Crooked Heart (A Death So Sweet Book 2)

by Candace Wondrak

  “Why don’t you ask my parents?” I muttered, giving him my back once again, refusing to say the other part of it, or my brother? My brother, the good child. The good son. The angel who took my place. He had swiftly become the light of my parents’ lives, and yet he was no angel. How could a person like me ever believe in love when I’d never had a shred of it from the people who were supposed to love me unconditionally?

  A sham. It was all a sham.

  “Your parents… you killed them.” He spoke it as a statement, because it was true. I had killed them, made sure they’d never be able to hurt me ever again. “Why didn’t you kill your brother?”

  I regretted my meltdown in the bathroom, how I’d punched the mirror and cut up my hands and tried to cut myself with one of the bigger shards. What I regretted even more was the story I’d told them all afterward. They knew my deepest, darkest secret, my vast, vile shame. They knew it, and I hated them for it.

  No one should know but me.

  “I guess I was scared,” I murmured, chuckling to myself in the darkness. “Who knew that, deep down, I’m still scared of that bastard?” The smile I wore with my face against the pillow was one of bitterness. “How crazy is that?”

  I wanted him to tell me it was stupid, that I was dumb for even bringing it up. That I couldn’t be more crazy… or less. I was content with where I was—mentally. No longer stuck in that house, in a vicious cycle that killed my soul day in and day out.

  At least, I should be content. I shouldn’t want more. This thing I had with these Lucianos… whatever I had with Viper, it didn’t matter. None of it mattered. I’d killed their youngest, and because of that, I would die. I could not let myself forget that fact.

  I felt him sitting on the edge of the bed, weighing it down. He must’ve moved silently through the night, quiet as a mouse. I did not roll over to face him, though my breath did catch in the back of my throat when he said what he said next: “It’s not crazy, Lola.”

  My heart did something weird in my chest, skipped a beat, a funny flip-flop feeling. The way he said it, like he whole-heartedly believed it, made me feel… things. Certain things I couldn’t name, things I couldn’t describe.

  There was a long pause before Viper whispered, “You’re not crazy.”

  I lay there, my eyes open and staring at my pillow in the darkness. Hearing that… what was I supposed to say? What was I supposed to do? I couldn’t—I didn’t know. He sounded so sincere, so genuine when he said I wasn’t crazy, but he was a liar. I was. I was so crazy.

  I had to be, because if I wasn’t… if I wasn’t crazy, then I might be other things.

  Sad. Depressed. Hollow.

  If I was crazy, at least I had that going for me, you know? Take away my insanity and I had nothing left, nothing worthwhile. I would be just another person who needed some psychiatric help.

  No, let me be crazy. Let me own it. Let me bury the eternal pain I felt by bringing death to those who deserved it. Let me pretend, just for a little while, just until I drew my last breath. Surely that day had to be coming soon.

  I closed my eyes, not responding to Viper, for I feared if I did, I would lose the charade.

  Sleep did not come that night, and on the rare occasion it did, my dreams were not nightmares but instead dreams of what could be. Me, happy and laughing and smiling. Viper, Maddox, and Sylvester all around me, doing the same. The four of us, happy to be together.

  When dawn’s light crept into the room and woke me up, I was almost sad to realize it’d been nothing but a dream. A dream that would never come true.

  Days went by, and I started to think that whatever I’d slipped in Carl DeLuca’s drink was nothing. I had no idea why Tony would give me a vial of something that wasn’t potent enough to kill, but I assumed if Carl died, we would’ve heard of it by now.

  Unless they were trying to keep it under wraps, like the Lucianos had attempted to do with Mario’s death. If that was the case, then I guess we just had to play the waiting game to see who would be the first leak.

  Apparently there were always leaks. When you were high up on the criminal ladder, and people either were loyal to you or wanted to kill you, there tended to be those who switched sides, the ones who jumped ship. Danny had been one of them.

  It was a nice day, so I found myself outside. I didn’t often spend time outside, but the Lucianos had a nice place. Their backyard was something you’d see in a movie, tall stone pillars and a pool to match. The house kind of curled around the patio, so you felt secluded and closed-off from the world.

