Chapter 26
TWENTY-SIX
Angelo
My bride is a deceitful traitor. She steps in front of the man she has or is about to marry, protecting him from the bullet meant for his heart. She fucking shields him, placing the body and life that belong to me in the path of danger. By doing that, she puts herself head-on in the way of my wrath, because the fury that ravaged me a minute ago is nothing compared to the inferno of violent rage erupting inside me now.
I’ll fucking kill him. Them. Every single man. Right here. I don’t care if I do it in a church. The grace of a holy place won’t save them. You have to possess some reverence to respect a house of religion, and I don’t have a dignified bone in my body.
My voice doesn’t betray the level of my anger. My tone reflects a well-practiced calm. “Aren’t you going to answer me, bella?” I turn the gun on the vicar. “Should I ask him? Does he need a bullet in the stomach as motivation?”
“No,” she cries out, raising her hands in a placating manner. “We haven’t made the vow.”
I take her in, how beautiful she looks in the dress I chose, the dress in which she was meant to marry me. So help me, I’ll strip that dress off her perfect body and make her regret every second of her despicable, insulting betrayal.
First, I have to focus. I have to fight through the cobwebs of crazed jealousy that obscure my reason. I have to make sure my little traitor isn’t also a liar.
I direct my question at the vicar. “Did they say the vow?”
He shakes his head with fervor.
Not turning the gun away from his head, I say, “Swear it on the Bible.”
“I swear.” He lifts trembling hands in the air. “Check for yourself. They haven’t exchanged the rings.”
I shift my gaze to Sabella’s hand. All her fingers are naked. But under the dress, she already carries my mark. She had no right to give it to another man. How was she going to explain that to her husband on her wedding night?
Fuck.
The thought makes me put pressure on the trigger. I dispel the image that takes shape in my mind lest I kill the motherfucker behind her without making him suffer.
My command is cool and controlled, not giving away how close I am to snapping. “Step out of the way, Sabella.”
“No, please,” she says in a tremulous voice. “Don’t hurt him.”
She’s pleading for him? She’s begging me on his behalf? That does it.
“Take the women and the kid outside,” I instruct the guards.
“No.” Sabella jumps forward, pushing her chest against the barrel of the gun. “It was my idea. If you have to punish someone, kill me.”
My eyes tighten, narrowing involuntarily to slits at the sight of the hard, black metal of the pistol caressing the silk of the wedding gown right between her breasts.
“Have you forgotten?” I ask with an icy inflection. “Your life belongs to me.”
Her soft brown eyes glimmer with tears. “Please, Angelo.”
The sound of my name on her lips gives me pause. It jars me, just for a second, but she senses it, because she continues quickly.
“Let them go, Angelo. They had nothing to do with it. They’re innocent. I’m the guilty one.” She leans into the gun, putting her weight behind it. “I’m the one who asked them to do this.”
“I’m not leaving my husband,” a woman says in a shaky voice. “If he stays, I stay too.”
Celeste. The sister-in-law.
Stupid woman. Stupid but loyal.
Her husband, Ryan, grips her bicep and gives her a slight shake of his head.
Sabella’s voice pulls my attention back to her. “We can get married. Right here.” Her gaze is pleading. “The vicar can do it.” She even manages a quivering smile. “Please, Angelo. Let’s do it here. Now. Everything is ready. Let the others go.”
She’s offering me an exchange—her vow for her family’s lives. Only, her vow was always supposed to be mine. She can’t bargain with something that already belongs to me.
What I’m really interested in is, “Did you kiss him?”
She stares at me, her expression baffled. “What?”
My nostrils flare when she makes me repeat those blasphemous words. “Did you fucking kiss him?”
Catching on, she blinks. “No.” She speaks fast. “No. It’s not like that.”
I apply pressure, feeling the resistance of her breastbone against the gun, feeling the cruel smile that manipulates the stiff muscles of my mouth, curving my lips as if they belong to a puppet and not to me. My words are measured, spoken softly like a dirty caress. “Did you fuck him?”
“No,” she exclaims, fear bleeding into those expressive eyes. “Colin and I never…” She licks her lips. “I swear it.”
Colin.
I grind my molars together at the sound of his name.
The man himself—fucking Colin—steps to the side, putting himself in my view. His manner is calm, devoid of bullshit. “She didn’t.”
She throws a panicked glance at him, no doubt willing him to go back to hiding behind her. “We’re friends. Best friends.”
I keep my gaze fixed on her before I’m tempted to shoot his head off and splatter her white dress with his blood. “Is that why you wanted to marry him? Because he’s your bestfriend?” My mouth twists with a sneer around the term of endearment. On second thought, maybe I should blow his brains out all over her. It’ll be a good lesson.
