All Chapters of Desires In Mourning : Chapter 1 - Chapter 9

9 Chapters

Chapter 1

The rain had stopped. Odette Davenport stood at the mouth of the Moretti estate's private cemetery, her black coat hugging her body tightly, the wind seeping under the hem of her dress and running over her skin. Her boots sank tiny into the muddy earth as she watched her husband's coffin being lowered into the earth. Salvatore Moretti was gone. Three nights ago, she had found him facedown in the living room. Blood beneath his head and, Three bullets in his skull. Her fingers trembled from cold, as she tucked her hands into her coat pockets, willing her breath to steady. You should be consumed by sorrow for his passing Odette. That’s what she told herself countless times. But instead, a voice in the back of her mind says something entirely different, something she dared not say aloud. You’re free now, Odette. She flinched at the thought. Salvatore Moretti had been the ideal son, in the family's eyes—courteous, calm, a gentleman. But at home, he had been ruthless.

Chapter 2

"I’ve arranged your marriage to the Santoro girl, Nico." The hypocrisy of it made him ill. Nico stared at his father, who sat behind the massive oak desk, looking so laid-back like his son had not taken three gunshots to the head inside their own home, by the lord knows who, which is simply an inconvenience. "And Salvatore?" Nico asked, trying to keep his voice level. "Do we just pretend that someone killed him in this house?" Mr. Moretti helped himself to a drink, unmoved. "What does it matter now?" Nico laughed, harshly. That was all? Not who did this? Not find them. Just another dead Moretti to sweep under the rug again. He shouldn't have been surprised. Feelings was something his father had long equated with weakness. He had ruled the family for years with steeliness and utterly without emotions. Despite that, it infuriated him, that His father had only summoned him home to be bartered off to some Mirella Santoro, a stranger he did not know and had no intention of marryi

Chapter 3

Three Penelope removed Odette's coat and began to undress her. Odette stood frozen, her loose arms at her sides. Her knees weak. For some very unusual reasons, her heart had not stopped racing. Not since Mr Moretti's corridor encounter. Not since Nico's arm went around her waist holding her in place against his chest. He'd touched her hardly at all. Only one hand. Only a few inches of closeness. And yet… Her body was still flamming from his touch, her thighs still squeezing tight in instinct. It was not something she'd ever felt before. The quick loop within her belly. That throbbed thoroughly somewhere below her hips, that had her shifting slightly on her feet now just to find some relief from this strange heat. "Ma'am?" Penelope's soft voice broke the silence. "Are you all right?" Odette nodded too quickly. "Yes. I'm— I'm—fine." She says her breath caught repeatedly. Penelope unfastened the back of her dress, as Odette remains perfectly still staring at the floor, disc

Chapter 4

"You appear to be Odette Davenport" Nico replied his hands still fixed on hers. "Now answer me. How excertly did you end my brother's life." He growled. She shook her head, her lips trembling. "I— I—did—not do it." She breathed. Nico turned away from her, pacing, his fingers clenching and unclenching at his sides He stared blindly at the wall, then ran a hand over his hair. The words did not soothe him, more so. They fueled him. She looked… afraid. And that only cinched more suspicion around his ribcage. He had recited Giancarlo's words a dozen times at least by now, and yet they still sounded very much unreal. "Scratches Nico. On his torso. Deep. Defensive. And a stab wound— on the lower abdomen." "The bullets came after." "Your brother wasn't just shot. The shots came afterwards. Salvatore was stabbed first—possibly even killed that way." "There had been signs of intimacy too. I noticed it when I was doing the preliminary exam on Salvatore's body, moments befo