  Mike came with me, of course, because he always was with me during the day. He and Viper traded places in the early mornings.

  I came upon a tattooed, muscular body in the pool, and I found myself grinning as I watched him swim. Maddox, for Sylvester was off on a job—a job that, sadly, did not require my bloody talents. A pity, I know. If I could go on every job, I would.

  Mike hung back while I approached the water, crouching down as Maddox swam towards the front end of the pool. I didn’t think he’d noticed me yet; his head was bent down underwater. He was doing some fancy stroke. I admit, swimming was not something my parents taught me. Or, you know, bought me lessons for. We had a pool, but they were much more interested in honing my other skills.

  My voice. My piano-playing. Keeping my body free of babies. You know, the usual.

  Maddox made it to the edge of the pool, flipping his body, about to kick off and keep swimming, but his dark stare finally caught mine, and his smooth movements in the water jilted to a stop, a scowl growing on his face. The half of his head that had black hair was messy, the other half plastered with a tattoo dripping water.

  I mean, not gonna lie, he looked good wet.

  “Hey,” I said, smirking at him.

  His brown eyes narrowed at me. The look he gave me right then was not the look a man gave the woman he loved, but I was under no impression that Maddox cared for me. I wasn’t some stupid girl who was a slave to her coochie. No, my lady bits did not control me, nor did any hormones that slipped past me and into my body.

  No, the way he looked at me right then was a look of hatred, of annoyance. It was a look that made me smirk harder, really.

  “What the fuck do you want?” he said, not bothering to hide how unhappy he was at my interruption.

  “I’m bored,” I whined. My feet were already barefoot—I was not the type of person who walked around the house with their shoes on, I wasn’t a savage—so I plopped down and hung my feet into the water. I got the ends of my skinny jeans wet in the process, but I didn’t care. I had nowhere else to be, and bothering Maddox seemed like a good way to waste some time.

  Maddox hung on the edge of the pool, the muscles in his strong arms bulging as he continued to glare. “And how the hell is that my problem? Go be bored somewhere else.”

  I pouted, noticing that his gaze immediately dipped to my lips. Maddox might hate me, but he was attracted to me all the same. It was so easy to play him, really. Too easy. It almost wasn’t entertaining, but with his proclivity toward choking and bringing knives into the bed, well, let’s just say that made it a lot more fun.

  “You should teach me how to swim,” I suggested.

  He looked as if he wanted to do anything else in the world but that. “You get in this pool with me, I might just drown you.” He ran a hand through his hair, combing its lengths back on the left half of his head.

  “Ooh, promise?”

  The look he gave me in response made me chuckle. I got up, pulling my feet out of the water as I reached for the hemline of my shirt, tugging it off my body and dropping it to the ground. My pants came down shortly after that. I stood in nothing but my bra and panties, and I gave a good wiggle of my ass before I lowered myself into the pool beside Maddox, who still glared at me, even though he’d just checked me out.

  The water was a bit cold, but my body got used to it. Of course, it helped that I stood near the edge by Maddox, his body heat practica
lly oozing into me even though he wasn’t touching me. Love might not be between us—we were both too crazy for that—but we had the physical aspect nailed down.

  He was hot, what could I say? All wet and tattooed… I could easily lick every inch of him, even in this chlorine-filled pool.

  “I don’t remember telling you to come in,” Maddox growled out as he turned toward me, his arms slipping into the water.

  “I wasn’t aware I needed an invitation—” Whatever else I was about to say, whatever smartass comment I had prepared in me, it was stolen out of my throat when his hands found my hips beneath the water. He pushed me against the side of the pool, its concrete edge digging into my back as his body pinned me there. He wore swimming trunks, but with his body this close, they left hardly anything to the imagination.

  Then again, I was already quite accustomed to that monster dick he packed below the belt.