“Please,” she says again, bravely standing her ground.
“But us, we’re not friends, cara, are we?”
She pales, knowing exactly what I mean.
“Tell him,” I command. “Tell him why we’re not friends.”
Her slender throat bobs as she swallows. “Angelo, please.”
“Tell them why we’re so much more than friends,” I say, caressing that spot between her breasts with the barrel.
Her red, plump lips part, but no sound escapes.
“You want me to tell him?” The question is rhetorical. She’s shaking her head, begging me quietly even as I continue, “I already consummated our engagement when I fucked her on her eighteenth birthday.”
A gasp rises from the pew. Her mother.
“That’s right.” My words are as callous as my smile, but there’s no stopping them, no denying the claim I have on her or the need to prove it to all the witnesses present. “I already fucked her more than once. Isn’t that so, bella?”
A mixture of horror and shame transforms her features, but she doesn’t look at her family or her best friend. She doesn’t look away from me.
A deathly quiet stretches in the space. Our dirty secret is laid out in the open. It takes time to process, I suppose.
“I’ll marry you.” She’s no longer throwing bait, tempting me like earlier. Her voice is raw. She sounds defeated. Humiliated. “Right now. Just let them go.”
Bargaining with a vow that’s rightfully mine is like trying to pay me with my own money. She needs to give me more. “Beg.”
She gapes. “What?”
“Get down on your knees and beg me.”
A pained look flashes across her face. “Angelo.”
“You heard me. If you want to marry me so badly, show me how much you want it.”
“Sabella,” Ryan says from the side.
My command is harsh. “Quiet.”
The kid starts crying.
“Get him and his mother out of here,” I tell one of the guards.
There’s a shuffle and a protest.
“Go,” Ryan says, his order both authoritative and gentle.
I can relate to that. I’m not a father, but I know my father would’ve done the same. He would’ve laid his life down for me.
More shuffling and sniffling follow. The doors open and close. Silence again.
“I’m waiting,” I say, addressing my bride. I raise a mocking brow. “Unless you changed your mind?”
Holding my gaze, she kneels in front of me. “Please, Angelo.”
I follow her down with the gun, the barrel now aimed at her head. “Please what?”
Her voice comes out hoarse. “Please, marry me.”
I click my tongue. “You can put a little more effort into it. Convince me.”
A flame of defiance licks in the depth of her eyes, but she purses her lips and goes on all fours before bending down low and pressing her lips first on my right shoe and then on my left.
A single tear runs down her cheek when she sits back on her heels. “I beg you, Angelo. Marry me.”
Her groveling doesn’t leave me unaffected. Gripping her arm, I help her to her feet. She stares up at me with loathing and fear yet also with a glimmer of hope.
I nod at the guard flanking me. He grabs Colin and flings him into the front pew on the right.
“You heard her,” I say to the vicar. “She wants to say yes. Speak the magic words so that she can give me her answer.”
He glances at the pistol in my hand and says with a nervous twitch of his left eye, “Can you put the weapon away?”
I tuck the gun into the back of my waistband under my jacket and lock my hand around Sabella’s a little too tightly, making sure she’s not going anywhere even though I know she won’t run while I’m keeping her family hostage. She cares too much about them.
The vicar stumbles over the vow as if he can’t recite the holy sacrament fast enough.
When she says, “I do,” she doesn’t look at me. She doesn’t meet my eyes. She stares at the space in front of her as if she doesn’t see anything at all.
I don’t let her escape my gaze when it’s my turn. Splaying my fingers over her cheeks, I turn her face to me. The pressure of my fingertips leaves white marks on her skin when I say, “I do.”
A heartbeat later, I push both her engagement ring and the wedding band onto her finger before placing my own ring on her palm. She battles to slide it over my finger, but I don’t help her. I let her wiggle the ring until it fits against my knuckle.
It’s done.
After three long years of fighting bitter battles and paying in blood for what’s always been mine, we’re married. Husband and wife.
The silence is complete as I lower my head to kiss my bride. She doesn’t kiss me back, but she doesn’t pull away either.
Someone cries softly. Her mother, I think.
A gasp of distress cuts through the air.
Sabella stiffens.
We turn.
Her sister stands, one hand resting on her belly and the other on her lower back. “I think my water broke,” she says in a small, surprised voice.
“Mattie,” Sabella exclaims, trying to dash toward her sister, but I catch my wife’s wrist.
“Make sure she gets to the clinic,” I instruct one of my men.
Matilde purses her lips. “I’m not going without my husband.”
