Kill Order Kiss novel · Chapter 1 of 16
Chapter 1: My Name in His Hand
At 3 AM Mariana finds her own kill order in Rocco's jacket, lets him take her back to bed, and at dawn overhears him promise his father it will be done before her plane lands.
I found the order for my own death in the pocket of my fiancé's jacket.
He had put that jacket around my shoulders five hours earlier, on the terrace, because I was cold.
I was still wearing his ring when I unfolded the paper.
Mariana Cordero. Eliminate before the merger. Not negotiable.
It was Rocco's handwriting.
I knew those tall, slanted letters better than my own.
He wrote them on the notes he left under my pillow.
He wrote them on the card inside my ring box.
Under my name there was one more line.
She knows nothing. Keep it clean. No suffering. I owe her that much.
The date at the top was tomorrow.
My knees went soft, and I put my back against the bookshelf.
The study was dark except for the green lamp on his desk.
The clock on the wall said 3:04.
The Ricci compound was asleep around me, the guards out on their rounds, the family in the east wing.
I had only come down to leave him a note.
I'd written it on a napkin in lipstick.
It said, "Marry me sooner."
It was still in my other hand.
Three hours ago I'd been in his bed.
The sheets had been on the floor.
His mouth had been on my shoulder, then lower, slow, like he had all night and meant to use it.
I'd had my fingers in his hair and my heel hooked behind his knee, pulling him closer.
His hands had held my waist.
He'd kissed the little burn scar on my wrist the way he always did.
When he moved inside me, he'd made me open my eyes and look at him.
"You're mine, Mari," he'd said into my skin. "Say it."
I had said it.
I had said it twice, the second time with my nails in his back and my voice gone.
He'd laughed against my throat, low and pleased with himself, and I'd laughed too.
Now my skin still smelled like him.
I read the paper again.
Maybe it was old.
Maybe it was some other Mariana.
But the ink hadn't faded, and there was only one Mariana Cordero who owned a restaurant in Red Hook and wore a Ricci emerald.
Rocco Ricci had come into Casa Cordero every night for two years.
He'd ordered the same thing every night, my father's ropa vieja, and asked me to dinner every night.
I'd said no six hundred times.
The six hundred and first time, I said yes.
He told me once that I was the only person who made him want to be something other than what he was.
Now he owed me a clean death.
A floorboard creaked in the hall.
I shoved the paper back into the jacket pocket and pulled the jacket tight.
"Mari?"
Rocco stood in the doorway with no shirt on.
His black hair stuck up on one side from the pillow.
His eyes went straight to my face, soft and worried.
He had rolled over and found the bed empty.
He looked completely in love.
"What are you doing down here?"
His voice was low and warm.
It was the same voice that had asked me to say I was his.
I made myself smile.
"I couldn't sleep."
He crossed the room in three steps and pulled me against his chest.
He kissed my forehead.
"You're freezing. Come back to bed."
I was shaking, and he thought it was the cold.
"Rocco," I said into his chest.
"Mm."
"Do you love me?"
He pulled back and looked at me.
The lamp lit the scar through his left eyebrow.
"More than I should," he said.
Then he picked up my napkin from the desk, read the lipstick, and laughed quietly.
"Sooner," he said. "I'll see what I can do."
He took me back upstairs.
I lay beside him with my eyes open until the window went gray.
He slept with one arm across my stomach.
It felt like a bar across a door.
At seven he brought me coffee in bed, the way he always did.
There was an envelope on the saucer.
"Open it," he said.
Inside was a plane ticket.
Teterboro to Lisbon, a private flight, tonight at nine.
"You've been working seven days a week for four years," he said. "Take two weeks. Beppe will fly with you. I'll come out when the business here is done."
"What business?"
"Boring business." He kissed my knuckles. "Signing things."
"Tomorrow?"
His thumb stopped moving on my hand.
"Tomorrow," he said.
He went to shower.
I sat there holding the ticket with both hands.
Nine o'clock tonight.
Before the merger.
I got dressed and went downstairs to find my car keys.
The door to Aurelio Ricci's sitting room was half open.
I heard Rocco's voice inside and stopped.
"She has the ticket," he said. "She'll be on the plane at nine."
His father answered in that soft, dry voice he used for everything, even the weather.
"And Carmine gets his proof?"
"He'll get it," Rocco said. "It'll be done before she lands."
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