Obsession (Sinners of New Orleans #3)

Chapter 8

EIGHT

Madi

T here’s an ache brewing in the pit of my stomach as I enter my rehearsal dinner. The beautiful location feels jarring in contrast to the darkness of my pending marriage. There’s a long wooden table in the center of the courtyard surrounded by brick walls and greenery, settled under the open sky. Warmth from the setting sun coats everything in a golden haze that matches the strings of cafe lights.

Vases of pink roses and eucalyptus stems sit on top of the gauzy white linen runners and candles of various sizes fill in the blank spaces, the flames adding a bit of extra ambiance.

This is what I would have chosen if I’d planned it myself. For some reason, that makes me angrier. This should be mine. This moment should be special, but now it will always be tainted by the wrong man.

“You changed your hair.” As if on cue, Adrian appears behind me, pressing his palm against my lower back. He’s wearing a navy-blue Tom Ford suit with a white linen shirt and a pale pink tie that matches the roses on the table.

I want to move away from his touch, but I hold myself steady. “Not by choice.” I say, turning my body to face him. Something lingers in his eyes. I’m not sure if he’s just remembering the blue color of my hair with disgust, or if he doesn’t like the dark brown my mother had it dyed. Not that I care what he thinks.

“Are you ready?” he asks, snapping out of it and changing the subject.

“No,” I tell him.

“I thought you might say that.” He chuckles. “Here.” He tilts the glass of champagne he’s holding to me.

There’s a part of me that wants to beg, that wants to get on my knees and ask him to call this whole thing off. I should run. To Lana, maybe? What would that even look like? Hop on a plane and go? Someone would stop me, I’m sure of it. There are enforcers who follow me everywhere these days.

I take the champagne flute from him and chug it.

“Easy there,” he says, taking back the empty glass. “You don’t want to be drunk.”

“That’s exactly what I want to be.”

Adrian’s lips tilt up into a smile. “So sassy, ” he says with a laugh. “You always need to have some kind of comeback, don’t you?”

Everything with Adrian is back and forth, give and take. He says something, I retort. And so on.

My lips open, ready to tell him if he wasn’t such a jerk, I wouldn’t need to always have a comeback, but the words die on my tongue when I see John.

I should probably be angrier at my cousin, as he was the last one to see my brother. Or at least that’s the line I heard from the family gossip tree. I can tell by the look in his eyes that he’s gauging my reaction, waiting to see if there is enough love left in my heart to be mad at him for what he might have done.

If John did kill my brother, I’m not mad at him in the slightest.

The opposite, actually. As horrible as that sounds.

My relationship with Marcus was all dried up. Dead roses on the vine. He took and took from me until I had nothing left to give, and then he kept going. Love doesn’t thrive in that type of relationship. It withers and dies.

But Marcus is gone now. A thought that shouldn’t make me happy. But his death felt like chains were being cut, freeing my body. Freedom feels good.

Only, I’m not really free. I’ve just traded one jailor for another. Despite my brother’s death, the marriage he arranged for me still stands.

When I see John, there isn’t an ounce of anger lingering inside me. Instead, there’s hope. Maybe he can rescue me like he did with Lana. Showing up on my wedding day and helping me escape.

Adrian sees me staring and turns, facing my cousin.

“John,” he greets. “Wasn’t sure if you’d make it.”

“She is my cousin.” He nods toward me. “I can’t miss her wedding festivities.” Zoe, his girlfriend, stands beside him, wearing a pretty floral-printed halter dress and pale pink heels. The two of us hit it off immediately. I never expected to see my cousin committed to a woman, but I knew the moment Zoe saw a dead body at his feet and didn’t run away crying that she was the perfect fit for my psychopathic cousin. Even now, she stands by his side, holding her head tall.

Adrian plasters on a fake smile. He probably has too much practice sucking up to judges and juries. “It’s nice to have you.” He claps a hand on John’s back.