  “You’re not a guest here, in case you forgot,” Maddox whispered, leaning his nose against my cheek. “Sylvester might pretend you’re his girlfriend, but you aren’t. You’re the family dog.” His words were whispered with venom, and I shivered against him.

  Can’t a gal get turned on by a growly man?

  “I know,” I purred out, arching my back against him, wanting to tease him, tempt him, get him to grab my throat and try to put me in place. His hands might suffocate, they might choke, but the body they were attached to whispered no lies, no false promises that it would be over soon. Maddox was a monster, a mad beast, his anger always getting the better of him, and he never tried to hide that fact.

  Maybe it was wrong, but it was something I appreciated.

  His body moved against mine, pinning me even harder against the edge of the pool. The feeling of the concrete wall scraping against the skin on my back was not a particularly good one, but being caught between a rock and a hard place wasn’t so bad.

  And by hard place, I meant Maddox’s body. Because he was hard in every way possible. His muscles. His ragged breathing. The snake currently growing and poking me against my stomach. Oh, yes. He was hard all around, and that made my insides burn in the best way.

  I could lose myself in Maddox. It wasn’t anything more than sex, nothing more than two adults releasing some pent-up frustration and anger. Occasionally I might feel some strange things inside toward him, but those were a fool’s feelings. Only an idiot would ever hope to have more than sex with Maddox, to want an actual connection to him.

  And I might be a lot of things, but I was no idiot.

  “Teach me how to swim,” I whispered, turning my head so that my lips grazed his with every word I spoke. I didn’t dare kiss him; I still wasn’t too big a fan of kissing, honestly, but Maddox’s kisses were rough and wild, hard and unforgiving, just like the rest of him. I guess they weren’t so bad.

  “Oh, I’ll teach you how to do a lot of things,” he responded, pushing his midsection upon me harder, as if I could ever overlook the erection currently pressing against me. Silly man.

  I chuckled, and that only seemed to annoy him. What could I say? I liked grinding his gears. It was all too easy to do. Hell, all a gal had to do was breathe the wrong way, and Maddox was likely to want to strangle you.

  “What’s so funny?” he growled out, his breath hot on my face, a stark contrast to how cool the water was around us. Although, it was starting to feel a little hot, especially with how close we were.

  Or maybe that was just my vagina, screaming with a need for that third eye between his legs. Unlike men, you know, our little kittens didn’t come with an instruction manual. Men had it so easy: dick hard equaled horny. And sometimes all it took for them to get hard was a look, a soft touch, a suggestive whispered phrase. Now, a cunt? Those things were a bit more complicated.

  Were you hungry or were you horny? You couldn’t rely on your kitten to tell you the answer; people tended to frown upon you slipping your fingers into yourself to check on your wetness when you were in public. Men, on the other hand, could feel their dicks getting hard.

  What an easy life it must be, having a cock. Not going to lie, some days I was jealous.

  Plus, I think it’d be so fun to be able to whip it out and piss wherever I wanted, make yellow words in the snow—I was getting off track, wasn’t I?

  Yes, back to the situation at hand: Maddox’s hard dick and his growly voice.

  “You,” I murmured, drawing two hands down his chest, relishing in the feeling of his muscles tightening beneath my fingertips. His body did react to mine, but it wasn’t like I was his girl.

  Brief memories of seeing him in the club, dancing with a short-haired girl, surfaced in my head, and I suddenly grew prickly. I shouldn’t feel jealous. I shouldn’t feel anything. Maddox Luciano was not mine to obsess over. His dick could go anywhere it pleased… and yet, that didn’t stop my blood from boiling at the thought.

  Even though we stood practically in each other’s skin, Maddox sensed something was off. He pulled his head back a bit to stare at me, his dark brows coming together as he asked, “What is it?” I must’ve worn a very peculiar expression, for him to ask. Usually he didn’t give a shit, and that’s how I liked it.

  But he noticed. He noticed and cared enough to say something. Odd.

  With my hands still on his chest, I muttered, “I was just remembering that girl at the club. What’s her name?” I shouldn’t ask. I shouldn’t care. I should not let Maddox know that had affected me at all.

