Velvet Cruelty WHOLE CHAPTER excerpt!
For anyone curious about my modern-day Snow White novel here's an entire chapter of Velvet Cruelty! Come meet my four twisted heroes. and my sweet girl, January Whitehall...
Chapter 3
January is balled up on Morelli’s dark red carpet, still unconscious from her sleeper injection. I lean against the banister of the main staircase, waiting for her to wake up. I’ve heard all brides are beautiful on their wedding day, but she’s a pretty little thing. She reminds me of a colt, all legs and lashes and long, dark mane. And those tits… Mama Whitehall did a good job hiding them away. My eyes almost fell out of my head when the brat walked down the aisle toward me.
A moan falls from her red lips. Even twitching on the carpet, she looks too pure to exist. Like she’s been kissed by angels. It makes a man want to violate her. Or at least it makes me want to do that.
On the other side of the room, her useless bodyguard is still out cold. He didn’t get a sleeper injection; Adriano just kicked him in the head. I would have slit his throat and pushed him out of the van, but Morelli wants him alive for now.
“Mmmmff.” The brat turns over, her fingers contracting like kitten claws. Her eyes flick open. They’re green. Not psycho green like Adriano. Pale green with a dark ring. The kind that make you think of Irish hills and secret gardens. I push myself off the banister. “Evening, Tits.”
January squints at me. “Father Monastero?”
I grin. When we got home, I changed into black jeans and a T-shirt. I’d have kept the priest robes on but Morelli told me to quit showing off. “Not a real priest, dipshit.”
Her lower lip trembles and I watch as today’s events replay in her brain. She touches the side of her neck. “You drugged me.”
“I did.” The needle pierced her so easily. I’ll never get over how simple humans are to penetrate. How quickly you can turn the living into the dead.
January sits up, her wedding dress spread around her like a white puddle. Her eyes scan the entrance hall, lingering on the oil paintings and the fire roaring away in the corner. “Where am I?”
I yawn pointedly. The kidnapped are so fucking boring. ‘Why am I here?’ ‘Please let me go?’ ‘I have a family…’ Things won’t get fun again until the others are back downstairs.
“Mr…” She blinks at me. “I don’t know your name?”
“You can call me Doc.”
“Doc, can you please let me go?”
With a sigh, I pull my butterfly knife from my pocket and flick out the blade. “What was that?”
She shuts up.
I pick my thumbnail with the point. There’s a little blood under the nail. Not from today. Probably from when Adriano and I worked over Nicci Fattore. I wish I’d cut Parker, sliced his eyelid, or taken a finger. But I did tongue his virgin bride and Adri pissed in his face. We have plenty of time to make the ugly fuck pay.
I can feel the brat watching me. I count the seconds until she asks another stupid question. One, two, three—
“What are you going to do to me?” Her voice is clear but there’s a little wobble at the edges. She’s a minute from tears, max. “Can you please tell me where I am?”
“Stop talking.”
“Please just… Why is this happening?”
“Tesorina, I don’t know why you think I carry a knife, but keep talking and I’ll bleed you all over the carpet.”
Her mouth snaps closed, and she starts whimpering into her hands like a bunny. I like when girls cry, but she’s not doing it properly. She’s sniffling like a five-year-old who lost her teddy bear.
I groan at the molded ceiling. “Fucking hell, can you quit your whining?”
She looks up at me. She’s even paler now—and she didn’t have a lot of color to lose. She looks half-dead. But then maybe she’ll be entirely dead by the end of the night. That’s Morelli’s call.
“How many people died?”
I frown. “The fuck do you mean?”
“The explosions. How many people died? Do you know?”
I lower my knife. I could tell her that her whole family’s dead, but looking at her grey complexion, the news might kill her, and then I’d be in the shit. “No one died, Tits.”
“But… the explosions?”
“C4 down in the sewers. So, I guess some NYC plumbing died. You gonna cry about it?”
January stares into the middle distance. “Everyone’s safe?”
“Yup. You’re the only person who got fucked over in this arrangement.”
“Oh.”
I expect her to start bawling, but she just blinks rapidly. “So, are you really a doctor?”
I stare at her. For a girl with unicorn stickers on the back of her phone, I wasn’t expecting this much backchat. “Does it matter if I’m really a doctor?”
“I… No. I just don’t know what to call you.”
I grab the front of my jeans. “You can use Father Monastero, if you want. That got me hard.”
She flinches. “I don’t…”
I laugh. “Or you can keep playing innocent, lurida sgualdrina. That gets me hard too.”
“I’m not a whore.” Her eyes widen and she claps a hand to her mouth.
For a second, I don’t understand, then it clicks. “You speak Italian?”
She shakes her head.
“You speak Italian,” I repeat more to myself. “Capisci cosa ti sto dicendo, vero?”
She keeps shaking her head, but I can see the comprehension in her eyes. I swear under my breath. How could we have missed this? She’s Anglo. Her whole family is Anglo. Mentally scanning our plans, her speaking Italian doesn’t change anything, but how did we miss it? “Who taught you Italian?”
She shoves herself backward on the carpet. “No one.”
I point the blade at her. “Who. Taught you. How to speak. Italian?”
“My Zia.”
“Your Zia?”
