Hexed (Never After #6)

13. Enzo

THIRTEEN

ENZO

Goddamn .

She’s unhinged in a visceral way that makes her ruthlessness look like art, and I’m hypnotized by the sight of her.

I’ve always known I was depraved, but it’s not until this very moment I see how deep that depravity runs because watching Venesa cut off someone’s hand has me realizing that violence does, in fact, turn me on.

It was hard to not intervene after the man wouldn’t stop disrespecting her, but I’m glad she stepped in when she did because I probably would have lost control and killed him, after torturing answers out of him, and that would raise too many issues back home.

In the Cosa Nostra, you’re not allowed to kill freely. There’s a system in place, one that’s been there since the old country, and it works for a reason. The boss—in this case, my pops—gives his approval on every single contracted hit. Unsanctioned killings just don’t happen, and if they do, there are grave consequences, meaning a bullet in the back of the head. My being the underboss doesn’t change that fact, and neither does being in an unfamiliar state with different people.

There’s a code. An honor system.

It freaks me out how quickly I would have let all that slip away because I couldn’t control my emotions over someone treating Venesa like trash.

And then he says someone sent him to South Carolina for me , and it took every ounce of self-control to keep from taking over everything. From shoving her out of the way and torturing the answers out of him myself, but I’m not sure I want Venesa to hear the answers I’d get.

If he’s from New Jersey, I have to assume it’s the De Luca family who sent him, and if they have a message for me, they can say it to me directly.

I glance over.

Venesa’s breathing heavily, her arms at her sides and the meat cleaver she just used on the man dangling from her fingers. There are blood spatters decorating her skin and a pool of red beneath the guy’s sawed-off hand, leaking over the side of the table and onto the concrete floors. He’s passed out, most likely from the stonefish venom she injected him with earlier, and my eyes flick back and forth between her and the gruesome scene.

“Well, now he definitely won’t say anything,” I joke.

Her lips twitch, her shoulders relaxing. “He will.”

I nod, kicking off the wall and taking a few steps toward her. “So what now?”

“Now I inject him with the antivenom so he doesn’t die, and I call Bas to make sure our little thief here tells him everything he knows.”

“He’ll get him to talk?”

Venesa nods, and a few strands of her icy-white hair fall onto her forehead. She swipes them away with the back of her hand, leaving behind a smear of red. “He always does… I’ll tell you if he says anything, you know? About why he was here following you.”

Good. Hopefully I can find out who he was because I’m finding it increasingly difficult to believe that New Jersey popping up again is a coincidence. Usually, we let the De Luca family do their own thing, as long as they understand it’s still us they answer to, but if they’re down here causing issues unsanctioned, then…

I should tell Pops immediately, but something holds me back. I’m not sure how he’ll respond, and the last thing I need is for him to learn information that could make him volatile when I’m not there to try and keep him in check. Besides, if I call him again, he might take it as a personal insult, considering he’s convinced we’re being tapped.

There’s a small rolling table at Venesa’s side with two glass bottles and a couple of syringes, and she picks up one of each, flipping the bottle upside down and inserting the needle’s tip until the liquid moves into the empty tube. Then she injects it into the man’s remaining hand, right between his first two fingers, the same way she originally injected the poison.

Watching her question him felt oddly carnal, like I was witnessing her purge the blackest parts of her soul. It was invigorating and something I’ve never experienced before—intimate in a toxic type of way, her darkness enabling my own and making it vibrate beneath my skin, desperate to come out and play.

She walks toward the door and gestures for me to follow. “You coming, Lover Boy?”

I’m not sure where we’re headed, but after what just happened, I think I’d follow her anywhere.

“Anywhere” ends up being out of the basement of the Lair and up a narrow spiral staircase that leads to her studio apartment.

Right now, she’s in her bathroom with the door wide-open, standing in front of a small porcelain sink, gripping the edges, her hair draping over the sides of her face like a cloak while she regulates her breathing.

I say nothing, just lean against the doorframe with my arms crossed and watch her reflection, those dark irises swirling as she stares down at her hands.

“You okay?” I ask.

Her gaze flicks up to mine. “Yeah, fine. You just…weren’t supposed to see that.”

She turns on the faucet.

I take a step and then another one, putting our bodies so close that I can feel the adrenaline bleeding off her skin and sinking into mine.

Our eyes lock in the mirror.

“I’m glad I did,” I say.

She grins, those dimples of hers appearing and dotting the apples of her porcelain cheeks. “Why, so you can use it to blackmail me?”

What she’s saying isn’t wrong; it is beneficial for me to know things like this about the underworld of the Kingstons, but her thinking that’s what I’ll do bothers me.

