Page 87 of Righteous Deceit

The corner of his mouth tips up, and while I should be concerned that reminiscing about removing someone’s insides calms him down, I understand his anger and fear and the way it morphs into something unrecognizable inside.

“How did you get involved in the hunt? Is that how you met Charles Lincoln?”

I shake my head. “No. Charles introduced me to the hunt.”

“But you remained involved with The Quest after he died.”

I shrug. “Just because Charles pushed me into it doesn’t mean I did it for him. I fell into a form of addiction with the experience. It offered me what nothing else could.”

“What?”

I swallow, dampening my throat. “I’m a powerful woman. I’m a consigliera, for fuck’s sake. Thefirstfemale in my position, and I moved into that role at twenty-four. But I was still a pawn when it came to marriage. I married for the family. Sure, Salvatore asked me first, but what was I going to say, no?” I wipe my hands on a napkin.

Diego chews quietly, listening to me speak. It’s different when I talk to him. Charles listened to me, but I’m not sure he everheardme. Diego hears mebeforeI speak.

“I was a possession to Charles. A pretty trophy that he paraded around and touched and caressed to make others uncomfortable. Fuck, it made me uncomfortable. As powerful as I am in the family, I was stilltraded.”

“But Charles introduced you to the hunt. Isn’t it the same? He owned The Quest and bound you into participating.”

I sip my wine, contemplating my words before I speak. “Yes and no. Charles introduced me to the hunt, but nothing else mattered once I was in that forest. I wasn’t Alessia Lincoln, younger wife to a billionaire. I wasn’t Alessia Bianchi, consigliera for the outfit. I was Alessia. I was free.”

He sits back, resting his weight on his palms behind him. “But you had men hunting you.”

“On my terms,” I argue. “For the first fucking time in my life, it was my terms. I decided what color hood to wear. It lit a fire in my gut. I was being hunted by a man, but it was a man whowantedme. Not my name. Something was salaciously primal about the whole concept, which fed something inside my soul.”

He’s genuinely intrigued by my thoughts, and it entices me to give him more of them.

“I was turned on. Nothing from the outside world existed except for me and my hunter. A man stalking me with the sole purpose of my capture. He wanted to ravage me, and after being stuck in a marriage with an impotent eighty-year-old for ten years, even you have to understand the appeal.”

His breath leaves him, and I wait for him to speak, but he keeps silent, watching me intently.

I stand, clearing my plate, unsure how to breathe in his space.

“Say that again.”

I pause at the threshold of our kitchen. “Say what again?”

His face has morphed from interest to rage in mere seconds, and I discard my plate gently onto the bench, turning to give him my full attention. “I was turned on?”

What a strange way to show possessiveness. Hewatchedme in the hunt for months before participating. He knew other men hunted me.

He shakes his head. “After that.”

I tilt my head to the side. “I wanted someone to ravage me?”

He swallows, the act difficult by the way his lips twist with distaste.

I try again. “I was stuck in a marriage with an eighty-year-old?”

He glares. “Impotent,” he grits. “You said impotent.”

I roll my lips. “Did I?”

His hands grab at his face, pulling down to grip his jaw. “Sia. Did your husband ever fuck you?”

I avert my eyes, picking my plate up off the bench to walk toward the sink. I wash my plate in silence.

“Sia.” He’s standing now, moving toward me. In the forest or our home, he stalks me in the same way. Like a panther, broody and silent and ready to pounce at any given opportunity. “Sia.” He turns me by my shoulders when he reaches me. “Did Charles fuck you?”

---