A Sinner’s Truth (De Bellis Crime Family Book 5)
A Sinner’s Truth: Chapter 27

Aria’s soft snores fill the room. I want to wake her up. I want to devour her. I know that’s the last thing she’s going to want when she wakes up, though. I put the ibuprofen and a bottle of water on the bedside table next to her.

Then I leave her asleep as I walk out. Marcel is waiting for me in the games room. I sent him a message last night to meet me first thing. I tried to insist he drag his ass out of bed and meet me when I got back here last night. He politely told me to fuck off and that he’d meet me in the morning.

“What’s so urgent I had to leave my wife in bed?” Marcel asks me.

“I need you to hack into the cameras at Unhinged. I want the footage from last night,” I tell him.

“Why not just ask Williamson for them?”

“I did. He told me he’d give them to me after his own team went through them. I don’t want to wait.” Usually, I wouldn’t let someone tell me I had to wait for shit, but our family and the Williamsons are long-time friends, and I’m not about to jeopardise that when I have other means to get what I want.

“What happened?” Marcel asks.

“Someone grabbed on to Aria when we were walking through the club. I want to know who it was,” I explain.

“Did you ask her?” Marcel raises a brow at me.

“She was drunk.” I smile at the memory. Aria was possessive, jealous, and fucking hot as shit when she tried to publicly stake her claim on me. Not that she needs to. I’m fucking loyal. If I tell someone I’m theirs, then I’m sure as shit not going to let anyone else have me.

My mind drifts to Shelli. I’ve thought about her less and less over the last few weeks. I think I owe that to Aria and her body giving me a distraction I need right now. Whenever I let my mind drift to Shelli, pure rage fills my veins. I never thought it’d be possible to hate someone I spent years loving.

The worst part is there are still times when I’m with Aria that the guilt starts creeping in. The fact that I allow myself to be happy with her has me twisted the fuck up. Aria tells me that I should focus on remembering the good years I had with Shelli, and not how things ended. But I can’t think of Shelli and not feel the betrayal. The lies.

I knew something was off and I put it down to fucking wedding stress. She made a damn fool out of me. Not just then but the last year and a half I’ve been struggling to keep my damn sanity, all because I was mourning a lie.

“Okay, let’s see what fucker just got an entrance ticket to the warehouse,” Marcel says while cracking his laptop open.

“I’m making coffee,” I tell him. His fingers are going crazy on the keyboard. A heap of code shows up on his screen.

By the time I get my coffee and walk back in, Marcel has the camera feed from the club up on his computer screen. I tell him what time and where to check. Sure enough, some fucker did grab Aria.

I watch as he leans in and says something to her, and then he vanishes into the crowd. “Who the fuck is that?” I hiss. “Can you get a better look at his face?”

“This is the only view we have from this camera. Give me a minute,” Marcel says. “I can track his movement through the club. Get a face shot.”

Not even sixty seconds later, my brother has the fucker’s profile up on the screen. “Oliver fucking Densper,” I grit out between clenched teeth. “I should have known the arsehole wouldn’t let her go that easily.”

“This is the fucker her father wanted to marry her off to,” Marcel says. “We never did find out what her old man was getting out of that deal, did we?”

“No, we didn’t. He hasn’t contacted her, hasn’t done shit about it, so I let it go.” That was obviously a mistake.

“What do you want to do about him?” Marcel nods his head towards the screen.

“I want to know what he said to her,” I tell him. “And I want to know why the fuck she lied to me last night.”

Anger surges through me. She fucking lied to me. I asked her what happened last night, and she blew it off, knowing full well some fucker had his hands on her.

Aria’s still out of it when I walk back into the bedroom and close the door. She looks angelic, her hair fanning out over the pillow. I want to crawl back into bed with her and hold her close. I want to keep her shielded from the world so no one else can touch her.

I climb onto the bed and straddle her body, trapping her between the mattress and me. “Aria, wake up.” I kiss my way down her neck. My hand trails over her chest before cupping her naked breast.

“Mmm…” Aria moans and arches her back off the bed as much as she can with me on top of her.

“Wake up,” I whisper into her ear again. My cock is hard. I need to be inside her. But first, I need to find out what that little shit said to her last night and why the fuck she lied to me about it.

“Santo?” Her eyes blink open. “What time is it?”

“Time for us to have a chat.” My hand massages the flesh of her breast; then I pinch her nipple between my fingers.

“Chat?” she asks.

“You lied to me, Aria. I don’t like being lied to. Especially by you,” I tell her, twisting her nipple a little harder than I should.

“I didn’t lie.” She frowns at me.

“I asked you who grabbed you last night. You lied and told me you didn’t know. But you did know, didn’t you?” I could tell her I already know who it was, but I’m giving her an opportunity to come clean.

“I didn’t want you to do something that would get you into trouble,” she says. “It was Oliver. He’s just being his usual arsehole self.”

“He touched what’s mine. You should have told me.”

“Why? So you could start a fight in a nightclub and get into trouble?” She squirms underneath me, trying to get out of my grip.

My hands wrap around her wrists, and I hold them still above her head. “Do you know what usually happens to people who lie to me, darling?”

“I didn’t… What?” she asks me.

“You’ll never know because none of them are alive to tell you.” My lips nibble on her earlobe.

“I… just don’t want you doing something like that for me,” she says.

“You don’t want me to kill for you, Aria?”

“No.”

“Then you should have chosen your husband more carefully. Killing is what I do best, and there is no better reason to do it than to keep you safe.”

“Oliver is just a spoilt brat who doesn’t like hearing the word no. He can send flowers and make comments. He’s not going to hurt me,” she says.

I still. “What do you mean he sent flowers?”

“When I went to my office a few weeks ago, there were flowers on my desk. I assumed they were from him. The card basically said the same thing he said last night.”

“What did he say?”

“That he will get what’s his,” she tells me.

“He’s a fucking dead man. If he thinks for a second he’s getting you,” I grit out.

“He’s just an ass. He’s not going to do anything.” Aria wraps her arms around my neck and presses her lips against mine. “I’m sorry I lied. I just wanted you to take me home.”

“Don’t ever lie to me, Aria.”

“Okay,” she says as her mouth captures mine. The buzzing of her phone from the bedside table stops me before I can deepen our kiss. Aria reaches her arm out, grabbing her phone. “Hello?”

I don’t hear what the other person is saying but her face goes ashen white. I climb off her and tug her upright. When the phone drops to the bed from her shaky hand, I pick it up.

“Who is this?” I grunt into the phone.

“This is Detective Humes. Who is this?”

“Santo De Bellis, the husband of the woman you just called. What the fuck did you tell her?” I yell at him.

“Her father was found in his house by his secretary. He was shot at close range. I need her to come in for questioning,” he says.

“Yeah, you can get a fucking warrant. She’s not coming in to be questioned,” I tell him and cut the call before I scoop her into my arms. “Aria, darling, it’s going to be okay.”

She doesn’t say anything, not a single word for what seems like hours but is more likely minutes. Then she blinks up at me. “I have to shower. There are things I need to organise.” She climbs off the bed and walks into the bathroom.

What the fuck? Things she needs to organise.

I know she didn’t like her father, but the fact of the matter is he was her father and her only parent. This is going to hurt her. My chest aches at the thought of her in any kind of pain. It has to be sympathy pangs. She’s mine for now, but in eleven months, she won’t be mine anymore.