Page 70 of Corrupted Temptation (Mafia Kings: Corrupted 2)

It felt as if someone was taking a bone out of my rib cage out and using it to pierce my lungs.

Greta was the type to rip off the Band-Aid all at once.

“Easy peasy, see?” she’d say. “Just get it over with!”

I did it the opposite way—peeling it off one painful inch at a time. Preserving the pain, suspending the blood that would spill out, delaying the inevitable.

I glanced at my watch. I was running out of time.

Maybe I was just being paranoid. Maybe Victoriadidn’trecognize me.

Or maybe she did, and I was wasting what precious little time my life had left before I was served up on a silver platter.

I stood up and glanced at my reflection in the mirror, surprised to see tears glistening on my cheeks. They often surprised me. It was like I got so caught up with what was going on inside, I forgot to notice what was happening outside.

When Greta warned me about my plan, I waved her off, certain I wasn’t going to be distracted.I’m focused, I insisted then. But she was right. I enjoyed the ride too much. And now I didn’t want to get off the roller coaster.

I became careless and did the stupidest and most dangerous thing:I’ve fallen for Nico Costa.

I breathed in deep, trying to stem the flow of tears.

Then as if a staccato beat was drumming to the pulsing of my heart, leather shoes clicked and clacked against the marble floor, the sound awfully near.

The door swung open behind me.

Chapter Thirty-One

Nico

I could feel every eye boring a hole at the back of my head as I turned left into the hallway.Lorenzo, angry. Mom, concerned. Gabe, smug son of a bitch. The two, giving Alicia Silverstone a run for her money.It played like a reel in my head, like the opening sequence of a sitcom.

How had I missed this?

I watched Mom stare at Raven like she was looking at a ghost the moment we arrived. But seeing Raven act like she was fucking Emily Rose purged the haze for me.

Or maybe it had always been clear as day and I was just looking the other way.

The reason I was never able to find information about Raven’s past was because she did not have one. Raven Ferrari did not.

Raven Ferrari didn’t exist until the night Sofia Luca died.

A Luca right under my nose, on my bed, in my mind, on my lips. She played me for a fool. A deceptive vixen acting like a kitten, wearing naïveté as a costume so well it looked like her own skin.

I threw open the bathroom door so hard it slammed against the wall.

Raven was hunched over the sink, tears flooding her eyes.

The muscle in my jaw spasmed.

She spun around, eyes widened in shock.

The rage flowed inside me like electricity. It zapped inside me, flaring through my veins like wire. Yet the moment I met her eyes, the blue sea in them put out the fire blazing through me.

I couldn’t do it. I could never hurt her.

And I resented that. Despised it.

She had stripped me of the one thing by which I defined myself. Who I was down to the core.

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