Page 7 of Of Desire And Deception

The bathroom didn’t even have a bathtub, just a small cabinet with a sink, a mirror on the wall, a toilet, and a shower with a white-ish curtain. The tile floor sloped slightly to a drain in the center of the room. My college accommodations had been better than this.

It’s only for a few months, I reminded myself. I would use it as motivation to search for the truth as quickly as possible so I could get out of the hellhole that was my new apartment and back to my plush bed at home.

Heavy bass thudded through the walls, and I cursed my new neighbors, who didn’t give a fuck about others. Two hours later, as I sat on my bed eating Chinese takeout while watching a rom-com on my computer, I wished for the music again. It would have been better than hearing somebody in the building fucking like it was their last day on Earth. And the dude had some stamina, keeping the woman screaming for precisely forty-two minutes.

I lost my appetite and put my leftovers in the fridge before climbing into bed and curling up under my blanket, hoping the morning would start out a little brighter. After all, I was one day closer to destroying Cosimo Neretti and his cursed family.

Chapter Three

The sterile scent of hospital-grade cleaner permeated the air as I knelt on the bathroom floor and scrubbed an already pristine white tile surface. People said too much of the product bred superbugs, but anything less left me scouring my home until I’d worn through the black rubber gloves I wore.

There was none of that natural shit in my house. The earth-conscious housewives selling essential oils could keep their vinegar and salt. I needed the acids, the corrosives, the things that would burn every living organism from surfaces and leave me safely on my own.

I sprayed more cleaner behind the toilet, completing my fifth pass of the floor. Excessive? To some, perhaps. It was an improvement over the days when I spent eight hours cleaning one space. Once, I’d ghosted my entire family for a weekend, and Dante finally broke into my place and found me detailing the floorboards. He’d taken one look at me with my camping headlamp and magnifying glasses and tore the small brush from my hands, tossing it in the trash and hauling me to breakfast at Angelo’s.

Now, I set alarms to avoid getting lost in my work. Nothing else offered the same satisfaction as seeing a space so spotless you could lick the floors. That would be a bad idea, given the cleaners I used.

Sighing until my lungs burned from lack of oxygen, I pushed myself off the floor, planting my hands on my hips and examining what I’d accomplished. How many people could boast pure white tile grout after years in a home? Me, that’s fucking who.

Toting the plastic holder containing my supplies to the guest bathroom, I repeated all the steps, working my way down from the ceiling to the floors. I’d already cleaned the bedrooms, so mopping the upper floors came next. There wasn’t a speck of dust when I finished. Dirt didn’t dare remain in the cracks and crevices of the stairs or at the base of the railings.

I glanced at the clock and swore to myself, realizing it was too late to call Niccolò in Calabria. Not that I’d told my twin I would call. I just wanted to hear his voice. I’d even listen to him drone on about how much he loved his wife and unborn child.

My twin was the closest thing I’d had to what others called a soulmate. There was an invisible thread that connected us no matter where we were. That same bond kept me going as a child when my father conducted his twisted little experiments. The memory of the cellar’s cold, damp air raised my flesh, and I shivered involuntarily.

“Never again,” I muttered to myself as I filled my bucket with cleaner and hot water in the kitchen sink. I folded a clean cloth and dipped it in the solution, the thick gloves saving my hands from burns as I wrung out the extra liquid. I’d turned off the temperature controls on my water heater when I moved in. Meticulously, I scrubbed my white kitchen cabinets.

The smell burned my nose, but it was preferable to the stale cigars and whiskey my mind wanted to plant in my olfactory memory. I shut down those vivid recollections, blocking out the sound of scurrying rodents, the burn of their bites, the metallic stench of their blood when I’d ripped their heads from their bodies to save myself from the torment.

“Never again.” I whistled a tune, but it wasn’t enough to stop the feeling of spiders crawling over my skin. Frustrated by my lack of self-control, I tossed the cloth back into the steaming bucket and waved my gloved hands as I stalked to the living room and grabbed the remote to my sound system. I punched the play button, and the first notes of a Bach cello suite drifted through the space.

My shoulders relaxed as I returned the remote to its place and tipped my head from side to side, willing my body to release the tension brought on by things better left in the past. My father was gone; his body turned to ash in a conveniently fiery car crash, as far as authorities were concerned. I’d seen to it personally.

“Never again.” The words were more than a reminder. They’d become a vow. Ettore Neretti would never bleed his poison into another life. It didn’t make the past worth it, but it eased my mind to know my brothers and their families would be that much safer.

The straining notes of my music drowned out all the other thoughts. It was me and my cloth, cleaning and forgetting the world. I could exist in my bubble where I had complete control, where there were no surprises, no unpredictable outliers waiting to throw a wrench in my plans. For a short while, at least.

All good things had to end, and an hour later, the old-school radio alarm clock blaring from the top shelf of my built-ins interrupted my bit of solace. It was the only way to break my cycle of obsessive cleaning. I’d tried a phone alarm, but it was too easy to swipe the nuisance away and continue.

I clenched my teeth as I stowed my cleaning products and tossed the used cloths into the washing machine. The alarm droned on until I marched to the bookshelf and reached up, silencing the abrasive tones. My ears continued to ring with the echoing alarm as I climbed the stairs and started the shower in my bathroom.

Sweat dampened my shirt, and I had to peel it off my body before shoving my grey sweatpants to the floor. I tossed them into the hamper along with my socks and stepped under the water, taking a moment to relax as the hot stream rushed down my body.

As I showered and dressed, I walked myself through the evening ahead. I had to meet Luca at a club. He didn’t want to come to Deception and meet in my office, so I’d play the mafia party boy for the night.

The task wasn’t entirely repulsive. If I wanted, I could probably find a girl to fuck against the wall out behind the club. Sex helped curb my desire to kill, that ever-present need to spill blood and watch the life drain from a person’s eyes.

I couldn’t take a woman back to my place or stay the night at hers. It wasn’t safe for her because I was unpredictable when I slept. So I satisfied my needs with quickies at clubs and never led them on or made them think I wanted more. It was a transaction—one and done—orgasms for everyone.

The man in the reflection in the bathroom mirror looked on brand for my task. My hair was slightly messy, with a shadow of stubble on my jaw. Clad in black, from the dress shirt with rolled sleeves and the top two buttons undone to reveal a hint of my tattoos, to my leather jacket and worn black jeans, to the boots on my feet, I looked like every mother’s worst nightmare—the bad boy.

Only, I wasn’t just a stupid mistake college girls made after one drink too many on a Friday night after finals. I was the reaper incarnate. The harbinger of death to countless traitors. A man who’d nearly slit the neck of the last woman unfortunate enough to accompany me to my bed.

Satisfied, I grabbed my wallet, keys, and phone and headed to the club. It was in an area of town where parking on the street was a gamble, but anybody who dared touch something of mine would pay with their life.

I bypassed the line and gave my name to the bouncer at the door, who knew enough to let in somebody with the last name Neretti and a look that told him he’d regret making the wrong decision. The heavy bass of the music beat through my chest as I made my way to the stairs leading up to the VIP section, where I caught Luca grabbing a drink at the bar.

He looked like a walking red flag with tight black pants and a white v-neck t-shirt that cut halfway down his chest, exposing his tanned, shaved skin. There was no way he was naturally hairless. His black curls fell across his forehead, giving him a boyish look that tempered the shrewdness in his dark eyes.

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