Page 26 of Kingpin
Her giggle behind the door clenched my gut, and I felt electricity zipping up the back of my spine. Three weeks, and I still hadn’t consummated our marriage. It wasn’t that she wasn’t pretty. Oh, no. The woman was beautiful. Fraught with curves any man would drop to his knees for. That only solidified my concern. Something was so off about her that I couldn't even take what was rightfully mine as her husband.
In that moment, I decided to do a little digging.
I reached for her purse and leaned against the bathroom counter. If a woman kept anything hidden, there were two places she hid it: her purse and her underwear drawer. I rummaged through her purse and found her phone pretty quickly. I set it off to the side and kept pulling things out.
I searched and searched until the damn thing was empty.
“Fuck,” I murmured.
“What was that?” Brianna asked.
“Nothing. Hold on. I want to dry off first.”
“Of course. Take your time. I’ll just be in here changing.”
My cock pulsed at the idea of her naked just beyond that door. But my gut pushed me on. I flipped her purse upside down and began to shake, but nothing fell out except lint and some balled-up tissue. I held the purse up to the light and studied it. There had to be something here. Something I missed.
Then, I found a small zipper compartment on the side of the purse.
Bingo.
I slowly unzipped it, trying to cover my tracks. The second that small glass vial caught the bathroom light my heart sank. I reached in and grasped the small vial, holding it between my thumb and my middle finger. As I held it up to the light, watching the bubble dance, fury burned in my veins.
“Brianna?”
“Yes, handsome?”
I ripped the bathroom door open. “What exactly is this?”
She turned around, clad only in her bra and panties, and when she saw what I was holding, her face dropped. That told me everything I needed to know. My eyes locked with hers as I pulled the small cork from the vial. I tipped it up to my lips, watching as her eyes widened. She didn’t say anything, though. She didn’t stop me.
Not that it would have mattered.
I smacked my lips. “Doesn’t really have a taste. The smell is a bit pungent, so you were smart to have kept it corked.”
It didn’t even look like she was breathing as her eyes locked with my own.
“I’d say this is some sort of snake venom. Reduced to a fine liquid so it can be easily inserted into, say, a drink. Right?”
Still, my wife didn’t move.
“There was no need for you to waste your time, you know. I’ve developed a high tolerance to most protein-based poisons. You’d need ten times this just to make me loopy.”
I tossed the vial to the floor and crushed it under my heel.
“Come here,” I commanded.
Brianna blinked, but she didn’t budge.
“I said, come here, you slimy little bitch!”
I yelled so hard my vision faltered. When my eyes focused again, she was standing in front of me, her beautiful face tilted up to mine. I gripped her cheeks. I squeezed them until her mouth opened, and even though her face turned red, she didn’t cry.
Interesting.
“Who ordered the hit?” I asked.
She shook her head. “Israel, I—”
