Page 6 of Hot-Blooded Killer

Lorenzo Beneventi.

Life is strange.

But I’m absolutely certain I can use his interest in me to my family’s advantage.

And it isn’t like I’ll have to fuck him more than a few times—just enough to get pregnant, give my father the grandsons he wanted. Then Lorenzo and I can go our separate ways most of the time.

We’ll still have to make the occasional public appearance, of course. But a lifetime in Vegas high society has taught me how to playact when necessary.

I can act with Lorenzo, too.

I’ll do whatever is necessary to make Pop proud.

By the time my current driver and bodyguard fall in behind me on my way out the door, I’m already making plans for how to take over the Beneventi businesses.

Massamiliano Beneventi could be a problem. But rumor has it he’s so wrapped up in his new bride that he has little time for anything else.

I climb into the backseat of the town car and stare out the window at the desert landscape outside the window as Gino drives me back over to my apartment.

I have a lot to do.

I’ll have to call Elio first to break up with him.

And then I need to find the perfect wedding dress for a Vegas wedding.

Not one of those cheap-ass Elvis chapel weddings, either.

No.

This will be the biggest blowout Vegas high society has seen in a long time.

If I’m going to marry for my family, I promise myself yet again,it’s going to be the party to end all parties.

CHAPTER3

GIA

When Lorenzo walks into my father’s study three days later, I have a slight twinge of concern.

After all, I haven’t seen him in years—he’s been traveling around the world taking care of business for his family, much of his time spent in Italy working with connections there, training in some of the finer aspects of the business.

I’m certain what I expected. Maybe the gangly, gawky boy who attended the same private high school that most of us went to?

In his place, though, in walks a muscular, bearded, extraordinarilyhotman.

Lorenzo Beneventi has grown up fucking gorgeous.

I am in so much trouble.

I can still see the boy he was somewhere under there—in the lines of his face, the breadth of his shoulders, the tilt of his head.

As his gaze flickers between Pop and me, something dark moves beneath his eyes, a gaping void swirling with nothing but anger and violence.

Then he blinks, and whatever I think I see is gone, replaced by the smiling, cheerful Lorenzo Beneventi that I’d known as a child. He’d been two years ahead of me in school, and I remember him as a bit of a jokester, always ready with a laugh and a smile.

I give myself a mental shake, certain I can’t have seen what I think I did. That darkness has to have been my imagination.Right?

Lorenzo reaches out to give my father a cordial handshake, and I detect nothing of the hostility I thought I’d sensed.

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