Sinners Anonymous :- by Somme Sketcher ( Sinner Anonymous + Sinner Condemned + Sinner Consumed )

Description

My fiancé’s nephew knows every sin I’ve ever committed. He’s about to become the deepest and darkest of them all.

My name is Rory Carter and I do bad things.
There’s a charred soul under this angelic exterior and sometimes, I wonder if my weekly confessions to the Sinners Anonymous hotline will be enough to heal it.

Marrying the seventy-something head of the Cosa Nostra to save my father is the only good deed I’ve ever done.
I’m burning and bitter under the fake smile and tight dresses, but I was keeping it together.
Was.

**********

PART ONE OF A DUET*

No good ever comes from a red-head in a stolen dress with her worldly possessions at her feet.

I should have known she was trouble when smoke and sin followed her into my bar and she challenged me to a game.

She may have won my watch, but she started a war.

As she slipped my Breitling off my wrist and onto her own, she gleefully announced she was the luckiest girl in the world.

Yeah, lucky to everyone but me.

Because the moment her muddy boots stomped down the stairs and up my spine, my empire started to crumble.

My cashmere charm is wrinkling.

My gentlemanly facade is cracking.

My enemies are closing in.

Maybe the fortune teller was right:

The Queen of Hearts will drag me down to hell.

At least it’s wonderfully warm among the flames.

*********

My world is on fire, and I’m obsessed with the girl who lit the match.

Bloodied knuckles and a lifeless body at my feet confirm it: Penny is my demise.

My gentlemanly facade is nothing but a memory.

My sins are seeping through my shirt like ink.

I tried to leave her. Couldn’t do it.

I tried to snuff the life out of her. Couldn’t do that, either.

So we’ll slow dance in the flames until I’m nothing but ash and embers.

I’ll only rise like a phoenix when she’s gone.

The problem is, I’d never let her go.

No, she’d have to run far, far, away to escape me.

And maybe she will if I just told her the truth: