“Luca,” I snapped. “Don’t talk to her like that.”
He snickered, then dropped the shovel onto the ground at my feet. “What did I tell you about sticking to pros, little brother?” Luca slapped me on the back. “They fuck better. And they know how to keep their mouths shut.” His gaze landed on Rhi, brutal and calculated like he was thinking about what he wanted to do with her. “She’s a liability. A loose end.”
I moved in front of Rhi. “Don’t fucking touch her, Luca.”
He got in my face and laughed. “You always had a weakness for pretty, broken things. Take Alex, for example. She will never be yours. Same with this little whore. Dad will never let you have her, so you might as well put a bullet in her head.”
Rhi stepped beside me with a gun aimed at my older brother’s head. I loved her crazy. That was what had drawn me to her from the start.
“You think you can get rid of me, asshole? Guess again.”
The corners of Luca’s mouth turned up into an evil grin, his gaze shifting between Rhi and me. “I can see why you like her, Marcello. But she’s outlived her purpose. Find a new toy. This one is defective.”
“Don’t you dare think about touching her. She’s mine.”
“Is she?” Luca laughed, but it was sinister. “She knows too much. I vote for a bullet to the head. Put this dumb bitch out of her misery.”
I lifted the shovel from the ground. “Doesn’t matter what you want.”
“We can’t trust the Irish,” Luca said in a harsh tone. “Dad knows this. I know this. And yet you can’t seem to get it through your head.”
“You can trust me,” Rhi said with authority. “I won’t tell anyone.”
“She won’t,” I assured him. “Just drop it and help me get rid of the body.”
Luca glanced down at Cillian, then kicked him with his black wingtip. He rolled him onto his back and stood over the dead Founder. “We have to tell Dad.”
“I know.”
“No one else,” he said as if reading my mind.
I nodded in agreement. “Not even Bastian and Damian can know.”
Luca leveled Rhiannon with one of his nasty looks. “You speak a word of this, and I will gut your entire family. I’ll leave you for last so you can watch.”
“Not a word. I promise.” Rhi lowered the gun to her side. “I’ll even help bury the body. I’m just as complicit as Marcello.”
Luca grinned with satisfaction. “We own you now.”
Chapter Seven
Rhiannon
We buried the body in a housing development that was under construction. Marcello had assured me no one would ever find Cillian since the Salvatores owned the land and the construction company. It was a new housing project on the outskirts of Devil’s Creek, single houses in a small community on the other side of the bay. They would eventually build over Cillian, leaving no trace of our involvement in his death.
Luca left in a hurry. After helping Marcello dig the hole, he looked at me as if I were dirt beneath his shoe, not even significant enough to address by name. Instead, he called me the Irish whore. To Marcello’s credit, he defended me, though I wasn’t sure I deserved it. My actions were whore-worthy. No one would ever say I was a good girl.
Covered in dirt, I brushed off the front of my jeans and headed to the car with Marcello. He dropped the shovel in the trunk of his Maserati with a pair of gloves, stripped down to a white undershirt and boxers. Marcello looked good enough to eat. He was a perfectionist, a neat freak. The second we got here, he peeled off his suit and dress shoes and got to work like it was a typical day.
I licked my lips and watched as Marcello reached into the car for his pants. His eyes met mine for a second. Watching him in action had turned me on.
“Don’t look at me like that, Rhi.”
“Like what?”
“Like you want to fuck me.”
“So what if I do?”
Marcello stepped into his pants and pulled them over his narrow hips. I reached out, needing to touch him, and he pushed my hand away.
“I’m not in the mood.” He shook his head. “Cillian Cormac. Really, Rhi? What the fuck were you thinking?”
I crossed my arms beneath my breasts, pushing out my cleavage. “I wanted to piss off my dad.”
He shook his head. “No, there’s more to the story than that. If you wanted to piss off your dad, you could do a lot less than fuck that old bastard.”
“Your jealousy is surprising, Marcello. I thought we had an open relationship.”
“We don’t have a relationship,” he shot back.
“You know what I mean. We have an arrangement. Sex with no strings attached.”
He stared down at me with angry eyes. “After tonight, we have nothing, Rhi. It’s one thing to ask me to get involved with your jerk-off college boyfriends, but this… Cillian was working on a big deal for the Knights. We needed him to finish the transaction.”