Violent Delights (White Monarch 1)

I refrained from touching my tingling mouth to erase his uninvited, overly intimate caress. “I don’t know,” I answered.

“I believe you don’t know his exact location, but he sent you.”

My heart began to hammer against my breastbone. Cristiano didn’t believe I was alone, and I suspected he never had. “You’re the one who came to me,” I pointed out.

“Diego knew I would.” Cristiano turned his head slightly over one shoulder. “Perhaps he’s right at my back. Or above us. Or in the shadows of the dancefloor. He’s not far, is he?”

If I thought I could fool Cristiano one moment longer, I might’ve tried, but he was too shrewd for that. I couldn’t risk him catching me in a lie and walking away before I got any information. Honesty was likely the best way to get the same in return. “He’s here.”

Cristiano drew back a little, his eyebrows rising. “Maybe your loyalty isn’t as strong as I thought.”

“I’m loyal to Diego, but I’m not stupid. Neither are you.”

“You may be if you thought you could deceive me.” He cocked his head. “I should be mad, shouldn’t I?” He cleared some of my hair away, lighting goose bumps over my neck and shoulders. “But I’m more intrigued to know that my brother is watching us now.”

I stilled so I wouldn’t betray how he was affecting me. “If you touch me, you’ll be dead,” I warned him.

“Ah, but I already have. Not once, not twice, not even three times,” he said, grazing my hip with one hand as he brushed his knuckle under my chin once more. “And now, I’m touching you again.” He placed his hands on my jaw, cupping my face as carefully as he might cradle a baby bird. He tilted my head up until I could look nowhere but into his eyes. “I put my hands up your skirt earlier. And where was your Diego?”

Chills made an icy trail down my spine as I tensed, waiting for some kind of consequence to befall Cristiano. And yet, he didn’t even look back. His eyes remained unwary.

He turned my head to one side and whispered in my ear, “Understand me. The next time my hands are that close to heaven, they will enter whether Diego is watching or not.”

Blood rushed to my head as the tender warmth of his breath warred with such an offensive suggestion. I couldn’t respond, my throat suddenly dry, my tongue numb. Gracias a Dios I hadn’t gone anywhere alone with him—I didn’t question his hands would do as they pleased. And to make Diego watch? I shivered. How indecent. How obscene and filthy.

And yet, heaven throbbed between my legs. That was the devil’s manipulation, making me think I liked the idea.

“You’re here to do Diego’s bidding,” Cristiano said. “To get answers for questions you don’t even know to ask. But how far would you go to get them?”

He let me jerk my head away. “I have morals.”

“You don’t even know the game he plays with you—you never did.”

“For some of us,” I said, “life is more than a game to play, a prize to hold tight, a lesson to be taught. There’s more to it than money and power.”

“Such as?”

“Love. Ethics.” I raised my chin. “Justice. You understood that once.”

He narrowed his eyes. “You remember that?”

“What you said to me about justice? Sí. That there is none.”

“There is in my world. I live by my own code, and you may not see it, but it’s both fair and ethical.” He inclined his head. “For those who are deserving, I ask before I take. I feed those who feed me. I can’t control how others interpret things, but I give honesty where I get it. You’ll find me dead before you find me a liar.”

My chest rose and fell faster as I held his gaze despite the fact that I was stupidly pushing his buttons. “A liar would be an improvement for a murderer like you.”

One corner of his mouth twitched. “I’m only deadly to those who’ve taken risks knowing the consequences. They traded a life of safety for money and power. They deserved it, as do I.” He crossed himself in a gross display of blasphemy. What right did a depraved criminal like him have to ask anything of the Holy Trinity? A hint of a smile touched his lips. “If I died tomorrow, I would not say the assassin had no right to do it. Though I’d commend him for accomplishing a nearly impossible task.”

“You say you’re honest as you lie. You’re not fair or ethical; you’ve executed people who didn’t deserve it.”

“Deep down, you know I didn’t kill your mother, Natalia.” Any suggestion of humor left his tone, replaced by graveness. “And that there’s more to her death than you’re willing to admit.”

His acknowledgement of her murder made me step back. I’d heard the denial from my father, but not yet directly from Cristiano. The conviction in his voice angered me. He had no right to dismiss her death. To question what I knew in the depths of my soul. “I saw you,” I said. “The gun, the blood, the duffel bag—I . . .” I didn’t want to believe there could be anything else to it. A hired hitman made her death even more confusing. More senseless. “You were a sicario for a living,” I said. I slammed the rest of my shot, and my throat burned with its spicy aftertaste. “You took as many lives as my father and grandfather commanded you to. Maybe one of their rivals paid you handsomely for this order, or maybe it was retribution for what my dad did to yours, but either way, I caught you red-handed.”