Sweet Temptation

by Cora Reilly

  “Is the baby okay?” I asked from the doorway, unable to go in, to go anywhere closer to my wife and the bed she’d betrayed me in.

  “It is. Of course, it’s not ideal that I had to sedate her. If she’s still this hysterical when she wakes, we might have to restrain her. I can’t keep giving her sedatives in her state.”

  “Can we get the baby now?”

  Sal shook his head. “Theoretically. But we should give it another two to three weeks at least.”

  How could I make sure the baby was safe? I’d have to keep an eye on Gaia 24/7 and hope she got over Andrea’s death. I knew I was foolish for hoping she could. And really, what could I hope for at this point? That we’d live under a roof, hating each other? Gaia would spend every waking moment wishing for my cruel death, and I’d spend every breath I took resenting her for what she’d done. This marriage was dead. It had been from the very start.

  “Stay with her,” I said. I walked out and into the master bedroom where I showered quickly and dressed before I headed to Daniele’s room.

  He’d fallen asleep, curled up on his side in bed. Slowly, I walked over to him and sank down on the floor. I stroked his unruly hair. He looked like Gaia. It’s what everyone had been saying from the very start. Her brown eyes and dark-blond hair, even her facial features. He had nothing of me. My sisters and mother had similar dark-blond hair color, so I’d assumed he’d inherited it from them. I closed my eyes. Andrea and Gaia shared very similar looks. If Andrea was Daniele’s father, that explained why he had nothing of me.

  Acute pain sliced through my chest. I looked at the little boy I loved more than anything in the world. I’d never loved Gaia, not for herself. I’d respected and cared for her because she’d given me the purest gift in the world: a child.

  I stood abruptly. Voices sounded in the corridor, one of them belonging to Father. I stepped outside, finding Faro and my father talking in urgent whispers. The moment Father looked at me, I wished I could have kept this from him. He limped toward me, looking pale and weak. He gripped my shoulder, his eyes searching mine. “If you want to make Gaia disappear after the baby is born, nobody would blame you, least of all me, my son.”

  I nodded. It wouldn’t be the first time a Made Man killed his wife for cheating. Would things have been different if Gaia hadn’t been pregnant? Would I have killed her like I had Andrea? I’d killed women before. The whores the bikers kept around to suck their dicks—but they’d been armed and trying to kill me and my men.

  Gaia was still a woman, still my wife, still the mother of Simona and Daniele. I wouldn’t kill her unless it was her life against that of my children or mine.

  “I don’t want her to disappear.”

  Father looked puzzled. “Faro told me everything. How do you want to keep her around? She’s a danger to you.”

  “I’m not worried about my life but those of my children.”

  Father glanced at Faro then back at me. “You don’t know if they even are your children. You need to have a test as soon as possible.”

  “And then?” I growled.

  Father shrugged as if the matter was easy. “If they aren’t yours, we can send Gaia and them to live with her family, and you can find a new wife who can give you children.”

  Giving away Daniele? Even our unborn baby girl had already lodged herself into my heart since I’d first heard her heartbeat and seen the ultrasound image.

  Father clutched my shoulder more tightly. “Cassio, be reasonable. You need an heir. You can’t want to raise the children of another man. For God’s sake, those kids might be the result of incest. It’s sin.”

  “Sin,” I repeated, chuckling bitterly. “I beat a man to death with my bare hands today. I skinned and burned a biker today to get information. I’ve killed more men than I can remember. We sell drugs, weapons. We blackmail and torture. How can a child be a sin?”

  Father lowered his arm. “Let’s postpone this discussion to another day.”

  “There won’t be another discussion, Father. Daniele and Simona are my children, end of story. Anyone who claims otherwise will have to pay the price.” Part of my resolve was cowardice. I was scared of the truth, scared of looking into Daniele’s face and not seeing my son, but Andrea’s. I’d never allow that to happen.

  Father straightened. “Don’t forget who you are talking to.”

  “I’m not. I respect you. Don’t destroy this by saying something I won’t forgive.”

  Father leaned more heavily on his cane, letting out a deep sigh. “If you prefer to live in the dark.”