“She’s not really my auntie. She’s my housekeeper. My nanny. She’s lived with me my whole life. I call her Zia Teresa.”
There was an old woman around the house, but neither of us gave her a second thought. “Dyed hair? Smokes cigs?”
January blinks rapidly. “Yes. How—”
“This old girl taught you how to say, ‘filthy whore?’”
“No. Our gardeners… they were Sicilian. I used to overhear them sometimes.”
“Yeah, that makes sense. Sicilians are swine.”
A small smile creases her mouth.
“What?” I ask.
“Why do all other Italians hate Sicilians?”
She’s trying to be funny. Sweet. I drop to my heels beside her and flip the knife over my knuckles. Her eyes go glassy. Better. I jerk my head at the blackened windows. “It’s dark now, Tits. If you’d stayed at your wedding, you’d be married. Eating crab while Zachery Parker gropes your thighs under the table.”
She swallows, her eyes fixed on the blade. “I… I guess.”
“I know. And in a few more hours, you’d be on your way to the Ritz-Carlton to suck your ugly husband’s cock. Do think Parker’d fuck you like a dog the first time? Bend you over and nail you from behind?”
Her gaze skids away, coming to rest on the wall behind me.
“No, he’d want to see that perfect rack. But then he’d only last thirty seconds.”
I can almost see her thinking ‘don’t let him upset you.’ I laugh. I could tear her apart and watch her piece herself together again all night long. “You’re in luck, Tits. All four of us are better-looking than Parker and we all know how to make it last hours.”
Her ruby red lips tremble. I remember pressing my mouth to them at the cathedral. I was mostly focused on Parker, but it was a sweet kiss. Sugary. She didn’t want to like it, but she couldn’t help herself. I bet she’s the kind of girl who soaks her underwear while you’re making out. “When I stuck my tongue down your throat at the cathedral, was that your first kiss?”
She blinks her doe eyes at me. “I… What?”
“Was it your first kiss? Or did you practice with the girls at school?”
Her mouth twitches and I know she wants to tell me I’m disgusting. My cock thickens in my jeans. I lift the knife, examining the point again. “Tesorina, if you don’t tell me about your first kiss, I’ll give you another one. And this time I’ll bite.”
She shudders. “It was my first kiss.”
“Glad to hear it. I know Tweedledee and Tweedledum didn’t let anything with a cock within ten feet of you, but there’s always a chance someone slipped under the ropes.”
Redness rushes into her pale cheeks. I want to make her cry and then eat her pussy. Listen to her sob while she comes all over my face…
“Mr. Parker never kissed me,” she whispers. “He was a gentleman.”
“He was a weirdo playing fucked up games with his cock.”
Her face registers only confusion. Fucking virgins. “He was edging himself. Waiting for you to grow up. Fantasizing over your jailbait pussy like it’s an apple getting ripe enough to eat. He’s a freak.”
She shakes her head, dark curls whipping around her shoulders. “You’re a psycho.”
I roll my tongue across the inside of my cheek and grin. “Yeah, but I’d never piss ten years away waiting for a girl to get legal. Now you’re eighteen, I don’t plan on waiting ‘till the end of tonight.”
“Please leave me alone,” she whispers, beautiful tears collecting in her eyes.
I look up the stairs. Where the fuck are the others? I was planning on saving this bombshell until my brothers were around but they’re taking too fucking long. For years I’ve watched this brat float around with her head in the clouds. Pearl earrings; summers in Paris; parties with nine different fucking birthday cakes. She’s a spoiled bitch. Already crying when nothing’s happened yet. She’s not cut or shot or getting it in all three holes.
I get to my feet. “Quick question. Do you think the first time I saw you was when you met with the Archbishop for marriage counseling?”
Her hand jumps to her throat. “What do you…?”
“If I could extort my way into being the priest at your fucking wedding, who do you think you’ve been confessing your boring, petty sins to?”
Horror stretches across her face. “No, you can’t…”
“I can’t?” I tap my chest. “I dunno. Do you have a weird thing about secretly eating tiramisu that you feel the need to tell priests about?”
She throws herself on the carpet and resumes her silent snuffling. My enjoyment is slightly deprived by realizing I should have put two and two together about the Italian housekeeper. This bitch had way too much access to tiramisu.
“Doc?”
Basher bounces downstairs, buttoning the sleeve of his navy shirt. He reeks of Tom Ford and his dark hair is ruffled with wax. I know exactly what he’s doing. “Dressing up for the little brat?”
Basher looks pointedly at my bare feet. “You know you’re not seventeen, right?”
“You know you’re not the bass player in a Midwestern wedding band, right?”
Basher rolls his eyes. “At least you’re not in the priest outfit.”
He doesn’t know January’s awake, otherwise he’d be making soppy eyes at her like always. I smile at him. “Whaddya think of the girl up close? Pretty scrawny, huh?”
“Have you gone blind? She’s stunning.”
I want to turn and see January’s reaction so bad, but I keep my eyes on Basher. “You get the tarp?”
He takes the wad of clear plastic from under his arm. “Where does Adriano want it this time? Because last time—”
“Bobby?”
The tarp falls to the ground. Turning on my heel, it’s hard to see who looks more horrified, him or her.
“You’re… awake,” Basher says in a strangled voice.
“Yes. What are you doing here?”