Holy shit!

Jude

“You’d be sentencing the man stupid enough to touch you to a slow, drawn-out, miserable death. I suggest you rethink that plan.” I said it calmly. 

I wasn’t a good man.

I had never claimed to be. 

I had done things that would make normal people shiver in terror. I was neither proud of it nor horrified by it. Maybe at first it had given me sleepless nights, but not anymore. I had gotten to a stage in my life where I accepted all my actions as simply necessary evils. It was what needed to be done for business, and if I didn’t do it, it’d be up to one of my other brothers to do it, and the last thing I wanted was for them to get stained by evil. 

I was already black as the devil. What was more black or even red to a man like me? I had been rotten from the day I was born, and I’d gladly do all the dirty work so my brothers would never have to. That was what older siblings did. They protected the younger ones. Grandmother had driven it home to me a million times. 

But killing whoever would be idiotic enough to touch my wife wouldn’t do any good to the company; in fact, it would only serve to make me very happy and satisfied. 

She gaped at me, her face twisted into disbelief. 

Isadora was a stunning woman. I had heard Theo gush endlessly about her. All the things he had said about her had been great understatements. Isadora was a provocative woman, no matter how young and childish I thought she was. I had long, straight blonde hair, big blue eyes, and the most pillowy lips I had ever seen on a person. They were fuller on the top than at the bottom, turning her mouth into a permanent pout. She looked like a doll. And she looked like trouble. 

“Do you just go around killing people?” she asked, her voice trembling. 

I could bet everything I owned that my new bride had done a little sleuthing about me. Well, she had better not be hoping for reassurance that I wasn’t the big, bad monster she had read about. There was no reassurance to be found here. 

“No.” The relief on her face amused me. “Just those who deserve it.” The relief was gone just as soon as it had come. 

She was a marvel. I couldn’t remember when last I’d met someone who wore all their expressions on their face like an open book. I was used to dealing with people with nefarious intentions, snakes, and people who thought they were the smartest and most cunny. Unfortunately for them, I hadn’t yet met anyone who could run circles around me. I was always one step ahead, just the way I liked it. 

“What am I supposed to be doing here every day?” she whined. “This place is a mausoleum. Why don’t you have a place in the city? How am I supposed to shop? We’re cut off from civilization.” 

I wished. 

What had I been thinking about when I agreed to marry a 22-year-old? 

“And did my father already mention my diet restrictions?” 

She was going to be in for a hell of a surprise when she discovered that this house didn’t employ a staff. Past experience with staff turning traitorous had made us get rid of them all. Only Martha, Lady Madigan’s personal aide, still remained. 

I pressed my lips together to hold back an entertained smile. 

“Can you at least help me take off this darn dress? I always wanted to get married somewhere on the beach, in a white bikini and a see-through lace dress over it, flowers woven into my hair, barefoot on the sand.” She walked to where I was standing at the door and turned around, presenting her back to me. 

She talked way too much. 

I traced my fingers down the back of the dress, where there were endless fastenings securing the dress. As if my hand had a mind of its own, it flew to her hair, digging out one flowered hairpin. 

“What are you doing?” she asked, her voice full of curiosity. 

I ignored her in favor of taking her hair down from the twisted-up knot. When it finally fell down her back in shiny waves, I stared, entranced. 

“Jude.” She said it impatiently. “the dress too. Any day now.”

“Bossy little thing.” I whispered into her ear before sweeping her hair over her shoulders and starting on with the buttons. I had done this for Josephine often, helping her undress when she was too 

No, I didn’t want to think about it. 

Josephine belonged in the past with that version of me.

As the dress parted, her expanse of milky skin was revealed, and the visceral reaction I had to all that flesh on display staggered me. I took a step away as soon as the last button came undone. 

She turned around to face me, her hands holding the dress up and in place. 

“That’s all; you can go off to catch your plane now.” 

What Isadora didn’t know was that I had already been climbing aboard my private jet when, for some reason, my legs refused to take that final step into it. The meeting was important, and yet, here I was. In all my years, I have never chosen anything over the business. 

I was at her door like a fool now because my damn legs had carried me here straight from the driveway. 

“Do you threaten the news stations to not publish stories about you?” she asked. “I’m glad pictures of my husband riding off into the sunset without me aren’t out there right now, but only someone with something to hide goes to all that length.” 

I narrowed my eyes in confusion. What was she talking about this time around? The last thing I would ever bother myself with was the media. They were all a bunch of vultures anyway. 

It happened so fast; one second she was just standing there, running her mouth; the next, that damn dog bolted into the room and charged for her. She screamed just as I caught the dog’s leash, and when I looked at her, her hands were covering her eyes in fear, and her wedding dress was pooled around her feet, leaving her in just lace pants and a matching garter. 

Holy shit.