Page 58 of A Beautiful Crime

“I don’t have to say anything. He’ll see it.”

“Then you’ll lie,” he says thinly.

I raise a cool brow at him. “Do you honestly believe he’ll fall for it? He’s not a dense man, Luca. He’s not like the soldiers you rule.”

“You’ll make him believe it,” he responds stiffly. “Don’t act like the Queen on the chess board, Carina. You’re a pawn. A pawn moved by Papa and me. Don’t forget who you are and don’t forget your place.”

But I’m not a pawn.

I hear his voice, the deep velvet dark voice of a man who I loathe, yet speaks the truth.

And I hate how it’s his voice in my head that gives me strength.

Yet I can’t deny how powerful it makes me feel.

The man I loathe is slowly becoming my dark guide.

“If you believe you aren’t a piece on someone’s chess board then you are more foolish than I thought you were.”

He laughs, a bleak sound that rattles my bones. His eyes glitter with maliciousness. “Carina,” he says mockingly, “one can’t be on the chess board if they are the master.”

I want to scoff. I want to let out a laugh that rumbles my stomach and jumbles my bones.

Luca may very well believe he’s the master but the true master of the chess board who controls all the pieces is papa.

My hand flexes against my sore throat but it does nothing to alleviate the pain.

A sudden hard knock at the door has both of us at pause. Luca cocks his head to the side curiously but gives me a stern narrow look of his eyes to remain silent.

Giving his tie one final tighten he waltz over to the door as if he didn’t just have his hands on me. As if nothing has transpired between us.

He opens the door and my blood immediately begins to hum as my heart starts to sing at the sight behind it.

Whiskey colored eyes meet mine and it sends an electrical impulse to my heart.

As I stare in the dark depths of his eyes I know the darkness that lies ahead of me and yet I’m not afraid.

His eyes soften. I have noted that his eyes only ever soften when they are gazing upon me. The fact causes the flutters to return in my stomach in a chaotic and maddening swarm.

I mentally curse myself for not being able to kill them.

Those damn unkillable flutters.

“Carina.” My name rolls off of his tongue in a velvet caress that touches me in ways no other soul can.

The whiskey color of his eyes have me intoxicated. Therefore I can’t possibly take accountability for the way I find myself wanting to be nearer.

There’s this magnetic pull he’s emitting and I can feel it latched around my entire being.

Yet that magnetic pull, the charge in the air that sparks around us becomes frayed and strained as Luca takes place in front of me.

Over Luca’s shoulder I see Constantine’s head tilt ever so slightly with a cocked brow.

“It isn’t polite to see a woman in her bedroom,” Luca admonishes him. If I didn’t know my brother at all I would think that he wanted to be a dead man.

Constantine, however, allows himself further in the room. He brushes past Luca with the hint of his shoulder and his gaze on me.

The fury rolling off of my brother is palpable but to Constantine it is no bother. He isn’t the least bit intimidated nor threatened. If anything his confidence grows with each step. His path to me is short given the long powerful strides of his legs.

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