It was cute.
My breasts were a size too big for the top, and when I reached behind me, I couldn’t grab the zipper. I slid the curtain to the side and beckoned Marcello with my index finger. He moved toward me without complaint and shut the curtain.
With my back facing him, I pointed to my zipper. “I need your help.”
Marcello pressed his hand on my lower back. “You look like a present,” he said against the shell of my ear, caging me against the mirror with his muscular body.
His fingers traveled up and down my spine as he pulled up the zipper. I held my breath as our eyes met in the mirror. He looked so much like Luca. Even smelled like him. And for a second, I wondered if they tasted the same.
I shook the thought from my mind. Marcello was no better than Luca. He was one of many Devils who led my brother to Hell. They were all responsible for Aiden’s disappearance.
The Devil’s Knights.
The Serpents.
They were all going down.
“Looks like Luca ordered the wrong size,” he said in that sexy voice that made my pulse pound as his fingers swept across my breasts.
It seemed to please him that Luca messed up my size. Mr. Perfect was always right about everything. He made sure of it because there was no room for error in his carefully curated world.
“Turn around,” Marcello instructed.
I spun around to face him, and he moved his hand to my waist, fingers diggers into my hip. His eyes traced up and down my body, settling on my breasts, which spilled from the tight top. My heart raced as he stared at my lips, eventually looking into my eyes. Every inch of my skin was on fire, tingling with desire.
Marcello’s cell phone beeped, and he sucked in a deep breath. He sighed as he looked down at the message. Taking a few steps back from me, he raised the phone and snapped a few pictures.
“Are you planning to jerk off to that later?” I shook my head and groaned. “You’re as sick as your brother.”
He ignored me and hit send. “It’s for Luca. Calm down.”
“He can perv on me but won’t talk to me on the phone? So fucking typical of him. Your brother is such an asshole.”
“Get dressed,” he said on his way out of the room. “We’re leaving.”
They say it takes the same amount of energy to love as it does to hate. I spent equal amounts of time hating and loving Alex. She drove me fucking insane. With every ounce of my being, I wanted to hate her for things that were out of her control. But most of all, I wanted to hate her for making me feel emotions I’d buried a long time ago. In my line of work, weaknesses were dangerous.
I found my beautiful girl on the floor in my mother’s studio, wearing nothing but black lace panties and a matching bra. “Till I Collapse” by Eminem blared through the Bluetooth speakers. Alex was dead to the world, lost in her art. Her blonde hair fanned out around her as she laid on her stomach, on a drop cloth in front of a canvas.
My dad avoided this room as if it were diseased, but I never denied Alex access. She was a fan of my mother’s work, inspired by some of her pieces, and when I watched Alex in her element, it took me back to better days. To the days when bloodlust didn’t run through my veins, poisoning me from the inside out.
My mother would have loved her. When I’d watch my mom paint, she would tell me to sit in the chair in the corner. No matter how sad she looked, she always fucking smiled. She always looked happy when her eyes landed on me.
I thought of the last time I saw her in the same spot as Alex, with her fingers wrapped around a paintbrush and two more stuffed into her hair like chopsticks. She always did that to push the hair off her face. Dad would kiss her and laugh, promising to buy diamond clips to tie up her hair.
He was a different man back then.
My parents were lucky. They married for love. When Alex’s mom ran from Devil’s Creek and broke off the engagement with my father, it allowed him to marry outside of the founding families. Some days, I wished for that kind of freedom—a free pass to do what I wanted without recourse. But I’d grown up knowing I would marry a Wellington. We needed their connections in The Founders Society to ensure my family’s legacy remained intact.
I inched my way into the room and lifted one of my mother’s paintbrushes from a wooden table, rolling it between my fingers. Alex’s brush moved across the canvas, her movements fluid and graceful.