I move even closer, my heart kicking my chest when I brush against her.

Her breath hitches, and it pushes that phenomenal cleavage out in a way that has me biting back a curse, because fuck . Slowly, I reach around her until she’s caged in by my frame, the energy between us dancing like tiny electric shocks along my body.

But I make sure not to touch her.

I can’t keep touching her. Not right now, not when I’m feeling like this.

Instead, my hands surround hers on the edge of the sink, my thumbs centimeters away from meeting her pinkies.

She looks down at them and shifts on her feet.

When she moves, her ass pushes into me, and I bite the inside of my cheek so hard, I taste blood. I exhale slowly, gritting my teeth so I don’t do something crazy like reach out and dig my fingers into the meat of her hips while I drop to my knees, rip off her skirt, and put my mouth on her cunt.

The visual alone… Christ .

Self-loathing mixes into the lust I’m feeling like a volatile cocktail; it’s an internal war where I’m both the savior and the villain.

I grab a hand towel from where it’s hanging on the wall, hyperaware of how she’s tracking my every movement. I swear it feels like she’s lighting me on fire, and it’s fucking torture because I can’t give in to the feeling, I don’t want to give into it…but I can’t pull away either.

Placing the cloth under the running water, I find myself wishing the tepid temperature would douse the fervor blanketing the air, but I know better than to assume it will. Instead, we just exist in this vortex of energy until it’s physically painful to keep my body from falling into hers, and I have to remind myself she’s more off-limits to me than any other woman in the world.

When I take the damp fabric and move it to her right hand, wiping away the specks of blood dotting her skin in slow, methodical motions, my stomach tightens with every pass.

“What are you doing?” Venesa asks in a hushed tone.

“Helping,” I reply, although my voice comes out so low and raspy, I’m not positive she hears me.

“You don’t have to?—”

“Shut up,” I snap, squeezing my eyes closed. “Just…stop talking.”

When I look at her again, she’s staring at me through the mirror, biting the lower corner of that plump red lip, and my heart jumps into my throat because fuck if I don’t want to know what that feels like—what it tastes like to have her mouth beneath my teeth.

My hand shoots out and grips her hip as I spin her around.

Off-limits.

Her ass bumps into the sink, and I lean in close, making her breasts press against me. It’s barely even a graze, but my heart backflips and dives like it’s careening off a cliff anyway. I swallow and pray she can’t feel how wildly it’s beating.

After bringing the towel up to her cheek, I wipe away the specks of blood that dot her face like splatters of paint on a canvas.

That’s what she is to me: a work of art.

I wish like hell she weren’t.

Her hand flies to my wrist, holding me in place.

She blows out a shaky breath, and I suck in every tremble, over and over, our mouths so close that the heat of her lips warms mine. But I don’t bridge that last millimeter of space; instead, I swim in the torture of almost touching, convincing myself that if I try, almost will be enough.

I’ve never experienced an immediate attraction to anyone like this before, and I don’t know how to navigate it.

Pain radiates up my cheek from how tightly I’m clenching my jaw, and I use it to ground myself. To distract me from how badly I want to swing her around, bend her over, and sink so deep inside her, I drown.

Off-limits.

Off-limits.

Off-limits.

Finally, I tear myself away, ripping my hand from her hip and dropping the washcloth in the basin.

“All done,” I murmur.

“Yeah,” she whispers.

I clear my throat. “I should go.”

She glances at me from under her long dark lashes, and lust scorches through my chest and up my esophagus until my mouth runs dry. I take a giant step back and then another, pulling at the collar of my shirt, because when the fuck did it get so hard to breathe ?

After whirling around, I walk away.

“See ya later, Lover Boy,” she calls to my back.

I’m in the room again and on her before I can think twice, pushing until she’s flush against the sink, and I lean down so my lips skim along the shell of her ear.

“It’s Enzo.”

And then I turn and leave before I’ll do something that both of us will regret.

Because it isn’t her I’m supposed to want.

The beaches of South Carolina are not the same as the Northeast coast.

“Where were you again?” Aria asks me, her floppy sun hat casting a shadow over her face as she leans back in one of the lounge chairs on the Kingstons’ private beach.

I toss my head until it hits my own lounger. “How many times do we have to go over this?”

Aria narrows her eyes. “I just don’t understand what you could have possibly been doing for work while you’re here.”

Her voice has an edge to it, and it’s the first time I’ve ever heard her be anything other than docile and sweet, at least when she’s speaking to me .