Chapter 5

Odette’s blood ran cold. Her eyes whipped for the silhouette in the doorway, while still scandalously perched on the margin of her late husband's desk. Suzanna stood frozen—one of the oldest house keeper, her mouth slightly parted, her expression stricken her gaze fixed somewhere just over Odette’s thigh— refusing to see what might already be seared into her memory. She immediately averted her vision from Odette's positioning on the desk. "I beg your pardon, Sir Nico," she breathed, "I didn't realize the study was occupied." With that she redraw, the door shutting behind her. Silence closed in around the room. Odette remained paralyzed, unable to move. Her face burned with a heat that made her want to vanish into the floorboards. Her legs trembled fitfully as she tried to move against the desk, to modestly shut her knees properly, but the movement only tended to increase the burning pulsing low between her thighs. What in God's name was happening to me. She thought. Y

Chapter 6

A knock on her door was tempered, no louder than the rain on the windows, which started a few hours ago. Odette's brow creased into her pillow. The room was biting, the fire had long since gone out. She opened her eyes, slowly, her breath fogged in the darkness. Penelope, she thought, rising. Another knock came, then nothing. She moved across the floor, her palm against the door. Then opened the latch her breath caughting. Nico. Not her maid. What was he doing here? He stood in the doorway, soaked, his shirt plastering to every inch of his skin, his coat were open, water running down from his hair. His chest heaved once. And her gaze fall—to the faint outline of his abs under the wet clothes. His belt. His forearms. His knuckles which were curled white at his hips. She froze, her throat drying as she swallowed. "Nico—?" She murmured in a rasp. Her heart beat quickening. He looked at her like a man on the brink of madness. Her fists tightened into the doorframe

Chapter 7

Nico had woken up at some wee morning hour, though he hadn’t slept well, for days now. Sleep had become some kind of myth lately, something his body pretended to do while his mind would roam in the dark, back to the study. To Odette. He ought to have been focusing on the case. On the folder locked away in his room, parked with Giancarlo's forensic overviews and tribunal-acceptable suspicions. On the evidence that Salvatore had been stabbed first, before even being shot, and that his murderer had likely dispatched him up close—intimately. In rage or terror. But instead— His thoughts, strayed elsewhere every night, every minute. To her. To the sound of her breathing. To the warmth of her skin against his. To the sweep of her waist, the soft flesh of her wrist. To something entirely and sinfully different. Making merciless love to her. God. She drove him mad without even trying to seduce him. And giving that he was not supposed to feel this way, or was not wo

Chapter 8

Odette stirred from her drowse, the pillow warm below her cheek. Her head throbbed faintly at the temples as ‎she tried to lift her hand, scarcely moving the blanket beneath her. Her skin felt displeased and feverish. Slowly, she turned her head, her lashes dragging open to find herself quite in the familiar surroundings of her bedroom. The curtains were drawn. Groggily, she tried to move, but a searing pain extended outward from her body as she felt a wave of dizziness wash over her. “Glad you’ve come back to us.” Startled Odette’s eyes moved slowly towards the voice. ‎Odelyn. ‎She was seated on the chair near the hearth, her hands folded neatly in her lap. “You caused a considerable stir, sister. Even summoned concern from Sir Moretti. quite the feat, that.” ‎Odette blinked slowly, and swallowed, her throat bitter. "What…what happened?" ‎"You fainted in the old garden," Odelyn replied simply, smoothing the skirt of her gown. "Sir Nico carried you in, and yelled for the maids

Chapter 9

*****"Scarcely a sprinkle of yarrow and marigold," Nanny Bellamy declared, moving a strand of her hair behind her ear as she tied a scarf across her neck. "Nothing more. I'll be back before you know you miss me.""I might have Dr. Pelham drop by," Nico proposed.She'd smiled at him then, making him feel like he was one and five all over again."And disturb your father with a few aches? Oh, no," she'd said in a gentle voice. "He won't appreciate the fuss. This will do."He hadn't objected. Maybe he should have.Bellamy pushed the basket onto her arm and dismissed him with the same smile. "Mind your sketches, young sir. I'll have that garden wall straight this time."He'd promised it would. As he watched her leave.Two hours later.He headed down the corridor to the servant's quarter."Has anyone spotted my Nanny?" he inquired of a small kitchen maid with a wicker basket. "Well, She ought to be back by now."She opened her eyes wide in surprise. "Not since morning, sir. I think she sa

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