s true, it sends my brain into a fucking tailspin. A month ago, I wouldn’t have given two shits about who Valentina Titone married, unless it affected my businesses somehow.

Now, it’s fucking inconceivable. I imagine her in a white dress, walking down the aisle to someone else.

And then I imagine slitting the groom’s throat.

I release her chin and seize her arm, pulling her forcefully towards the house. She puts her full weight against me, leaning back at a chaotic angle. If I keep going like this, I’ll pull her shoulder out of its goddamn socket. Something I wouldn’t care about doing to literally anyone else.

But I stop pulling her arm.

And instead, I pick her up and sling her over my shoulder. Her hands grapple against my shirt, yanking it up and scratching my skin with her nails. I inhale slowly, letting the burning stripes of the sensation fill my consciousness. My dick stiffens.

In the house, I dump Valentina down on one of the gigantic white couches in the living room. She bounces slightly, falling sideways into a big pile of cushions with nautical colour schemes and phrases like “Home is where the lake is” stitched on them.

“What are you doing?” she asks, scrambling into a more upright position. “I thought you told me to go home for the night.”

“But you didn’t, did you? You stood at the end of my fucking dock so you could scold me when I came back from watching Connor drown.”

Even in the moonlit darkness of the living room, I can see blood rush from her face.

“He drowned?”

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