  “The dark is where we’re all most comfortable.” I nodded at Faro. “Get rid of the body.” He inclined his head then turned to do his job. I could always count on him. But trusting him after today? I’d never trust anyone ever again.

  My gaze settled on Gaia, whom I could see lying on the bed from my vantage point.

  “How will you ever be able to look into her face again after what she’s done?” Father asked.

  “I doubt it’ll be an issue. She probably won’t ever look into my face after what I’ve done to Andrea.”

  Three weeks later, Simona was born by Cesarean section. Gaia’s emotional state had worsened, so we had to restrain her at night and have her watched every minute of the day, even when she went to the toilet. Elia, Sybil, and Mia took turns keeping an eye on her. I couldn’t even be in the same room with her without her getting hysterical. I gladly avoided her, however. Even though I hadn’t loved her, her betrayal cut me in a way I hadn’t thought possible. My home had been my safe haven, a place where I could relax after grueling workdays, and my children were the light of my life. Now everything was draped in bitter darkness.

  Daniele didn’t understand why he couldn’t visit his mother, but I was scared for him and scared of what she’d tell him. Gaia had always been vindictive, and now she had a reason to hate me.

  When I held Simona the day after her birth, because Gaia didn’t want me there during labor, I fell in love with that little girl. Blood meant little in this moment, and I’d never allow it to.

  Gaia didn’t get over Andrea’s death. I was foolish to think she could for the sake of Daniele and Simona. For a while, she made me believe she did. She took pills that calmed her, and eventually she almost seemed like her old self. Sybil and Mia still had to take over most of the care for Daniele and Simona. But things seemed to be looking up. We managed to play our roles in public, managed to avoid each other behind closed doors. Sometimes we settled for politeness, but the hatred in Gaia’s eyes always reminded me of the reality of our situation. I’d killed the man she loved. She would never forgive me, and I didn’t need her forgiveness. I only needed her to find it in her to take care of our children.

  But Gaia focused most of her love and attention on the last gift from Andrea: Loulou. She treated the dog as if it was a human, lavished it with tenderness and loving words she should have given only Daniele and Simona.

  I didn’t allow her to be alone with our children. Sybil or Mia had to be around because I still wasn’t sure if Gaia wouldn’t kill our children just to hurt me as much as Andrea’s death hurt her. I never considered her capable of infanticide, but now I wasn’t so sure. Images of my children’s lifeless bodies haunted my nightmares.

  We lived a lie, which became more and more unbearable every day, but at the same time, I got used to it.

  Four months after Simona’s birth, on the day of our eighth anniversary, Gaia ended it all. I’d made dinner reservations in our favorite restaurant for appearance’s sake, but the moment I came home I knew something was wrong.

  It was awfully quiet in the house. Too silent. I was a man who enjoyed the quiet, but this kind of silence rang too loudly, bounced off the walls in ominous echoes.

  I found Sybil asleep on the sofa. Shaking her, she came to but her eyes remained unfocused. “I’m sorry, master. I must have fallen asleep.”

  “That’s not just sleep. I told you to be wary around Gaia!” I snarle
d, releasing her. “Where are Daniele and Simona?”

  Sybil blinked, then her eyes widened with fear. I began running up the stairs then froze on the second-floor landing. Small bloody paw prints covered the beige carpet.

  My heart clenched so tightly, for a moment I was sure I had a heart attack. It ran in our family, after all. I stormed toward Simona’s bedroom, ripping the door open, then stumbled toward the crib. Simona lay unmoving and everything in me stilled. In the one second I considered her death, I understood why Gaia wanted to kill herself after losing Andrea. I wrenched Simona up so fast, she came awake with an ear-splitting scream. God, it was the most beautiful sound in the world. I clutched her to my chest despite her relentless cries and kissed the top of her head over and over again.

  Loulou barked then squeaked. Simona in my arms, I walked out of the room. Daniele stood in the corridor a few steps from his mother’s bedroom, clamping Loulou against his chest. The dog squirmed wildly. As I came closer, I saw its fur was covered in blood and so was its muzzle. Daniele’s arms, too, were red. I rushed toward him and knelt down, holding Simona in one arm as I touched his cheek. “Daniele, what happened?” My fingers flew over his small body, looking for injuries, but he was unscathed.

