I knew I sounded like a prude. Worse—I knew I was raised to be one, and shaking off the chains of my dated scruples would be difficult. But I wasn’t nineteen. Not really. I had the manners of a fifty-year-old and the life experience of a goddamn toddler.

“Forget it.”

He sucked his teeth in, smirking. “Fine. No fucking. We can fool around. Senior-year style. A blast from the past.”

That sounded equally as dangerous as going all the way. The mere idea of being with him in the same room with the door closed felt scandalous, somehow.

“In your room?”

He hitched one shoulder up. “Your call. One of us will have to leave after it’s over. I don’t share a bed with women.”

“And men?” I slid back into my element, glad we were back in friendly territory.

“Watch your mouth, Miss Rossi, unless you want to find it wrapped around my something long and hard that’d make your jaw snap.”

I knew he was kidding this time, and even had to cover a grin, ducking my head down.

“Is sleeping alone a principle, too?”

“Yes.”

So he did not share a bed with his partners, did not perform oral sex, and was not interested in forming a relationship with a woman. I didn’t know much about the world of dating, but I was pretty certain my future husband wasn’t a great catch.

“I feel like there’s a Francesca question coming my way.” He scanned me, and I realized I’d been munching on my lower lip contemplatively.

“Why do you not give oral?” I asked, pinking again. It didn’t help that we were having the conversation in the middle of the foyer where Ms. Sterling could hear us through the thin door of her room.

Wolfe, of course, seemed anything but embarrassed, placing his shoulder on the wall and watching me through lazy eyes.

“I actually quite enjoy the taste of pussy. It’s the bowing down part I have severe dislike to.”

“You think it’s degrading?”

“I will never kneel for anyone. Don’t take it personally.”

“Surely, there are plenty of positions that would not require that of you.”

What was I saying?

He smirked. “In all of them, the person giving the pleasure looks like the peasant.”

“And how come you never share a bed with anyone?”

“People leave. Getting used to them is pointless.”

“A husband and a wife are not supposed to leave each other.”

“Yet you would be more than willing to turn your back on this, would you not, my dear fiancée?”

I said nothing. He pushed off the wall and took a step toward me, tilting my chin up with his thumb. Wolfe was wrong. Or at least, not completely right. I was no longer hell-bent on running away from him. Not since I realized my parents weren’t going to fight for me. Angelo said we’d be together this lifetime, but I hadn’t heard from him since. With every day that passed, breathing without feeling as if a knife had been shoved into my lungs became easier.

But I didn’t confess that to Wolfe. I didn’t utter aloud what my body spoke to him in my parents’ piano room.

I stepped out of his embrace, telling him everything there was to say.

I’m not ready yet.

“Good night, Villain.” I ambled to my bedroom.

The jagged edge of his voice ran like fingers over my back behind me, but he relented. Accepted my reluctance to be with him like that.

“Sleep tight, Nemesis.”

I WATCHED FROM THE BACK of my Cadillac as the private investigator I’d hired slammed his car door shut and walked over to knock on the Rossi’s door. Francesca’s mother answered, and he handed her the brown manila file and turned around without a word, just as I had instructed him to.

Arthur Rossi tried to destroy the evidence against him.

I was going to destroy him.

I’d filled Chicago’s streets with more cops and moles. For the past three decades, he’d been ruling those streets with an iron fist. And now, in only a short few weeks, I’d managed to eliminate a lot of his power.

The investigator I’d hired reported back that Arthur had been drinking more, sleeping less, and raised his hand to two of his most trustworthy soldiers. For the first time in three decades, he was spotted leaving his own strip clubs, smelling not only like cigars and alcohol but also other women’s pussies. Two of the women, out-of-towners, were stupid enough to allow the investigator to take pictures of them with Arthur.

I’d created more of a mess for him, and it seemed as though his Keaton problem wasn’t going to go away.

I watched Francesca’s mother’s face crumpling as she slid the pictures out of the envelope. I simultaneously clutched a letter in my own hand. It was addressed to me from her husband. Containing anthrax, I was sure, if it weren’t too incriminating against him.

Francesca’s mother started after the investigator’s white Hyundai, but he already took off before she could question him further about the things he showed her.

I tore open the letter and skimmed over it.

It was an invitation to throw his daughter and me an engagement party.

