Page 8 of Corrupted Deception

“Don’t let her out of your sight, Matteo. I want to know where she’s going.”

“Your wish is my command, oh wise one.”

“Stronzo,” I muttered as I hung up the phone.

I dropped the curtain and returned to the reason for my presence here this evening as Vito retrieved my briefcase from where I’d left it inside the hotel room door.

Daniel Marín stared up at the ceiling from his prone position on the hotel room’s bed like he was oblivious to what was going on around him.

“Looks like the girl restrained him without restraints,” Vito mused as he set down the briefcase on the edge of the bed and nodded to the empty syringes on the floor.

“Sì,” I agreed.

There were no signs of torture on DanielMarín’s body, nothing but smeared lipstick on his mouth and around the tip of his index finger. She’d had her lips on him, and oddly, that knowledge left an uncomfortable sensation in the pit of my stomach. The image was wrong; a puzzle piece forced into the wrong spot. Those lips didn’t belong there.Shedidn’t belong here. Charlotte Santoro, an assassin?

“Sounds like this girl has history,signor,” Vito said, his tone curious as I stared down at Marín’s limp form.

“Ancient history,” I replied, elaborating no further.

Vito nodded, wise enough not to pry, and looked down at Marín.

“Do you think he’s found the answers to the universe up there,signor?” he asked, following Marín’s gaze up to the ceiling.

“Either that or he’s having a profound conversation with the light fixture.”

Vito chuckled.

After my run-in with Charlotte, I wasn’t feeling particularly jovial.

“What did the woman want, Daniel?” I asked.

The man’s eyes finally swivelled in his head toward me. Beady eyes. Pupils blown.

“Hey, man,” Marín said with the most maniacal grin I’d ever seen. His lips barely moved, but the grin managed to transform his whole face, right up to the suspiciously large pupils in his beady eyes.

“What did you say?” I asked, my voice cold, devoid of emotion.I’d killed men for showing that kind of disrespect.

“You won’t believe what just happened,” he continued, then laughed. “There was this girl… and she had this thing, and… oh, man, it was wild.”

He kept laughing. When he tried to lift his hand but couldn’t get more than his fingers to raise up off the mattress, he laughed harder.

I looked over at Vito. “It seems a paralytic isn’t the only thing she injected into him,” I mused aloud.

Vito nodded, the corners of his lips twitching. “Not sure if that makes this job harder or easier,signor.”

I scoffed. If memory served me correctly—and it always did—nothing about Charlotte Santoro had ever made anything easier.

Fuck you, asshole,her eyes had screamed at me tonight.

It was a look I remembered well despite the passing of time. A look that made me want to fuck all that anger out of her to see what she was hiding beneath it.

It always had.

“What did the woman want, Daniel?” I repeated myself, not something I was fond of doing.

“She, uh... she had this... this...” He paused, his brow trying to furrow in thought. “This thingamajig, you know? And the most amazing tits.” He grinned, and his beady eyes turned lecherous. “They were like clouds, man. Big, soft clouds. And she was asking stuff... important stuff, I think. But then it was like... I was floating, man, just floating on those clouds...”

My jaw tensed, imagining the half-naked body that had been pressed up against my cock just moments ago, wrapped around this asshole, his hands on her tits.

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