Vengeful (Villains #2)(30)

A knockoff leather purse slumped on the shelf. Marcella rifled through the contents and came up with a hundred dollars in cash and a pair of glasses.

She finished getting dressed, tugged her hair into a bun at the nape of her neck, slipped on the glasses, and stepped into the hall. The cop in front of her door was picking at a bandage on his hand. He didn’t look up as Marcella turned and left.

A queue of taxis waited outside the hospital.

She climbed into the nearest one.

“Address?” rumbled the driver.

“The Heights.” It was the first time she’d spoken, and her voice was raw from smoke, a fraction lower and edged with the luscious rasp that so many starlets craved. “On Grand.”

The car pulled away, and Marcella leaned back against the leather seat.

She had always been good under pressure.

Other women could afford to panic, but being a mob wife required a certain level of poise. It meant staying calm. Or at least feigning calm.

At the moment, Marcella didn’t feel like she was feigning anything. There was no fear, no doubt. Her head wasn’t spinning. She didn’t feel lost. If anything, this road she was on felt paved and straight, the end lit by a single, blinding light.

And beneath that light stood Marcus Andover Riggins.





II



REVELATION





I





FOURTEEN YEARS AGO


UNIVERSITY OF MERIT


EVERYONE was shitfaced.

Marcella sat on the kitchen counter, her heels knocking absently against the cabinets as she watched them stumble past, sloshing drinks and shouting to be heard. The house was filled with music, bodies, stale booze and cheap cologne, and all the other inane trappings of a college frat party. Her friends had convinced her to come, with the weak argument that it was just what students did, that there would be free beer and hot guys and it would be fun.

Those same girls were lost somewhere in the mass of bodies. Every now and then she thought she caught a glimpse of a familiar blond bob, a high brown ponytail. Then again, there were a dozen of them. Cookie-cutter college kids. More concerned with blending in than standing out.

Marcella Renee Morgan was not having fun.

She was nursing a beer in a glass bottle, and she was bored—bored by the music, and the boys who swaggered over every now and then to flirt, and then stormed away, sulking, when she turned them down. She was bored by being called beautiful, and then a bitch. Stunning, and then stuck up. A ten, and then a tease.

Marcella had always been pretty. The kind of pretty people couldn’t ignore. Bright blue eyes and pitch-black hair, a heart-shaped face atop the lean, clean lines of a model. Her father told her she’d never have to work. Her mother said she’d have to work twice as hard. In a way, both of them were right.

Her body was the first thing people saw.

For most, it seemed to be the last thing, too.

“You’re think you’re better than me?” a drunken senior had slurred at her earlier.

Marcella had looked at him straight on, his eyes bleary, hers sharp, and said simply, “Yes.”

“Bitch,” he’d muttered, storming away. Predictable.

Marcella had promised her friends she’d stay for a drink. She tipped the bottle back, eager to finish the beer.

“I see you found the good stuff,” said a deep voice, rich, with a faint southern lilt.

She glanced up and saw a guy leaning back against the kitchen island. Marcella didn’t know what he was talking about, not until he nodded at the glass bottle in her hand with the plastic cup in his own. She gestured at the fridge. He crossed to it, retrieving two more bottles. He cracked them open against the counter’s edge and offered one to her.

Marcella took it, considering him over the rim.

His eyes were dark blue, his hair sun-kissed, that warm shade between blond and brown. Most of the guys at the party hadn’t shed their baby fat, high school still clinging to them like wet clothes, but his black shirt stretched tight over strong shoulders, and his jaw was sharp, a small cleft denting his chin.

“Marcus,” he said by way of introduction. She knew who he was. She’d seen him on campus, but it was Alice who’d told her—Marcus Riggins was trouble. Not because he was gorgeous. Not because he was rich. Nothing so bland as all that. No, Marcus was trouble for one simple, delicious reason: his family was in the mob. Alice had said it like it was a bad thing, a deal breaker, but if anything, it only piqued her interest.

“Marcella,” she said, uncrossing and recrossing her legs.

He smiled. “Marcus and Marcella,” he said, lifting his drink. “We sound like a matching set.”

Someone turned the music up, and his next words were lost under the bass.

“What did you say?” she called over the song, and he took the opportunity to close the gap between them. She shifted her legs to the side, and he stepped closer, smelling like apples and linen, clean and crisp, such a welcome change from the sticky, tacky grime of lazy, drunken bodies.

He rested his beer on the counter just beside her arm, the cold glass brushing her elbow and sending a small shiver through her. A slow smile crossed his face.

He leaned in close, as if telling her a secret. “Follow me.”

He stepped back, taking the scent of linen and the blush of heat with him.