I tilt my head toward the exit, indicating the husband can go.
There’s a commotion as Matilde, supported by Jared, is escorted outside. Everyone is on their feet except for Colin. Not that he’s not trying, but the guard standing next to him holds him down.
“Finish this,” I tell the vicar.
He goes to a table next to the altar, produces a register, and turns the big book toward me. “I’ll need documentation to make this legal.”
Dragging Sabella with me, I go to the table. She stumbles a step before righting herself. I take the papers from my inside jacket pocket and slide them over the tabletop.
The vicar unfolds the documents with trembling fingers, eyeing me suspiciously as he does so. When he’s gone through the stack, he hands me a pen. “Sign your name here.”
I write down the details and sign before giving the pen to Sabella. She does the same.
“We need witnesses,” the vicar says in a high voice. He clears his throat and manages to utter in a somewhat more normal tone, “Two.”
I turn to our audience, enjoying how they shuffle their feet even as they glare at me with hatred. “Ryan. Margaret.”
They shift to the end of the pew, walk to the table, and sign the register.
Our marriage is legal, acknowledged by the church and the state. It’s very convenient for me that religious marriages in this country are also legal. In my country, only a legal marriage is recognized, but any marriage certificate is accepted, which means Sabella is my wife here as well as on home soil. Everywhere. Anywhere I want her to fulfill her marital duties.
The vicar scribbles something on a perforated sheet that he tears from another register. He hesitates a moment before handing it to me.
I snatch the marriage certificate from his fingers with a taunting grin that makes him cringe.
Leaning so close to him that I can smell the garlic he ate for dinner in the sweat oozing from his pores, I ask with enough menace to turn him pale, “Do I need to come back here?”
He shakes his head, trying to cling to his dignity, but under his robe, his knees are trembling.
“Do you need an incentive?” And I don’t mean money.
Understanding contracts his pupils. He knows very well I’m referring to a bullet.
“No,” he says, still shaking his head.
“Good.” I straighten. “Because you heard her.” Looking at Sabella, I add, “She begged for this.”
She flinches.
The guard next to Colin asks, “What about them?”
Sabella turns her big, pleading eyes on me. “Angelo.”
A deal is a deal. She did beg very prettily on her knees.
Cupping her face, I brush a thumb over the soft skin of her cheek, giving the promise to her instead of to them. “They can go.”
The housekeeper moves to the exit in a haste. Margaret reaches for Sabella. Ryan clenches his fingers. Colin looks as if he wants to punch the man who finally releases him.
Wrapping an arm around Sabella’s waist, I pin her to my side. “But…”
They all freeze.
Sabella tenses in my hold.
“If anyone causes trouble,” I continue, “I will be back. For Sabella’s sake, I hope that won’t be necessary.”
Ryan steps toward us. “If you hurt her, I swear to God, all bets are off.”
“Don’t worry.” I pull her tighter against me. “I’ll treat her fairly.”
He gnashes his teeth, no doubt biting back an insult.
“Play nice and nothing will change.” I pat his shoulder just because I know it’ll irk him. “The money will arrive as promptly as before.”
His nostrils flare. He hates that he’s dependent on me for a living.
“Say your goodbyes, cara,” I say without letting her go. “We have a plane to catch.”
Her family, those who are left, come up one by one to kiss her cheek. They all wear ghastly expressions.
Margaret pauses in front of her daughter. “Is it true?” Her features twist. “Did you sleep with him?”
“Mom.” Sabella wrings her hands together. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“Enough,” I say with a grunt.
Margaret winces and moves on.
Colin is next. He appears apologetic. “Sabella, I?—”
“I’m fine,” she says, trying to smile, but she doesn’t quite pull it off.
She’s anxious, as she should be. I still feel like offing the motherfucker with the soft hands who dared to try and steal her from me.
“Where’s your phone?” I ask my wife.
“I destroyed it,” she says, wrapping her free arm around her waist.
“Both of them?”
She nods.
My tone is curt. “Where’s your bag?”
“In the cry room.”
“Get it,” I say to a guard.
A moment later, he comes jogging with her suitcase and handbag.
I grip both in my free hand and tug her into motion.
Her family is still bundled together in the back of the church, huddling like sheep when I pull Sabella behind me down the aisle. A guard opens the doors. My driver is waiting. He loads our luggage in the trunk while I shove Sabella into the back of the car and slide in beside her, caging her between her side of the car and my body.
When we pull off and she flattens herself against the door, escaping me even in the confines of the small space, my fury ignites again.
At last, she’s mine, but it’s not the beginning I imagined. Our story doesn’t get a happy ending. In our case, we’re doomed to live unhappily ever after.