Sweet Temptation

“Why? Because she bled your first time together?” He laughed nastily. “There are doctors for everything.”

Almost eight years. That was how long Gaia had been cheating on me. I’d been faithful even when she hardly tolerated my presence most days and had only slept with me once or twice per month. I didn’t care. I kept my marriage vows, and she trampled on them from day one. I trusted her and Andrea, had let him become her only bodyguard because she asked me to. I didn’t give a fuck about what had happened before our wedding night, if she’d been a virgin or not, but every betrayal since then cut me like an acid-coated knife.

My hands balled to fists.

“Remember the bikers,” Faro said, but I barely heard him. “We need info.”

Andrea swallowed. “If you want an heir, you need to keep Gaia alive because Daniele and Simona aren’t yours. They are mine.”

Static rushed in my ears. I threw myself at him, raining punches down on his face, his chest, his stomach. I beat every inch of him I could reach.

“Cassio, stop!” Faro gripped my shoulders, but I shoved him away with a roar, more animal than man. He collided with the wall and crumpled to his feet.

Then I whirled on Andrea again. His gaze said he knew he would die.

My fists burned with every new punch. I hit flesh and bone, even the floor beneath us in my blinding rage. I punched and punched until I couldn’t breathe anymore, until my knuckles throbbed with pain, until my ribcage ached under an invisible weight. Shoving away from the corpse, I sank down against the wall, chest heaving. My knuckles were split from impact with the stone floor.

I gasped for breath and closed my eyes. When I opened them again, I was calm. Andrea was a bloody mess. I didn’t have to check for a pulse to know he was dead. I’d killed many men with a knife, gun, hammer, razorblade, but never with my bare hands. I didn’t let rage dictate my actions. Today I had.

Faro sat across from me, eyeing me warily. “You all right?”

I stretched out my blood-covered arms. My shirt and pants were drenched. My fingers ached when I wiggled them. I smiled wryly. “My wife has been fucking her half-brother our entire marriage… Daniele…” My words died in my mouth, throat becoming dry.

Faro got up with a wince. He stepped over the corpse and almost slipped on the blood. “Fuck,” he growled before he stopped in front of me. He held out his hand.

I took it and let him pull me up, even as sharp pain sliced through my fingers.

Faro touched my shoulder. “Andrea might have said it to provoke you, Cassio. You don’t know if he said the truth. Daniele and the baby could be yours. Do you really think Gaia would have risked putting cuckoo’s eggs in your nest?”

“Don’t call them that,” I rasped.

Faro regarded me with penetrating intensity that set my teeth on edge. “Andrea knew what awaited him. A slow death, hours of brutal torture until he’d given up all his secrets. By provoking you, he got a quick death.”

I regarded the bloody mess on the floor. “I doubt it was the painless end he’d hoped for.”

“Not painless, no,” Faro said, following my gaze. “But fairly quick. Better than he deserved if you ask me.”

I leaned back against the wall, not sure where to go from here. My wife had betrayed me, had admitted that she’d rather see me dead, had threatened to kill our baby… if it was even ours.

My chest constricted until every breath was a struggle.

“What are you going to do now?” Faro asked. I met his cautious gaze. “With Gaia,” he clarified, as if I didn’t know.

“I don’t know.” I couldn’t—wouldn’t kill her. She was still my wife, still the mother of Daniele and Simona. My head fell forward under the force of emotions slamming into me.

“Cassio.” Faro squeezed my shoulder, his voice imploring.

“Call my father. Ask him to come over. He needs to know. Don’t alert anyone else yet. We need to come up with a story.”

“You’ll keep Gaia’s affair a secret?”

“Of course. I don’t want people to know. We’ll blame this on Andrea. Declare him a traitor, as he probably was anyway.”

“Gaia might know more. If she was his lover, they might have talked.”

I shook Faro’s grip off. A new wave of rage and despair rose in me. “I need to check on her.”

“Cassio,” Faro said, gripping my shoulder. “Even if you don’t kill her, you can’t trust her anymore. Your marriage is over.”

I didn’t say anything, only walked up the stairs. I found Gaia and the doctor in her bedroom. She lay in bed, looking drugged. The doctor was covered in sweat and had a swelling on his forehead. “She struggled. I had to sedate her and drag her to bed. She would have hurt herself and the baby otherwise.”