Page 38 of Till Death Do Us Part

Roma’s face relaxed when she realized I’d come to discuss business with her father. I’d been to the house on one or two occasions before. Corvo was alone both times.

Four men stepped up behind the women. One of them had a kid on his shoulders wearing a headband matching Roma’s.

“Whatisthe problem here?” Talia stepped in front of Isabella and invited me in. “My husband, Joe, will show you to my father’s—”

I stepped inside, and everyone but Talia and Roma moved back as a unit. I caught it when Lolita grabbed Roma’s arm. She seemed frozen to the floor.

I didn’t give a fuck about reactions. I took Roma by the arm and whispered in her ear we needed to talk in private, or we’d be talking in front of her sisters.

She walked ahead. I followed her through the house to a sunroom that led us outside. She moved fast, her arms folded in front of her. When she stopped and faced me, her face was as pale as snow. I took off my coat and draped it over her shoulders.

She shook her head and handed it back. “I can’t, Felice.” Her eyes cut to the left, implying her family might catch her.

“You can’t catch cold.” I set the coat over her shoulders.

She sighed and a cloud of air blew from her mouth. “Do you understand who you are?”

“I’m the man who would kill for you, but besides that, tell me who I am.”

“You’re the kind of man my father warned me about. The kind he kept me away from. And now you’re showing up at my house.”

“Am I scandalizing you, Roma?”

She looked away from me, holding the edges of the coat closer. Her throat moved. “No, that would be Jack,” she whispered. Then she met my eyes. “His business seems worse than yours. But it’s not my choice. He looks good on paper.”

“It is your choice. It’s as simple as saying a word: yes or no.”

“Maybe for you.” Her voice was soft and full of regret. “My choice isn’t simple at all. I’ll lose my family, and I don’t even really know you. This all might be just physical attraction. Nothing more. I refuse to use my family as stakes in a risky gamble.”

“That theory can be tested easily enough.”

“I gave you enough of my firsts.”

“Not nearly enough. And any man who tries to take more from you will find himself in a meat locker.”

“God.” She looked up, like she was calling out for answers. Snow fell, and the flecks landed on her face. She let them for a minute. “The sky is drunk.”

“Are you?”

She looked ridiculous with lights wrapped around her neck, the headband, and a red nose. But I’d never felt anything so warm before I set my eyes on her. My blood ran cold. And it still did, for the rest of the world.

She smiled, but it didn’t touch her eyes. “When it storms, the sky seems angry. When it’s sunny, happy. When it snows, I always figured it was drunk. It’s cold and disconnected, and it sends all this swaying white stuff down.” She held her eyes up for another second or two before she looked at me again. “What if I have sex with you? Would that cure you of whatever this is between us?”

Anger shot through me. It was so hot my ears might’ve been blowing steam. She must have seen it on my face. She took a step back and held up her hands in a defensive position.

To prove a point, I stepped closer to her until our bodies collided. Her hands hit my chest, but her fingers grasped my shirt. She wasn’t afraid of me. She didn’t trust herself with me.

She looked up at me, a pleading look in her eyes. It was enough to make me feel emptiness in the center of my chest, like she’d stolen my heart and was keeping it to herself.

“You’re a skilled butcher, for a plant eater,” I whispered, my voice shredded. “You carved my fucking heart out.” I sank my hands into her hair and my tongue into her mouth, searching for the cure, and I found it, but she was going to be the death of me anyway.

Time or place didn’t exist when she was close.

She made a helpless noise, and we pulled apart with a violent motion. A motion savage enough to split one into two halves.

“Roma!”

She startled at the sound of Lolita’s voice.

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