Page 77 of Dangerous Deception

Serena Monroe.

One result pops up.

My blood turns to ice and I react without much thinking. Rage consumes me as I fly over the table and tackle Bryan right out of his chair. We crash to the floor, and his yell of fright is cut off by my fist smashing into his face again and again. Fire burns in my joints, blood pounds in my ears, and a painful tremor takes over my entire body.

Not Serena.

Not the woman I loved wasting away from a mysterious illness.

I never, ever would have considered poisoning, and even if I did, I would have blamed the Russians or the Irish.

And Lucia.

Adelina’s mother.

Dead.

“Who paid you to bury this?” I roar, punching him again andagain.

Bryan’s face becomes wet slop as skin and muscle split under the repeated impact of my fist. Teeth fly loose, bone fractures and cracks, and his face swells like a beach ball.

“Who the fuck paid you?”

“Cast—” Bryan croaks when I finally halt my furious onslaught. He coughs and blood pours out of his mouth. One eye swells shut, and the other is glazed and dull.

I grab him by the throat and bring him close to my face. “Who?” I demand with a cold, empty voice.

“Castig—cough—scal… pas… oni…”

“Who?”

“Pascal.”

30

ADELINA

My hormones are driving me crazy. Google tells me it’s normal to feel all over the place in the first trimester, but that doesn’t make it any easier. One minute, I’m so horny for Raffaele that it physically pains me when he pulls himself away to tend to work. He left this morning telling me he had somethingextremelyimportant to tend to, and I felt like a child being denied a treat while everyone else ate theirs in front of me.

The next minute, I’m overwhelmingly sad about Marie and my mother and all the children at the hospital who have no idea that I’m now paying their medical bills and getting them access to treatment they could never have dreamed of. I don’t need thanks—the grateful, crying parents are more than enough—but the sadness grows when my mind runs with the fear that not all of these children are in a place to benefit from better treatment. Some suffer from illnesses as mysterious as my own mother.

And then there’s the anger. Poor Caterina bears the brunt of my hot flushes and rapid fluctuation of temper, and it’s not her fault. She’s just the only one who is near me enough to actually get anger directed at her. She bore the brunt of it this morningwhen my horniness and a lack of a husband irritated me to the point that I stripped all of my clothes out of my dressers and wardrobes and then grew infuriated at how nothing felt right when I put them back in a different order.

I need to talk to someone, and the only one who knows about my pregnancy is my father.

So I leave a message for Raffaele, call my father, and persuade him to have dinner with me. He’s a little resistant at first but in the end, I don’t take no for an answer.

Evening arrives and the mouthwatering smells of spiced chicken, boatloads of pasta and crisp, fresh veggies almost overwhelm my sensitive senses as I’m seated at the table with my father across from me. He unfurls his napkin and then clears his throat so sharply that Caterina, who was in the process of sitting next to me, freezes.

“Caterina, would you mind leaving us?”

Her eyes narrow slightly. “Adelina is not to leave my sight.”

“While admirable, I would very much like to have dinner alone with my daughter.”

“Papà, it won’t be an issue. Her presence makes me feel safe and keeps Raffaele happy.”

My father’s eyes also narrow. “Addie, my dear. We have delicate things to discuss.”

---