My name is Camilla Ridge.
And I am the light.
Talent
Afuneral director will put anything on the death certificate if the price is right.
If the funeral director has a gambling addiction and owes t
he mafia a debt, they’ll do it for free.
Doctoring government reports could cost them their career but refusing to do our bidding would certainly cost their life. The death certificate was delivered to Ridge & Sons yesterday afternoon in a padded envelope labeled:Fragile. Maybe it was someone’s idea of a joke, but fuck that. Sonya signed for the package and tried to give it to Wilder. He took one look at it and walked away.
Only six weeks have passed since we found our only parent murdered outside his home. So, yeah, we’re fucking fragile. The visual inspection, autopsy—not applicable,and the manner of death are falsified. He was picked up in an unmarked van, examined after hours, and cremated in less than two days.
The official statement released to the media stated the cause of death as a pulmonary embolism.
My mother’s official statement claimed heart disease.
Both lies.
“How long will you be gone?” Lydia asks from bed. She’s posed naked on her stomach with the blankets draped to her waist. Long lashes brush across the tops of her reddened cheeks, and her dark hair is splayed across the pillow, not so long ago wrapped around my fist as I fucked her from behind.
“Twelve, fifteen hours,” I say, fastening a Rolex on my wrist.
“Does Camilla know?”
Low light from the nightstand lamp guides me through the room, but I still kick the bed frame and whisper a curse under my breath. A soft, sleepy laugh draws my attention away from the pain in my foot to my entire life rolling onto her back, exposing her bare chest to the semidarkness. Lydia’s arms drift above her head, and the sheet slips over and across her waist. Not even the shadows can stay away, cradling the supple roundness of her breasts, and licking the small dip where her hip bones swell.
“He told her enough.” I kneel on to the bed, chasing away any shadows that aren’t mine.
Uninterested and feverish are Lydia’s only genuine facial expressions. After pretending to be someone she wasn’t for so many years, summoning a picture-perfect smile, batting her lashes, or blushing after a compliment for the benefit of others comes second nature. Last week, when Nicolai released Hush from Giovanni’s fifty-percent tax, he fell for her wide-eyed graciousness, believing it genuine.
It was as fake as my father’s death certificate.
“What are your plans while we’re gone?” I brush my thumb over her full lips. We spent hours kissing—each other’s mouths, each other’s bodies, and her lips are still stained from the red lipstick she wears.
“Bad things,” she whispers, kissing the pad of my thumb. The veil of indifference slips, giving me a peek of the heat in her eyes. It hits my vein like a drug I’m in constant search of, rowdy and too brief. A high I’d give up my whole fucking life for.
There’re variants of uninterested and feverish reserved for those closest to her. I’ve seen the half-smile she shares with Camilla and the lazy contempt she shares with Wild. But they don’t get what I get: deep hazel eyes, parted rouge-tinged lips, hard nipples, and a wet pussy.
A new expression.
Soft.
Cupping her breast, I close my mouth over her nipple, circling my tongue around the beaded flesh. Sliding her hands around the back of my neck, I’m held close as my hands roam farther down her body. I explore the stretch of her torso and the curve of her pelvic bone until I find the place between Lydia’s legs that makes me delirious at best.
“Should I stay behind?” I ask, bracing myself as my fingers slide into her. She’s drenched, slick with remnants of our lovemaking. “Fuck, baby.”
Through the yellow-orange haze from the light, she finds my eyes and inhales a slow breath through kiss-swelled lips. I’ve filled her to the brim, and she glistens in my seed as it seeps out of her, coating my hand, the length of her cunt, and the inside of her thighs. Writhing in the sheets, she asks, “How many times tonight? Three or four? That’s mostly you in there.”
Pushing my thumb into her clit, a smile tugs at the corner of my mouth. “Three, but we can make it four. Am I staying home or not?”
“Not,” she says, and it was a mistake to ask. The veil sweeps across her face, straightening the subtle pout in her lips and hardening the softness in her eyes. She’s spread out and open for me, and I could take her like this, but Lydia’s mind is hard at work building another wall to scale.
Uninterested and feverishareLydia’s only true expressions, and I am no exception to the rule. Over the last year, I’ve blown holes through her walls with sledgehammers, driven through them with tanks, and brought them down with dynamite. One after another after another, I stand on top of the rubble victorious.
Victory is a smile that takes up her whole face, and when her eyes are alive like a burning forest. It’s waking up with her in my arms instead of across the bed, and it’s when she takes my hand and squeezes, like she might get lost without me. Triumph is as big as her lips brushing the shell of my ear and whispering,“I love you the most, Talent.”And as small as soft laughter late in the night after I’ve kicked the bed frame.
