Page 98 of The Viper's Wife

“I also brought you coffee.”

She sits up, stretching long, the bedsheets pooling around her waist and exposing her gorgeous breasts. My mouth waters.

She reaches over for the coffee and takes a deep drink before finally cracking open both eyes. “Thanks, weirdo.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Will you come to bed with me?”

My chest swells. “Yeah.” I crawl into bed and wrap my arms around her waist. She’s so soft. I press my lips to her belly just to feel her against me. I should’ve locked the door,but with her in my arms and my cock thickening, I’m finding I don’t care right now.

She runs her nails down my back as she sips at her coffee.

When I glance up at her, she gives me that soft, contented look I see on her face sometimes.

“This is nice,” she says.

“You’ll want to keep that in mind,” I say as I lay my head back down on her lap. “In about twenty minutes or so.”

Valeria was surprisinglyeager to go out with Alessia.

“You mean, she wants to take over every decision for our wedding? Of course I’m in.”

I had Joey wait in the parking deck.

While Alessia went to the bathroom, Valeria called her friend Lacey to join them, and as they drove off, I found Joey and stepped into his white van.

The first place he brought me to was an empty warehouse that smelled faintly of blood and bleach. He handed me a toothbrush and a bucket of bleach and told me to get to work.

By the time he and I finished, it was midnight, and Valeria was fast asleep, but after I showered and crawled into bed with her, she wrapped her arms around me and brushed a kiss against my mouth. I rolled her onto her back and ate her like a man starved.

For the next few days, we meet that way, like ships in the night.

One evening, I came home to find a few magazines scattered across the kitchen table with a sheet of cardstock in thecenter, scraps of red paper glued on top—her collage art. I studied it for several minutes under my phone’s flashlight, my eyes finally falling on the tiniest pair of red hearts in the middle of the abstract shapes. I shut off my phone and went to the bedroom to murmur praise in her ear as I took her from behind.

In the morning, she leaves with Alessia before I’m awake, but she leaves terribly brewed cups of coffee for me on the counter, which I suck down in gratitude.

At night, I drop pastries or takeaway in the fridge for her, shower, and fuck her in the darkness like it’s our first time, every time.

It’s not what I want for us, but it’s close enough. If the cost of her protection is that Salvatore hazes me with shit jobs, I’m more than willing to pay.

Every chance I get after stirring barrels of hydrochloric acid, counting thousands of items in Joey’s chemical inventory, or digging up dirt holes for him to throw mysterious trash into, I step aside to call my father. He used to pick up on the first ring. Now, he won’t answer any of my calls. I leave him short voicemails to answer me, and then move on to check my phone for Valeria’s location.

I could stare at her little blip moving from florist to bakery to boutique all day long.

I’ve never cared for power or wealth—and I’ve never understood why my father seeks to stockpile both—he has plenty, why would he need more?

But information? That’s a power trip that goes straight to my head.

I start to understand why my brother is so focused on surveillance as I observe Giovanni’s location moving all over Chicago—though Salvatore was quick to warn me not to trust the little red dots on the map.

Sometimes they lie.

After a few days of this new routine, Joey drives off from the mortuary, and I slump against the passenger side door, my eyes shuttering closed.

I’m dying to wrap my arms around Valeria, to pull her against me and roll myself on top of her. To smell her and kiss the sensitive skin underneath her ear that makes her body react in delicious ways. To whisper to her that I missed her today.

I get a notification that she’s leaving the apartment, and before I can react, my phone rings.