“Your cousin showed me around.” I speak slowly, hoping if I say it clearly enough, it will sink into her head. “Your dad wants me to open up a spot down here. A hotel or whatever.”

She pulls down her sunglasses just enough to look at me over the rim. “My cousin.”

“Don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“Look at me like that, all puppy-eyed and disappointed. You should be happy your family and I are getting along.”

A tendril of excitement blossoms in my chest, thinking she’s going to argue, going to give me something other than the same monotonous agreement, but she just frowns and pushes her sunglasses back onto her face.

“Just be careful around her…Venesa, I mean.” She leans over and brushes her fingertips along my forearm, squeezing. “She likes to take things that don’t belong to her. And she’s a liar.”

“You worried about me, princess?”

She grins, and she looks so damn innocent that guilt slams into my middle and makes me queasy. I lean forward and kiss her, both because I’m getting a headache from her constant questions and also because if I think too hard about what this weird feeling is in my solar plexus, I’ll have to come to terms with the fact I’m thinking about Venesa more than I should, even though we just met.

“I just know my cousin is all,” she murmurs, running her fingers through the hairs at the nape of my neck before letting go.

She reaches behind her and adjusts the chair until it’s flat, then rolls onto her stomach.

“What’s with you two anyway?” I ask, both because it’s weird, this animosity between them, but also because I can’t stop myself from wanting to find out more about Venesa.

Her glossy lips purse into a frown. “She’s a bitch.”

There’s an immediate urge to lash out and tell her to watch her mouth, but instead I laugh, because how am I going to explain telling my fiancée not to give some random woman a bad name. Besides, I don’t know if I’ve ever heard Aria call someone a bitch before. “The mouth on you. Where’d that come from?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re different here.”

“I’m not different, babe. I’m just…stifled. It makes me cranky.”

I look around at the private beach and then back at the mansion. “Yeah, you grew up in a real prison, princess. I feel sorry for you, truly.”

She rolls her eyes. “Just because something looks like freedom doesn’t mean it’s not a cage.”

“And your cousin has something to do with this how? She didn’t put you in there.” I point to the estate.

“No, she just treats it like it’s all supposed to belong to her.”

“Sounds a little dramatic.”

Aria sighs heavily. “Venesa’s mom was the jewel of the Kingston family, but then she chose some deadbeat, alcoholic gambling addict instead of her own flesh and blood. And look how that turned out—the man killed her and then disappeared.”

Surprise trickles through me because I didn’t realize Venesa’s dad was the reason her mother died. “Her husband killed her?”

“Either that, or it was Venesa herself. They never caught the guy.”

I give her a look. “But your uncle took Venesa in when her mom died, so she is a Kingston, technically.”

“Semantics. He should have let the state keep her.”

“Aria,” I chastise.

“What? It’s not my daddy’s fault his sister gave up her right to everything, and I don’t appreciate Venesa thinking she’s owed it just because of who she is.”

It just doesn’t sit right with me how badly she’s talking about Venesa. The woman I spent the day with yesterday? She doesn’t deserve the disrespect.

My stomach churns from the story and the blasé way Aria tells me about it, like it’s just some joke, and for the first time when I look at her, I don’t think she’s pretty.

“You have any other family members you need to warn me about?” I side-eye her.

She laughs and reaches into her bag, pulling out a magazine. “I don’t think so.”

“No aunts or uncles or anything like that?” I press.

“I mean, I’ve got an uncle, but we’re not close.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah, Uncle Frankie, but I’ve only met him a couple of times. He’s out in New Jersey, I think.” She flips a page in her magazine. “Why?”

My heart stops in my chest. New Jersey. “Just curious. You don’t talk about your family much.”

She giggles. “Well, after we’re married, what’s yours is mine anyway.”

Her words feel like a noose around my neck, but I shove the feeling away because it isn’t Aria’s fault I suddenly can’t keep my shit together.

“So this uncle of yours, Frankie…what’s his last name? How come I’ve never heard of him?”

She gives me a weird look. “Why would you have heard of him?”

I lift a shoulder. “I thought I knew everyone in Jersey.”

“Bianchi.”

My hackles rise.

There’s only one Frankie Bianchi I know of, and he’s a low-grade loan shark who calls himself “Shark Daddy.” He’s not a made guy, but if we were in a room together, he’d be introduced as a friend of mine, meaning he’s connected but not part of the family.

I’ve never met him myself, but I’m wondering if that needs to change immediately.

Especially if he’s related to my future wife.

I pick up my phone and shoot off a text to Giovanni.

Find out what you can about Frankie Bianchi and why the fuck we didn’t know he was related to Aria.