Page 14 of Corrupted Deception

I raised my gun, centering my aim on Matteo’s chest. Cielo’s little brother.

Was I seriously pointing a gun at a kid whose voice had barely begun to change the last time I saw him?

“Hey.” He raised his hands, looking at me like I’d lost my mind.

Maybe I have.

“I’m just trying to have a conversation here,signorina.”

I scoffed. “I’m not really in the mood for talking, so how about you just tell me what the hell you’re doing here before I put a hole through you and let Ray eat the evidence?”

Cielo’s little brother or not, I’d just threatened a man I had no doubt was a dangerous killer.

No harm could come from that, right?

Chapter Four

Cielo Luciano

I called Matteo for the third time in a row, letting the damn thing ring over and over again as I got into my onyx black Aston Martin DBS Superleggera, placing my briefcase in the footwell of the passenger seat. I was going to kill him. I loved my brother, but I was going to kill him. Probably with my bare hands.

With Daniel Marín as dead as a doornail and neatly packaged into Vito’s trunk, Charlotte was the only hope I had of getting answers at the moment.

I was just about to hang up the damn phone when the ringing stopped.

“Ciao, Cielo. How’s it going?” Matteo asked, his tone far too casual for an almost-dead man.

The urge to snap at him was potent, but I didn’tsnap. Not ever.

“Marín died before I could get answers out of him,” I explained through gritted teeth while failure writhed beneath my skin. It wasn’t something I experienced often.

“Forgetting how this works,fratello?” Matteo quipped. “I thought you had the whole ‘Q&A before RIP’ routine down by now.”

Always a comedian.

“Tell me you’ve got eyes on Charlotte,” I said, ignoring the jest.

“Oh, yeah. We’re just hanging out. Maybe you want to come join us?”

“You were supposed to be following her, not ‘hanging out’ with her,” I spat.

“Hands off,”I’d told him. He damn well better have listened.

“Sì,well, it turns out she had other plans,” he replied without missing a beat.

“Stai bene?” I asked because while I couldn’t for the life of me envision the Charlotte I once knew hurting my brother, that was a long time ago. She hadn’t run around in lingerie with syringes of paralytics back then.

He laughed, though the sound was tight. “Hot woman with a gun and a killer dog? All good here,fratello.”

Christ.“Where are you?” I asked, scrubbing my fingers through my hair.

Something barked. I say “something” because the deep, cavernous sound could not possibly have come from a dog.

“She’s taking my phone and sending you the address now,” Matteo said. “Feel free to step on it. I don’t mind.”

The call disconnected at the same time a text flashed on the screen from Matteo with an address that was at least a half hour’s drive away.

Heeding his vague warning, I typed the address into my GPS and sped the entire way there, caught between visions of my brother laid out and paralyzed, and Charlotte still dressed in lingerie with my brother’s hands all over her.

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