Page 11 of Velvet Cruelty

Chapter Three

Doc Valente

January is balled up on Morelli’s dark red carpet, still unconscious from her sleeper injection. I lean against the banister of the main staircase, waiting for her to wake up. I’ve heard all brides are beautiful on their wedding day, but she’s a pretty little thing. She reminds me of a colt, all legs and lashes and long, dark mane. And those tits… Mama Whitehall did a good job hiding them away. My eyes almost fell out of my head when the brat walked down the aisle toward me.

A moan falls from her red lips. Even twitching on the carpet, she looks too pure to exist. Like she’s been kissed by angels. It makes a man want to violate her. Or at least it makes me want to do that.

On the other side of the room, her useless bodyguard is still out cold. He didn’t get a sleeper injection; Adriano just kicked him in the head. I would have slit his throat and pushed him out of the van, but Morelli wants him alive for now.

“Mmmmff.” The brat turns over, her fingers contracting like kitten claws. Her eyes flick open. They’re green. Not psycho green like Adriano. Pale green with a dark ring. The kind that make you think of Irish hills and secret gardens. I push myself off the banister. “Evening, Tits.”

January squints at me. “Father Monastero?”

I grin. When we got home, I changed into black jeans and a T-shirt. I’d have kept the priest robes on but Morelli told me to quit showing off. “Not a real priest, dipshit.”

Her lower lip trembles and I watch as today’s events replay in her brain. She touches the side of her neck. “You drugged me.”

“I did.” The needle pierced her so easily. I’ll never get over how simple humans are to penetrate. How quickly you can turn the living into the dead.

January sits up, her wedding dress spread around her like a white puddle. Her eyes scan the entrance hall, lingering on the oil paintings and the fire roaring away in the corner. “Where am I?”

I yawn pointedly. The kidnapped are so fucking boring. ‘Why am I here?’ ‘Please let me go?’ ‘I have a family…’ Things won’t get fun again until the others are back downstairs.

“Mr…” She blinks at me. “I don’t know your name?”

“You can call me Doc.”

“Doc, can you please let me go?”

With a sigh, I pull my butterfly knife from my pocket and flick out the blade. “What was that?”

She shuts up.

I pick my thumbnail with the point. There’s a little blood under the nail. Not from today. Probably from when Adriano and I worked over Nicci Fattore. I wish I’d cut Parker, sliced his eyelid, or taken a finger. But I did tongue his virgin bride and Adri pissed in his face. We have plenty of time to make the ugly fuck pay.

I can feel the brat watching me. I count the seconds until she asks another stupid question. One, two, three—

“What are you going to do to me?” Her voice is clear but there’s a little wobble at the edges. She’s a minute from tears, max. “Can you please tell me where I am?”

“Stop talking.”

“Please just… Why is this happening?”

“Tesorina, I don’t know why you think I carry a knife, but keep talking and I’ll bleed you all over the carpet.”

Her mouth snaps closed, and she starts whimpering into her hands like a bunny. I like when girls cry, but she’s not doing it properly. She’s sniffling like a five-year-old who lost her teddy bear.

I groan at the molded ceiling. “Fucking hell, can you quit your whining?”

She looks up at me. She’s even paler now—and she didn’t have a lot of color to lose. She looks half-dead. But then maybe she’ll be entirely dead by the end of the night. That’s Morelli’s call.

“How many people died?”

I frown. “The fuck do you mean?”

“The explosions. How many people died? Do you know?”

I lower my knife. I could tell her that her whole family’s dead, but looking at her grey complexion, the news might kill her, and then I’d be in the shit. “No one died, Tits.”

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