It was suspicious, but a part of me gave him the benefit of the doubt. I figured he wanted to put on a show and make people think our marriage had his blessing in order to try and assert more power over the situation. Furthermore, staging the fire at Murphy’s didn’t serve him well. My briefcase (which didn’t contain the evidence against him, as he’d been tipped) was gone, but now he reopened a front with the Irish, who saw the fire as a direct attack on them.

Saying Francesca and her parents ended their last encounter on a bad note with me would be the understatement of the goddamn century, and this could give them a chance to patch things up. Not that I had any plans to play The Brady Bunch with a mobster, but the last thing I wanted was a scandal-filled wedding with a tearful bride. And the future Mrs. Keaton, much to my disdain, excelled at turning on that Buckingham Fountain and crying her eyes out every time things didn’t work according to her Instagram-perfect ideas.

Francesca was at church again. She’d been spending a lot of time at church, because on top of being a prude and a crier, she was also—you guessed it—a closeted nun. On the bright side, it couldn’t hurt my chances of gaining more supporters. Everyone loved a good Christian family. They didn’t have to know the groom’s bride was more interested in banging the family’s friend.

Today, Francesca had previewed the decorations for our upcoming nuptials. Since we’d agreed there was no need for a rehearsal dinner, we decided on a speedy event in the house of God, followed by a modest party at her parents’.

Arthur also asked in the letter if we’d do the Rossi couple the honor of staying the night at their house and attend a celebratory breakfast afterward.

It was a good opportunity to finally sit him down and lay it all out for him, play by play. How I was going to take away everything he’d ever worked for. Then break the news that none of the money, property, and reputation he’d gained over the years mattered and make him realize that none of it would help him one bit in his dire situation.

Francesca and I weren’t going to give him any grandchildren.

It wouldn’t hurt that my bride would get the chance to spend time with her mother. A reward for her sensible behavior.

“Back to the house,” I told Smithy.

“You have the pep rally at six o’clock,” one of my Executive Protection Agents (fancy name for a bodyguard, just as well—as there was zero chance of my remembering his real name) pointed out from the passenger’s seat. Usually, it was my PA’s job to remind me about social obligations. However, he was down with his fifth stomach bug for the summer and texted Smithy and my bodyguards relentlessly to keep me on schedule.

I waved my hand. “Make it quick.”

As we zipped by the Sears Tower, deep dish pizza parlors with cheap neon signs, and buskers performing their own version of Billboard’s current hits, I thought about my fiancée. Francesca had been growing on me like fingernails. Slowly, determinedly, and completely without my attention or encouragement.

She waited for me every evening in her vegetable garden, an oddly attractive scent of mud, cigarettes, clean soap clinging on her body, and not wearing much more than a barely there long camisole that cleaved to her body with sweat and mist. She was always surprised and delighted when I lowered her on the wet soil, still fully clad in my suit, pressed my knee between her legs and devoured her sweet mouth until our lips were cracked and our mouths were dry. She always gasped when I rubbed her hand over my cock through my dress pants, and she even chanced a squeeze in the pavilion, somewhere exposed enough for her to feel safe but hidden enough for us not to have an audience. Her eyes flared in awe and joy when I flicked her clit through her panties not-so-accidentally. Every time I gave her a chance to pull away, she stapled her body to mine, making us one entity.

I kept my word and didn’t initiate sex with her. Figured the day we’d sleep together was drawing close with our pending nuptials. She was receptive, syrupy and…fascinated. Long gone were the days of the jaded, experienced Kristens. Francesca, despite the fact she’d slept with men before, was raw. I was going to teach her all the dirty tricks the Bandini kid couldn’t and have fun doing so.

I’d visited her room a few times when I knew she wasn’t there, always watching out for two things. The third note—she hadn’t opened the box yet. I knew because the tiny golden key was positioned precisely in the same place, not moving an inch between the cracks of her expensive, ancient wooden floors. The floor was due to be replaced before her arrival, but now that I knew where she kept her secrets, I decided to keep the cracks intact. The other was to check her phone for traces of Angelo. There were none. His messages were left unanswered, though she did not delete him from her contacts.

“We’re here,” Smithy said as he parked by Lincoln Brooks High School. The place had produced more gang members than literate citizens, and it was my job to smile, wave, and pretend that things would be okay for the students. They were going to be—once I’d clean their streets of Francesca’s father’s employees.