Novels by Cerci Hills

Chapter FiveAlessia POVI didn't sleep.Well, the truth was I couldn't sleep.I lay in the dark on my side of the enormous bed, and I stared at the ceiling, listening to the house breathe around me.The tick of the radiator. The distant footfall of a night guard on the floor below.So many sounds, but not enough noise either. By five in the morning, I gave up pretending I was ever going to fall asleep.I dressed without turning on a light, moving by what I could feel and memory from the night before.Old habit.I slipped out of the suite and into the corridor and stood very still for a moment, listening.Nothing.Everyone was asleep, or doing a very good job of feigning it.Taking a deep breath, I walked to Isabella's room.---The door opened without resistance.I don't know what I expected.The same stillness, maybe.The horrible, sweet smell of spilled wine mixed with something underneath it.I hadn't let myself think about it, but now I knew that sickening copper scent was blood.

Chapter FourMatteo POVShe had grit. I'd give her that.Most people, when cornered, either fell into one of two categories — hysteria or submission.Alessia DeLuca had done neither.She had sat on that bed with my hand wrapped around her throat as she glared straight at me.She wasn't going to beg me either.I turned to face the door, my mind running over the thousand details from the story this DeLuca sister had spun.I didn't trust her. That hadn't changed.But I could respect what she'd done, even while I turned it over in my head, looking for the weak link in all the plotting.She was right about the war.That was the part I couldn't argue away, no matter how many angles I approached it from. I had spent what felt like an hour standing at the dresser after she finished speaking.I tried thinking of how exactly I could escape this. If I sent her away, then I would be disrespecting the Mafia king who had set up this alliance.An alliance that had been three years in the making. It

Chapter ThreeAlessia POV"Isabella," I croaked."My name is Isabella."His grip tightened.He was not pleased with my answer. Any more and I would actually choke to death."Try again," he hissed.There was no heat in his voice, and that was the worst part.I had braced for his anger – raised voices, the fury of a man who had been made to look foolish – but I had forgotten one thing.Matteo was not my father.There was none of that display of emotion, just the flat certainty that he would get what he wanted eventually.His hand around my throat was not squeezing tightly, exactly, but it was present in a way that made breathing a negotiation all on his terms.I made myself look at him, blinking rapidly as tears filled the corners of my eyes.He was not handsome the way men in magazines are handsome.Polished within an inch of their lives.I would go as far as saying Matteo was not a handsome man. His nose had been broken at least once, and the scar over his brow and along his cheek did

Chapter TwoMatteo POVSomething was wrong with my bride.I had known it since the start of the ceremony.It was not a feeling — I didn't deal in feelings, I dealt with facts — and right now the facts didn't quite line up.But I was almost certain she was not my bride.It was in small things, the way she held her bouquet too tightly, knuckles white against the white roses. The fraction of a second's delay before she turned when the priest addressed her by name.Her frame was smaller, not enough that it couldn't be explained away, but like I had said, it was the small things.I was a man who was good at reading people. I had spent the better part of my early twenties learning to spot a liar, reading the body language of people who were pretending.So I was sure I was good at it. And while my bride hadn't spoken a word to me beyond the ceremonial ones, which on its own wasn't unusual — Isabella DeLuca had made clear during our engagement negotiations that she had no interest in performi

Chapter OneAlessia POV“Do you take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband?” the priest said as I stood there frozen and not entirely sure of what I was doing right now.“Say ‘I do’, dear,” he urged when I stayed quiet for longer than was appropriate.“I do,” I repeated back to him like I was reciting something in a language I had never been taught.The words left my mouth and the priest continued droning away.The man across from me – Matteo Ricci, and my husband now, God help me – slid a ring onto my finger, and I felt the weight of the cold metal like a noose.Final.It was wrong in a way that only things belonging to the dead can feel wrong.This was Isabella's ring. She had worn it to the final fitting three weeks ago, turning her hand in the light while our mother cried and said she looked like a queen.Now it sat on my knuckle and I stood in Isabella's dress, in Isabella's church, surrounded by Isabella's life, while somewhere in the east wing of this marble mausoleum of