LIAR BEHIND THE MASK

CHAPTER THREE

KYLIANO'S POV

I have made grown men whimper with nothing but a look.

Soldiers who have put bullets through skulls without blinking. Capos who have carved their initials into bone and still slept like babies afterward. One stare from me and their spines fold. Their mouths go dry. Their hands start shaking like they already smell the basement waiting for them.

And this brunette?

This fucking brunette who already walked into my room, stole from me, and then had the audacity to sit in the back of my car sounding bored while informing me she was about to come on another man’s dick did not look fazed by my look.

“I could have come if you didn’t play Superman.”

That was what she said.

Like I had interrupted her favorite show. Like the fact that she was promised to my cousin was a mild scheduling conflict instead of a death sentence wrapped in white lace and family tradition.

My hand was around her throat before the last word finished echoing in the closed space of the car.

Not tight enough to bruise, just enough pressure to feel the frantic hammer of her pulse against my palm. Her mask still dangled from one ear. Her lipstick was smeared across her mouth like a confession. Those dark eyes stared up at me, furious and alive, like she was daring me to finish what I started.

“Say that again,” I murmured, voice low enough that the driver wouldn’t hear through the partition. “I dare you.”

She didn’t flinch.

She tilted her chin higher into my grip and gave me the most insolent, razor-edged smile I had ever seen on a woman who should have been terrified.

“Careful, Future Don. Squeeze too hard and Angelo won’t have a bride left to marry. That would be awkward at the wedding, don’t you think?”

I laughed.

It wasn’t a nice sound. It was the kind of laugh that usually preceded someone disappearing.

“Seeing you as a maid, one would almost believe you were honorable. A quiet little thing who keeps her head down and knows her place. Instead I find a thief who walks into a room she’s been forbidden to enter, steals my money, and then runs straight to a mask club to play prostitute for the night. Tell me, Rosarie, where exactly is the dignity in that?”

She rolled her eyes so hard I half expected them to get stuck.

“Dignity is overrated. Especially when the alternative is becoming Angelo’s third missing wife. At least this way I get to choose who ruins me. There’s a certain poetry in that, don’t you think?”

My fingers tightened a fraction.

“Men have died for speaking to me the way you just did.”

“Then they must have been very boring men,” she shot back, voice still steady even though her pulse was racing under my hand. “I’d rather die interesting than live quiet.”

I looked at her. Really looked closely.

Brunette. Not blonde. Mouth too sharp for her own good. Tits that would fit neatly in my hands instead of overflowing them. That ass that had filled out her uniform this morning like it was painted on when she bent over my bed. Not my type. Not even close. I had a rotating stable of leggy blondes who moaned on command, never talked back, and left when they were told.

And my cock was harder than it had been for any of them.

“You’re not even my type,” I told her, almost conversational, like we were discussing the weather instead of the fact that I still had my hand around her throat. “No big tits. Not blonde. Mouthy as hell. And yet—” I glanced down at the obvious, painful strain in my trousers, “—he seems to like you more than the entire legion of women I actually prefer. Curious, isn’t it?”

Her gaze dropped to my crotch and stayed there a second too long. When her eyes came back up they were glittering with pure, unfiltered spite.

“You can’t do anything to me. You know that. Angelo will have your head if you touch what’s already promised to him.”

I cocked one eyebrow slowly. The kind of look that made lesser men start apologizing before they even knew what they’d done wrong.

“Is that so? Then maybe I should just tell the driver to take us straight to the east wing right now. Dump you on Angelo’s doorstep looking exactly like this—stolen money still in your bag, another man’s spit still on your mouth, thighs still shaking from almost getting fucked in a back room of a club. I’ll tell him everything. The theft. The club. The way you were about to spread for a stranger whose name you didn’t even know. Let’s see how protective he feels then.”

Her face went white.

For half a second the bravado cracked and I saw real fear flash behind her eyes. Then she forced her spine straight again, chin high, like she was daring the universe itself to finish her off.

“Do it, then. Go ahead. I’m sure he’ll be thrilled.”

I smiled.

It was the same smile my father, Don Carmine wore when he was about to order a body into the river.

“You think I won’t? Cute. Keep talking like that and you’ll find out exactly how little I care about my cousin’s claim.”

She moved to stand like she could just climb out of a moving car and walk away from me as if I were some ordinary man she could dismiss.

