Sinful Love (Sinful Nights #4)

Her jaw fell open, and her eyes widened. She knew of the gang from all her talks with Michael after the murder. She grabbed her water, taking a drink, processing this newest twist. “She was involved with the head of a street gang?”

“Turns out she was buying and selling drugs from them. That’s part of what the cops have uncovered now. She was selling drugs to a whole long list of people, including the two guys they think helped out with the killing. The shooter was her supplier, and the guy she was cheating on my dad with—well, turns out Luke wasn’t just some local piano teacher. He’s like the ‘deep undercover, appears innocent on the outside, but is really head of the street gang’ teacher.”

Shock coursed through her, spreading from her chest all the way to her fingertips, a cold, liquid sensation under her skin. “Are they arresting him, too?”

Michael rubbed a hand across the back of his neck. “That’s the thing. They know he’s head of the gang, but they have to have specific evidence to link him to a specific crime, so that’s what they’re looking for. Since all the other players were part of the Royal Sinners, they’re trying to figure out if somehow that means my dad’s murder was related to the drug trade the gang is part of. The guy who supposedly masterminded the hit, T.J., was involved in a lot of the other gang crimes.”

Annalise shook her head, taking it all in. She remembered details that had emerged during the trial—the lover, the affair, the life insurance. Michael had told her everything. Crazy that the crime might have had deeper roots. “Do you think they can find T.J.?”

“I sure hope so. I want nothing as much as I want to see all those fuckers behind bars. Forever,” he said, his voice a low seethe, his eyes sharp as knives. “I will never forget.”

His hand tightened beneath hers into a stony fist. She rubbed her palm over it, wishing she could comfort him. As she touched him, a memory flickered before her. A party. His mother saying something about a piano.

“Do you think she met her lover at a party? Your mom mentioned something once about a party with a piano.”

“You remember those kind of details?”

She nodded. “I have a ridiculously good memory. I remember her making a dress. I asked her what it was for, and she told me.”

“A party with a piano?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.

She nodded, then told him bits and pieces from a brief conversation she’d had with his mother in passing one afternoon. “I don’t know if that’s helpful, though.”

His expression seemed grateful. “It’s all helpful. Every detail matters.”

They finished lunch, and he walked her back to the shoot a few minutes early.

“I can’t wait to spend some time together in New York,” she said, cupping his cheek. His eyes blazed, and his breathing intensified from that simple touch. For a moment she felt powerful, eliciting that reaction in this strong, stoic man. She stood on tiptoes and pressed a soft kiss to his lips.

“I’m counting down the hours.” He’d said he had a dinner with a client that night, so the flight would be the next time she saw him.

Then, because she was feeling frisky, and because things had been one-sided so far, she pressed a hand to his flat belly through his shirt. “Don’t think I’m selfish. I’m not,” she said, whispering in his ear. “I want to taste you. I want you in my mouth. I want to feel you in my throat.”

He swayed closer, a sexy sigh escaping his lips. “You’re killing me,” he growled.

She wiggled an eyebrow, turned on her heel, and left with a spring in her step, knowing that tomorrow she’d come again.





CHAPTER TWELVE


His grandmother kept everything. Which meant it took him nearly an hour to find the box of photos from when he was sixteen. If his hunch was right, his mom had met Luke that year. He grabbed a shoebox from the top shelf in the garage, cluttered with tools, old toys, and clothes headed for donation.

“Found it?”

“I think so,” he said, tucking the box under his arm as he climbed down the ladder to join Victoria Paige, the woman who’d raised him and his brothers and sister after his mother went to prison.

“Let’s go inside and paw through it,” she said, gesturing to the door into the house. Michael had come straight there after lunch with Annalise.

They parked themselves on stools at the kitchen counter, and Michael took the top off the shoebox.

“What exactly do you think you’ll find?” his grandmother asked as she grabbed a thick handful of curled-up photos from nearly two decades ago.

He shook his head. “Honestly not sure, Nana. But I want to look to see if anything gives me a clue about that guy. Any photo at all. I know he had to have been involved somehow. It can’t be a coincidence that she was trying to run away with that man.”