Page 23 of Corrupted Temptation (Mafia Kings: Corrupted 2)

I picked up my knife. It was saturated in his blood.

“I was hired to kill them—Abruzzo and all his family,” he confessed, staring at the knife.

“No shit.” I cocked an eyebrow.

“It was the Lucas. It was them. They hired me. They hired me to kill them, burn the house, and draw the letter on the grass. I was just doing what he told me to do.”

I shook my head. Looking in his eyes, I saw no deception there. But that just couldn’t be the truth.

“Which Luca hired you?”

Maybe the young one had gone rogue, or some pissed-off relative was out for revenge.

He looked at me like I’d lost my mind. “I’m a nobody. I didn’t talk to any Luca. Diego Berlusconi hired me. He said the Lucas wanted the job done. I owe him a debt. I have no choice.”

I spent three months looking into it, but no man by that name existed. It was just an alias.

“Berlusconi isn’t a Luca. Who the hell is he?”

“I don’t know. He works for them. He said he works for them. That’s all I know.” Again, I could detect no deception in either his tone or his eyes.

Ignoring the unsatiated itch that crept to my fingertips, I straightened my spine and squared my shoulders. I pretended that I needed to prepare myself for what I was about to do, but I was ready.

I was always ready.

“You let him turn you into a monster…”

Gabe’s words played through my mind as I buried my blade to the hilt, straight through the man’s heart.

“This is who I am.”

My father would have been so proud.

Chapter Thirteen

Raven

Greta sat cross-legged on my hotel room bed, staring at me while I turned back and forth in front of the mirror.

“Are you sure about this?” I asked her, trying to hike up the low neckline of the tight red dress. Half an inch lower, this dress would be illegal.

“You’ve got to play to your audience, hon. The Costas like their women sexy and sophisticated. From what I heard, the guy you’re going to see today likes them just plain trashy.”

I laughed, but there was no humor in it. Between the slutty dress and the overdone makeup, “trashy” aptly described the woman who stared back at me in the mirror. It was good to know, though, that if I couldn’t hack it as a nurse, I could fall back on a career as a hooker.

“You still haven’t told me how it went last night?” Greta probed, eyeing me while she leaned forward and pulled out the cherry-red nail polish from her giant Tackle Box of cosmetic goodies.

I’d gone to bed before she got back last night, and I’d been delaying the inevitable ever since I woke up. It seemed my time was up.

“It didn’t go… exactly as planned,” I hedged. I’d hooked the Costa that should have come with warning bells. And yet I couldn’t quite stop the smile that kept trying to tug up the corners of my cherry-red lips.

“Oh?” She cocked an eyebrow. “Because that smile tells me it didn’t exactly go badly.” She flipped her legs out from under her, held the nail polish bottle between her thighs, and unscrewed the top. “Sit,” she said, nodding at the space next to her. “The guy next to you at the bar looked like an awfully good plan to me from behind. And you look way too happy for a girl who struck out, hon.”

I sat down and held out my unpainted fingertips. “I guess that’s because I didn’t totally strike out.” The smile was back.Stupid smile.

“All right, spill.”

I held my breath for a moment before speaking. “His name was Nico. Nico Costa.”

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