I slammed her back down onto the seat so hard the leather creaked beneath her. My body followed immediately, one knee shoving between her thighs, one hand still at her throat, the other braced on the seat beside her head so she had nowhere to go.

“When I talk,” I said against her ear, voice low and rough, “you listen. You don’t get up. You don’t move. You sit there and take whatever I decide to give you. Understood?”

She tried to wiggle.

Tried to twist her hips and create space. I trapped both her wrists above her head with one hand and pinned her with my weight until she had no choice but to feel every hard inch of me pressed against the soft heat between her legs.

My cock was a fucking iron bar.

I remembered this morning with sudden, vicious clarity—her bent over my bed, that perfect round ass in the air while she tucked the sheets like she belonged there. The way the fabric of her uniform had stretched across it. I was hard the second I saw her. I got even harder when I realized she was stealing from me. And now that she was under me, still mouthing off, still pretending she had any control left in this car, my cock was ready to blow.

“Was that him?” I asked, voice rougher than I intended. “The man in the back room. Your weekend lover. The one you risked everything for so you could get fucked before the wedding and ruin the sheets on purpose?”

Her eyes shone.

Pure defiance. No fear left. Just fire.

“Yes,” she gritted out through her teeth. “Best fuck of my life. Actually fucks. Every. Single. Weekend. So your precious blood-sheet tradition? Never going to work. Tada. I lost my virginity the same year I learned how to shave. Sorry to disappoint the elders and your cousin’s delicate little honor.”

Something black and murderous uncoiled in my chest so fast it almost hurt.

She kept talking and provoking me, like she wanted me to snap.

“He’s thick, patient and knows exactly how to make a woman come so hard she forgets her own name. Unlike some men who are too busy playing Future Don to actually learn how to use what God gave them—”

“Careful.”

“—and the best part? He isn’t bound by your little family rules. He takes what he wants. He doesn’t ask permission from uncles or cousins or dusty old traditions that treat women like livestock. You wouldn’t have the balls to do half of what he does. You’re weak. Soft. Tied up in blood oaths and arranged marriages like a good little heir who never learned how to take something that wasn’t handed to him on a silver platter.”

I smiled and flipped her in one smooth, controlled motion and she was face-down on the leather, my chest pressed hard against her back, my hand still controlling both wrists above her head. My other hand slid under her body, cupped one breast through the thin black fabric of her dress, and squeezed—hard enough to make her breath hitch.

“I could grab these,” I murmured against the shell of her ear, voice almost gentle in its threat, “and not a single person in this city would stop me. I could bend you over right here on this seat, fuck your lover’s cum out of you until you can’t walk straight, and not a single soul would dare question me. You understand that, Rosarie? Not one.”

She laughed, still fighting even with my weight pinning her down.

“Promises, promises. All talk, Future Don. Just like the rest of them. Big threats. Small follow-through.”

Something in me snapped clean in half.

I tore her panties to the side with one rough yank, freed my cock with the other hand and in one brutal, unforgiving thrust I buried myself inside her to the hilt.

“Do you still think I’m joking?” I mocked.

Her face crumpled, an evidence of real, sharp pain. It was then that I felt the resistance, the kind that didn’t make sense with the filthy things she’d just claimed.

Something clicked in my brain that refused to line up with the words still hanging in the air between us.

I froze.

No.

It couldn’t be. I pulled out just enough to look.

Blood was smeared across my cock and the torn lace of her panties like a quiet, devastating confession.

“Rosarie…” My voice came out a rasp in a statement, not a question. Hoping or needing her to spit some sarcastic comment, some sharp-edged lie that would make this make sense again.

“You are not a virgin. You cannot be.” I dared her to speak.

However, she stayed there, face turned into the seat and completely silent for the first time since I dragged her into this car.

When I eased out a little further, more blood followed. My entire body went cold. Every filthy word she'd thrown at me came rushing back.

“Best fuck of my life. Every single weekend. I lost my virginity years ago.”

Lies. All of it had been lies.

I stared at her, unable to reconcile the woman who had spent the last ten minutes provoking me with the reality staring back at me.

Rosarie wasn't what she had claimed to be.

And somehow, that frightened me more than anything she had done tonight.

Because now I had one question I couldn't ignore.

Why the hell had she lied to me?