Page 91 of A Beautiful Crime

We are both witnesses to it.

She’ll never know it but this choice, this act of taking my hand and trusting me is earning her the respect of Rico.

As we all join the elevator, Rico first, to check out of precaution, he glances back at her hand still in mine before the elevator door closes.

When their gazes meet she says to him, “To complexity.”

He stares at her in a way that would make anyone uncomfortable but my rose doesn’t wither. He’s searching, searching for the truth, trying to detect the lie in her words. Andwhen he finds his answer he nods his head at her and says in return, “To complexity Ms. Fiore.”

She stiffens beside me. Her hand in mine like stone. Through terse lips she advises Rico in more like a warning, “Do not address me as such.”

He inclines his head towards her. “Then how shall I address you?”

“As Carina, never Miss Fiore,” she orders.

He nods his head in response.

Tilting my head I say to her, “And soon you’ll be addressed as Mrs. Donati.”

She turns her head, our faces a hairbreadth apart. How even more stunning she is up close. Every detail is etched in my brain. I’ll never forget her, and I never want to.

“I may hold your last name in time but I will never answer to it.”

Her fire, her spirit, it stirs my blood with desire. She knows, she must know the effect she has on me. And if so, dio mio, I love her all the more for it.

Smirking, I respond, “One day you won’t just answer to being addressed as Mrs. Donati, you’ll lead by it.”

Her eyes never leave mine. It’s as if Rico doesn’t exist. I’m sucked into her orbit. She’s the sun, the moon, the stars, the whole god damn galaxy. Whenever she’s in the room it’s just her. It always has been.

Icarus to the sun is absolutely nothing compared to me.

“Don’t hold your breath, Signore.” Her words echo back to me from our night on the ballroom floor. A night I’ll never forget, for it was when I finally had her in my grasp.

I echo my very own words back, “I won’t be holding for long.”

CHAPTER 18

Carina

Curiosity.

I tell myself it’s mere curiosity that caused me to take his hand and lead me to the unknown.

Curiosity.

It’s a lie I try to tell myself, the bitter pill I am not being able to swallow.

The truth is, the maddening frustrating damning truth is complexity.

Bearing witness to the complexity of Don Constantine Donati has my hand placed in his. A perfect fit, as if our hands were made to be intertwined with one another’s.

His natural olive tone against my fairer Sicilian complexion. Hands, despite being a Don, are rough and calloused against my scarred skin.

In my bones I cannot deny how right his hand feels in mine.

Our hands have still not parted, even in the confines of his car with Pietro behind the wheel and a partition for privacy.

His thumb traces over the jagged scar on the outside of my hand. Beginning at the knuckle to my pinky and ending diagonally at the bone of my wrist.

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