Page 41 of A Beautiful Crime

My brows furrow. “Will I do what?”

“Tell the tale?”

“You’re going to let me live, then?”

He takes another step closer to me and it closes the distance between us completely. His scent fills my nostrils. Cinnamon, musk and sin.

I try not to let the intoxicating scent fill my head but I would be lying if I said I wasn’t a bit influenced.

His finger lightly traces the edge of the bandage wrap over my shoulder and I try to contain my heart from bursting out of my chest.

“You would be astounded on what I would do for you,” he says in a low voice only meant for me to hear. And there’s a dark promise in it that I both want and don’t want to know.

Curiosity strikes me once again and it has me asking him, “And what exactly would you do for me?”

He smiles but it’s a conspiring one. “I don’t think you’re ready for that answer just yet.”

“And how can you possibly know that? You hardly know me.”

“Carina,” he says my name and I hate how enticing it sounds coming from his lips. He says my name as if it’s both a damnation and prayer. He says it like no man before him and certainly no man after him. When he says my name I can feelmyself rising from the dead. And I hate him for that. I hate how he can pull me from the depths of hell when he was the one who placed me there. “I know you better than you know yourself.”

My eyes flare up at him. My hands curl to fists by my side. In my blood I can feel it boiling.

Anger.

Rage.

Fury.

I feel all of it at once and it’s taking everything inside me not to erupt like a volcano.

“You know nothing about me.” My voice is the harshest it has ever been and my breaths come out in pants. It’s as if feeling is taking its energy out of me.

He smirks. “But I do.” His fingers then trail to my back and I stiffen. My eyes widen up at him with trepidation, fear, and anger as I grind down on my teeth. His expression changes when he looks into my eyes. They soften. And it has the flutters returning in my stomach. Those damn unkillable flutters.

Then his face hardens when his fingers press lightly against my upper back and I open my mouth in a silent scream. Unshed tears burn at the back of my eyes but I refuse to let them fall.

“He did this to you, didn’t he?” He asks too calmly. So calmly that it’s unsettling, and I fear for the man who challenges him rather than answers him.

But somehow that fear doesn’t translate to me. Because for some inexplicable reason I am not afraid of Constantine Donati. And because I am not afraid it has me saying back through clenched teeth, “You shouldn’t ask questions you already know the answer to.”

He hums thoughtfully. His whisky colored eyes have not wavered from my own. However, his fingers descend and the brush of his fingers lightly brushing down the expanse of myback, my wounds, has me biting down on my tongue, and forcing the tears not to fall.

“Perhaps it’s because I want to know who has the gall to lie to me.” And with his answer I understand why men fear him. Why his name is whispered amongst the streets under the black sky.

“And if I say nothing at all?” I challenge.

His lips twitch and amusement dances in his eyes. “Then it’s an unspoken truth.”

I remain silent.

Silent not because of fear but by choice.

Because by remaining silent I am telling him the unspoken truth.

And inside this black heart of mine it beats for someone on the outside of this gilded cage to know the truth.

He cocks his head to the side and when his hand lays gently on the flare of my hip I release a shaky breath.

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