  I mean, I’d run right out of there like a bat out of hell, but that was because I had flashes of my dear fucker of a brother, not because I’d seen him grinding on someone else.

  The face he gave me was slightly confused but also far too smug for my liking. “What—why? Why the fuck does it matter?” Maddox paused, and though the pressure between our bodies didn’t exactly lessen, I still felt like he was seconds from pulling away. “Don’t tell me you’re jealous of Mina.”

  Mina. So that was her name…

  Not sure what I’d use the information for, but if I ever got out of this house while not on a metaphorical leash, maybe I’d pay that bitch a visit. And then, almost simultaneously, as I was thinking that I realized what Maddox had said before telling me her name.

  Jealous.

  Jealous? Me? There was no way in hell I was jealous of that girl. I mean, I had his dick, too. He probably spread it around wherever he could, not like it was a competition. What was there to be jealous of? Why the fuck would I be jealous?

  Then again, why the fuck did I even think about it, about her, and bring it up?

  I couldn’t be jealous. There was no fucking way I was jealous. If I was jealous, that meant I actually cared, which meant I felt more for this madman than I thought I did. Which… just… no. No, I could not stress the word enough.

  “I am not,” I stated, sounding entirely unlike myself, and of course I’d taken so long to respond that nothing I could say would be believable. In Maddox’s eyes, I was jealous, even though I had no reason to be. He wasn’t my boyfriend. He sure as hell wasn’t my husband. He wasn’t even a crush. I didn’t have those.

  It was his turn to laugh. “Fuck me,” he muttered, a smirk crossing his face, the tables effectively turned all because I’d brought the bitch up, “you are. You’re jealous.”

  Turning my head, I could no longer stare at him, fearing, deep down, he was right. How else could I explain the confused feelings inside me? God, catching feelings for any of these Luciano men was a mistake. Not saying my heart could break, but in the end, they’d only kill me. They’d kill me, be rid of me, and never think of me again.

  Except Sylvester… I didn’t know if I believed Sylvester would. The way he talked sometimes, how I caught him staring at me every so often when he thought I wasn’t looking…

  To use Maddox’s words: fuck me. To use his words with my own flair: fuck me in the ass with a tentacled alien dildo.

  I was jealous. I mean, I knew I was crazy, but it took a special kind of crazy to
suddenly become jealous of something that had happened in the past, when I had no claim on the guy involved. That was just nuts.

  Maddox was still laughing at me, which annoyed the piss out of me. If I had a knife, or a bat, or any sort of weapon, I’d definitely do a bit of stabbing. Or hitting. Or anything. Hurt him some. He was a man, he could take it.

  “I can’t believe you’re jealous,” Maddox spoke, totally amused. Glad someone was finding this funny, because I sure as shit wasn’t.

  “Fuck off.” I wanted to say more, but my usual talkativeness had died the moment I realized that I was, in fact, jealous. I shouldn’t be. Me being jealous was basically my inner self trying to say I wanted to be the only one who rode the monster cock pressing against my stomach beneath the pool’s water.

  And that—that couldn’t be farther from the truth. I mean, I wasn’t the type of gal who could ever be in a relationship. Not with Maddox, not with Sylvester, not with hot and cold Viper. I was too fucked up for that.

  “Oh, there will be fucking, but it won’t be off—” Whatever else Maddox was about to say was interrupted by someone storming out of the backdoor, someone who looked quite frazzled—which was definitely out of the norm considering who it was.

  Sylvester.

  Back from his job already?

  I couldn’t turn my head to look at him, not with how Maddox still pressed his body against mine, but Maddox could, and he dropped whatever else he was about to say to me, instead asking him, “Back already? Must’ve been a quick drop.”

  “Get out of the pool,” he said, sounding hardly like himself. I guess that was just going around today. We were all acting a little crazy.

  “I’m busy” was what Maddox said next, his dark eyes returning to me. Busy with me. Busy with being smug that I was somehow jealous of a bitch I barely knew. Busy being an ass, basically.