  “Found Loulou. Where’s Mom?”

  The dog snapped wildly until Daniele finally dropped it. It rushed through the crack of the door into Gaia’s bedroom. Daniele made a move as if to follow. I grabbed his wrist. Cold dread pierced my every bone. “No. Were you in there?”

  “Mom was asleep. Is she awake now?”

  My throat clogged up. “No. She’s still sleeping. Go downstairs to Sybil. She needs to clean you.”

  Daniele jutted his chin out. “I want Mom.”

  “Daniele, go downstairs.”

  Slowly, he backed away then disappeared down the stairs. Simona had quieted in my hold. She was too small to understand, and yet I couldn’t take her into the bedroom with me knowing what I’d find.

  I returned her to her crib before I slowly made my way to Gaia’s bedroom. Pushing open the door, I slipped inside. A familiar scent drifted into my nose; it had never meant anything to me, but from this day on it would. Even knowing what I’d find, the sight slammed into me like a punch to the gut. I approached the bed slowly. One of Gaia’s arms hung limply down the side of the bed, still dripping blood onto the hardwood floor. Loulou perched beneath it, licking the sticky fingertips eagerly. It sat in a puddle of blood—the amount of which told me that I didn’t have to call an ambulance. My business required I knew how much blood a human body could lose before I needed to take countermeasures to prevent a premature death—before all the necessary information was extracted from the person.

  Gaia was gone.

  Blood kept dripping down on Loulou, and the goddamn thing kept licking it up eagerly. Enraged, I snatched the dog up by its neck, staggered toward the door, and tossed it into the hallway. It landed with a squeak before it dashed off.

  I stared down at my blood-covered hands then at the lifeless body of my wife. Slowly, I closed the door in case Daniele came by. A bloody handprint remained on the white-lacquered wood.

  Daniele didn’t need to see more of this. I turned back to the gruesome scene. The red roses one of the maids had bought for Gaia as a gift for our eighth anniversary lay crumpled beside the limp body. Red roses to match the blood-stained sheets and her white dress. A desperate attempt to mend a marriage that couldn’t be mended. Proof of my own failure.

  Seconds ticked by as I regarded my wife. Even lifeless, she was still beautiful. She’d chosen to wear her wedding dress when she killed herself. It still fit her perfectly. The crystals on her bodice glittered in the glow of the lamp. A few of them were sprinkled with blood, making them appear like rubies. They matched the gemstones in her necklace. She’d even curled her hair the same way she’d worn it on the day we made our vows. How long had she planned this?

  Picking up my phone, I called Father. I rarely called him after dinnertime. He and Mother spent their evenings watching classics or playing backgammon. Now that he’d retired, they had time for it. Their love had been something I strived for as a young man, before marriage, before Gaia.

  “Cassio, don’t you have a dinner reservation with Gaia?”

  A dinner to flaunt our failed marriage in public. “Gaia is dead.”

  Silence. “Can you repeat that?”

  “Gaia is dead.”

  “Cassio—”

  “Someone needs to clean this up before the kids see it. Send a clean-up crew and inform Luca.”

  I hung up. A sheet of paper on the bed beside Gaia’s body caught my eye. I crept toward the bed. Death didn’t bother me, not when I was the harbinger of it so often, but every fiber of my being revolted against going anywhere near the corpse of my wife. The opposite arm that wasn’t hanging off the side of the bed was draped over her chest. The blood from the slit wrist had soaked the fabric of her wedding dress. Her lifeless brown eyes fixed on the ceiling, even in death they were full of accusation. I closed her eyelids then picked up her last letter with shaking fingertips.

  Her elegant handwriting and the expensive stationery promised a love letter, but of course it was nothing like that.

  My breathing had slowed as I read Gaia’s letter to me. I couldn’t move, could only stare down at her last words. I wasn’t sad about losing her. I’d never had her to begin with. She’d been Andrea’s, even after his death. I felt a deep sadness over what this meant for Daniele and Simona and a raging madness toward the people who were responsible for this mess. Toward her parents who’d forced her into a marriage with me, even though they’d known the truth. It was incest. Their love had been doomed like ours, but her parents had let me run into an open knife, hadn’t warned me when I allowed Andrea to spend every day alone with my wife.

