The Kiss Thief

“You know, Wolfe, you think you’re so untouchable because you had a lucky streak. I’ve been in this business long enough to know you’re too conceited to get much further than you are today. You’re a real piece of work, and you think you can get away with even more.” She stopped in front of the door to my house. We both knew this was her last visit here.

I smirked, shooing her away with my hand.

“Write the piece, sweetheart.”

“This is bad publicity, Keaton.”

“A good Catholic summer wedding of two young, high-profile people? I’ll take my chances.”

“You’re not that young.”

“You’re not that smart, Kristen. Goodbye.”

After I got rid of Miss Rhys, I went back to my study to dismiss Bishop and White, before I made my way to the east wing to check on Francesca.

Earlier this morning, her mother showed up at the gate holding some of her daughter’s possessions, screaming she wouldn’t leave until she saw her daughter was okay. Although I told Francesca that whatever she didn’t have time to pack would be left behind, pacifying her parents trumped teaching her a valuable lesson about life. Her mother was blameless in the situation. So was Francesca herself.

I pushed my bride’s bedroom door open and found that she had not returned from her wanderings. Stuffing my fists in my cigar pants’ pockets, I sauntered across her room to look out her window. I found her in the garden, crouching in a yellow summer dress, muttering to herself as she stabbed a trowel into a flowerpot, her small hands swimming inside a pair of oversized, green gardening gloves. I cracked the window open, half-interested in the nonsense she was spewing. Her voice seeped through the crack of the window. Her ramblings were throaty and feminine, not at all hysterical and teenager-y as I’d expected someone in her situation to be.

“Who does he think he is? He will pay for this. I’m not a pawn. I’m not the idiot he thinks I am. I’ll starve until I break him or die trying. Wouldn’t that be a fun headline to try to explain,” she huffed, shaking her head. “But what’s he gonna do—force-feed me? I will get out of here. Oh, P.S. Senator Keaton—you’re not even that good looking. Just tall. Angelo? Now he’s a gorgeous specimen, inside and out. He will forgive me for that silly kiss. Of course, he will. I’m going to make him…”

I closed the window. She was going on a hunger strike. Good. Her first lesson would be about my apathy. The blabbing about Bandini did not concern me, either. Puppy love could never threaten a wolf. I made my way back to her door when a carved wooden box sitting on her nightstand caught my attention. I ambled over to it, the echo of her words from the masquerade bouncing in my head. The box was locked, but I instinctively knew she’d taken out another note, desperate to change her fate. I flipped her pillows on a whim and found the note underneath them. My beautiful, predictable, stupid bride.

I unfolded it.

The next man to feed you chocolate will be the love of your life.

I felt the sneer carving on my face and wondered, briefly, when was the last time I smiled. It was about something silly Francesca had briefly told me on the landing at her house before I bent her father’s arm into giving her to me.

“Sterling!” I barked from my spot by my bride’s bed. The old maid rushed into the room, the frantic wandering of her erratic pupils telling me she expected the worst.

“Send Francesca the biggest Godiva chocolate basket available with a note from me. Leave it blank.”

“That’s a wonderful idea,” she squealed, slapping her knees. “She hasn’t eaten in almost twenty-four hours, so I will do that right away.” She dashed downstairs to the kitchen where she kept a Yellow Pages bigger than her frame.

I pushed the note back into place, rearranging the pillows in the same, messy heap I’d found them.

I cared more about fucking with Francesca Rossi’s head than I did her body.

Now that was my idea of foreplay.

TWO DAYS OF NOTHINGNESS TICKED by, soaking like blood on the walls of my room.

I refused to communicate with anyone. Even the in-desperate-need-for-love garden was left unattended, including the plants and vegetables I’d potted after Mama paid me a visit the day after Wolfe took me. She snuck seeds of begonias in the wooden box. “The most resilient flowers, Francesca. Just like you.” Then Ms. Sterling caught up with my hobby and brought me some radishes, carrot, and cherry tomato seeds, trying to lift my mood and perhaps encourage me to expend some energy and consume something more than tap water.

Sleep was short, tormented, and interrupted with a nightmare: a monster prowling in the shadows behind my bedroom door, baring his teeth in a wolfish grin every time I looked its way. The monster’s eyes were mesmerizing, but his smile was frightening. And when I tried to wake up, to unchain myself from the dream, my body was paralyzed to the mattress.