Books a Plenty Book Reviews: Excerpt Reveal for Mafia Queen by CD Reiss

When I open my eyes, the dim light only enters one. The other is swollen shut, but through the fog, I can make out a blurry dark blob in the center of flickering yellow light. A head. A man. The voice. I am sitting. My wrists lay on the arms of a chair. I can’t move them. “Mrs. DiLustro.” He has the voice of an old man and his breath stinks of fermented plaque. “I need to know—” “Who are you?” “Father Alfonso.” His reply is slow and drunken. “I officiated your wedding to Santino DiLustro.” “Asshole.” I blink hard. Breathe in the incense. Scratch a sudden itch on my nose and cheek with an overly rough right hand, then lift my left off the arm of the chair. Okay. So my arms are weak. Not tied down. Itches attack my face. When I try to scratch my left eye, it tingles then explodes in pain like an afterthought. “I cannot commit a sin,” Father Alfonso says. “Please. Tell me if your husband has died.” My mind is clearing slowly, but I cannot fathom what Santino’s life or death has to do with a priest adding one more sin to a long, long list of them. “He’s dead.” I scratch my jaw and rub a colony of itches from my right cheek. My hand feels rough as lace. “She killed him.” I point to some place to the left where Gia exists in my mind, and I’m about to say her name when I realize my hand is lighter than usual. Father Alfonso leaves, hunched, touching surfaces and walls until he finds the door before he clicks it closed. When I’m alone, I sit straight in the chair. Hold up my hand. My one good eye is full of gunk. I blink. Blink. Blink. When it clears, I know what the candlelight will reveal. A room with plaster walls. A tiny, darkened stained glass window. I can’t see close. The world is crisscrossed by the net I’m caught inside. But across the room… a thick wooden door. A cabinet with a small statue of the Virgin, surrounded by the unassertive yellow glow of candles. When I scratch my face this time, it’s easier to identify the roughness of my fingertips. I’m wearing a veil. Throwing it back, I see clearly and hold my left hand in front of me. My ring. Rosetta’s ring. A meaningless assembly of rock and metal that my husband etched with a secret and gave to me. It’s gone.

Blurb:

What doesn’t kill you makes you a killer. Santino DiLustro changed me. You can’t spend time in bed with the devil without getting addicted to the heat. Before him, I was a girl. Innocent and weak. Now, I’m a woman. A fighter. A killer. I’ll burn the world down for him. Shatter the sky. But I will not break. No. I will rise up and destroy whoever dares to threaten what my king has built, because I am forever his queen.

About the Author:

CD Reiss has a long history of aimlessly moving from place to place. She finally settled in Los Angeles where she earned a master’s degree in cinematic writing from USC. After graduation, she ultimately failed to have one line of dialog put on film, but stayed in Hollywood out of spite. Since screenwriting was going nowhere, she switched to novels. Soon after, luck arrived with a complete set of baggage. She now has over two dozen titles under her belt. Two of those are NY Times Bestsellers and a handful more are USA Today bestsellers. Her audiobooks have won APA Audie Awards and Earphones Awards, swelling her ego to an inhuman size. She lives with her family, two cats and her long-suffering husband in a small Hollywood house that’s been outfitted with huge, ego-sized doorways.