  A knock sounded but I didn’t react. The door opened then. Faro slipped in and appeared beside me. He said something but his words were muffled. He took the letter from me. I let him. It didn’t matter if he read it.

  “Cassio!” He shook me hard, and finally my focus snapped to him. Behind him, my father leaned heavily on his walking stick, looking furious as he scanned the letter.

  “Don’t you dare feel guilty, Cassio,” he muttered. “That’s what she wanted. She cheated on you, probably helped her brother leak information to the bikers, tried to kill your children. She’s not worth a flicker of your guilt.”

  Faro met my gaze. “You didn’t choose to marry her either. You both were thrown into this marriage for tactical purposes. You aren’t any guiltier than she is.”

  And yet I felt it. “I don’t know how much Daniele saw of this.”

  Father grimaced. “He won’t understand either way.”

  “I locked that damn dog into the storage room. It was covered in blood,” Faro said.

  I nodded distractedly, but my gaze returned to Gaia. My wife had killed herself because of me. I’d been the final nail in her coffin, but her parents had built the fucking thing.

  “Take care of everything,” I said. “I need to deal with something.”

  Father gripped my arm. “Son, tell me you won’t do anything foolish?” I rarely saw fear in his eyes, but there it was.

  “Not the kind of foolishness you fear. It’s an act of cowardice and a crime toward the ones left behind.” I ripped away from his grip and stalked away.

  Faro hurried after me. “Do you need my help?”

  “No.”

  I took the car. Twenty minutes later, I knocked at my in-laws’ house. When they opened the door, I pointed my gun at them. “Let’s talk about Andrea and Gaia.”

  The next day, their maid found them dead in their bedroom. They’d shot themselves, unable to bear the death of their son and daughter. That was the official statement.

  The present

  Slowly, I turned away from the fireplace, facing my young wife. She was pale, her lips parted in horror after my story. “When I married Gaia, she was in love with h
er half-brother. I didn’t know it back then. Her parents did but chose not to divulge the information. Maybe now you understand why I was wary of Christian.”

  Giulia covered her mouth with her palm, staring down at the floor as if she couldn’t bear looking at me. I couldn’t blame her. It was a story that had shaken up even my father and Faro. “Oh my God.”

  I grimaced. I hated remembering, and worse speaking about what happened, but even worse than all that was the look on Giulia’s face now that she knew the truth. “After I married Gaia, she asked me if her half-brother could become one of her bodyguards. I agreed because she was miserable away from home and I thought it would help. I wanted her to find happiness in our marriage.”

  Giulia nodded, not looking up. “Her parents? You killed them.”

  “I did. They betrayed me. Their lies cost Gaia and Andrea their life.”

  She sucked in a sharp breath, horrified. Giulia was a good girl. Kind and positive, willing to see the light even in the dark. I’d dragged one woman into an abyss. I desperately hoped Giulia would be spared the same fate. “Gaia practically asked you to kill them in her last letter.”

  “She knew me well.” Occasionally I would share details of my work with her when I’d been particularly shaken or when she asked, which didn’t happen often.

  Giulia shook her head. She’d said our marriage would be doomed if I didn’t tell her the truth, but I had a feeling the truth just ended whatever had been blossoming between us. Losing Gaia hadn’t hurt. For one, because she’d betrayed me, and because I’d never loved her. Losing Giulia—I wouldn’t get over it. We hadn’t been together long, but in the weeks of our marriage, she’d brightened my days more than I thought possible.

  “I never raised my hand against Gaia, not then either. I would have never killed her. Whatever you decide, you don’t have to worry about your safety, Giulia. I won’t hurt you.”

  I couldn’t breathe. Hearing Cassio tell the story of what happened in a raw, bitter voice had unsettled me deeply. This was so much worse than I expected. The idea of finding Cassio with another woman tore at me. How much worse must it have been for him? Finding his pregnant wife with her half-brother, a man he trusted, and finding out his children might not even be his. It was too horrific to contemplate. Even I wasn’t sure what I would have done in a situation like that. Probably not killed someone, but I wasn’t a man raised to survive in the mafia.