Devil (The Marchesi Family 3)

I needed to fuck him, to hold him down, to let him do every filthy thing he’d done to me before and more, things so twisted I hadn’t even thought of them yet. But all I could have now was this pathetic imitation which would never fully satisfy me.

The sheets chafed my dick as I fucked against them, but I didn’t stop. I was out of my mind with the need to come. I worked myself faster as I thought about the hot sounds Devil would make with his ass stuffed full of my cock. I imagined him whimpering and whining, struggling under me, trying to get what he needed to push him over the edge.

I muffled a shout against my pillow as I came, wetting my sheets with spunk and hugging my cool pillow as I longed for a warm man under me, even if he was a fucking mobster.

A few weeks after the fire at Santino’s, I was sent to the scene of another fire. Santino’s had been a small kitchen blaze that had been extinguished before major damage had occurred. This fire was a huge inferno that had burned a sizeable house to the ground. There weren’t many close neighbors, and none of them knew anything about the single man who’d lived there. They’d been able to give only a very basic description of him, and one neighbor had insisted the homeowner’s name was Tony while another swore he was named Thomas.

The house had been purchased by a holding company, and all the bills were directed to that entity. There seemed to be no record of who currently resided there. A car was parked in the garage, but it was registered to someone who was deceased.

None of the neighbors knew if the man—whatever his name was—had been home at the time of the fire. If he had been, he’d either died in the blaze or fled the scene.

Everything about the case made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. There was a hell of a lot more than a simple house fire going on here.

The next day I learned the fire had been ruled an arson, and the remains of a person had been found in a room at the back of the house. There’d been nothing left we could use to identify the body except for a few teeth, but evidence pointed to the victim having been shot prior to the fire, so we were treating it as a homicide investigation.

Several pieces of jewelry had been recovered from the debris, and I requested access to examine them, hoping they might offer a clue about the victim’s identity. The first piece I examined was a locket. A few pieces of thin silver chain were included with it. I assumed the rest had disintegrated. I pulled on gloves before opening it. There had been a picture inside, but it was too badly damaged to identify. The next piece was a man’s ring. It would’ve looked ostentatious if it were in better condition, but there was nothing on it to give any clue to the owner’s identity. At least it would be something we could show anyone who might come looking for him.

When I turned over the third piece, my breath caught. I pulled it from the bag and held it up to study it more closely. Around the edge there was an engraving of an angel and a devil with a heart between them. I was sure it had been custom made. A knot formed in my stomach. I knew this ring. It was Devil’s. I’d felt the scrape of it against my skin the night he’d broken into my house.

There were, of course, a number of explanations for how Devil’s ring might’ve ended up at the crime scene, but the most likely was that it had slipped off his finger as he’d set the fire.

My heart pounded as I considered what to do. Should I confront Devil with the ring or hold off until I learned more about the case? Would I learn more? I should let my lieutenant know I could identify the ring. What I knew should go in the case notes, but I wasn’t ready to disclose that information. I needed to think about how to handle the situation first.

If Devil was responsible for the fire and a person’s death, I would charge him and see justice done for the victim. I’d been waiting for this moment, hadn’t I? Waiting to punish Devil, to make him pay for at least one of the many crimes I knew he’d committed. But now, faced with the prospect of actually bringing charges against him, the thought sickened me. The punishments I dreamed up in my fantasies were so much better. The idea of arresting him didn’t feel good. It felt like it might break me.