“I was hoping I could get a moment with Madi. To talk.”

Adrian chuckles with a knowing grin. “I was told not to leave her alone with you.”

John helped Lana run away from her arranged marriage, and Adrian’s afraid he’ll do the same for me. Apparently, Costello girls are useless if they’re under the protection of the Colombo famiglia in New York City .

“It’s not like that.” John smiles as he raises his hands in a nothing to worry about gesture. “I just want to talk. We’ll stand right here in the hallway, and when I’m done, she’ll go inside and hang on your arm just like the doll you want.”

Adrian barks out a laugh.

“I’ll go with you,” Zoe adds, moving from John to my fiancé. She extends her arm for Adrian to take, and he eyes it suspiciously, moving his gaze between her and my cousin.

“Fine,” he relents. “Five minutes. And princess ”—he turns his gaze onto me—“just remember, tomorrow you marry me. Nothing is changing that.”

His words rattle my bones, but I nod in agreement, watching him walk away with a satisfied grin. As soon as he’s gone, I whip my head back to John, praying he has a plan, some good news to get me out of this arrangement.

“Don’t get too excited,”

I immediately deflate. “Marcus is gone , John.” It takes effort to keep my voice low and steady, preventing it from shaking. “Why am I still marrying him?”

“I talked to Sam.”

“And?” My fingernails bite into my palms, impatiently waiting for my cousin to spit it out.

“He thinks Adrian could be useful.”

An icy sensation rushes through my veins. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

“Madi, I know you don’t like him-”

A rush of air burst through my lips. “Don’t like him?” I scoff. “He represents the scum of New Orleans. He’s the reason rich assholes think they can get away with whatever they want. Not to mention, he’s a prick, John. It’s more than just me not liking him.”

“And what are we, Madi?” He shakes his head. “We’re the rich assholes he’s representing, the scum . Aren’t we?”

I press my lips into a thin line. I know my family’s reputation, but we do good too. Does that fix it? Does that make it okay that when everyone has their heads turned, we cheat and lie and steal? That our money is just as dirty as the rest of it? There’s a blurry line between where my morals begin and end.

“Sam wants to use him,” John says. “He thinks he could be beneficial in getting him out. So for now, we don’t want to piss him off.”

Don’t want to piss him off. The words ring loud and clear in my head. Because Sam wants to use him, I have to marry him.

“I thought you took care of it. With the detective or something?” I’m bargaining now. It’s one of the stages of grief and I’m grieving my life. Every minute is getting me closer to my life sentence of becoming Mrs. Russo.

John scrubs a hand over his chin. “Damien killed him.” There’s a hint of emotion, or at least as much as I think he can muster. He feels bad for me. I’m not sure if it’s because he hates Adrian as much as I do, or if he just feels guilty that he’s making me do this. “We need a new plan.”

Fuck. Murder is an easy solution in my family when someone doesn’t do what you want. I learned that lesson as a kid, listening to my grandfather and uncle discuss my father’s accidental death. John got what he wanted from the police, so Damien killed them to make sure Sam stayed in prison.

“You’re going to ask Adrian to defend Sam?” I ask hesitantly. That seems like a bad idea, considering Adrian is in Damien’s pocket currently. Once glance into the dining room shows them laughing together. Adrian’s eyes spot me watching the two of them, and he looks at me, possessive and proud, like he knows John is giving me bad news.

“Yes.” John eyes me as I turn back to him. “You can help, ya know? Make him want to get Sam out. For you .”

For you. His meaning is clear. Make him fall in love with me, so in love with me that he’d change his alliance. My stomach sinks a little further.

My uncle is well polished on the outside. He doesn’t look like the gangster the news paints Uncle Junior and Sam as. But underneath his exterior is a ruthless asshole. He tried marrying off both his daughters to Davis LaFontaine to strike a deal. It didn’t matter that Lily proved she’d rather die than marry the congressman. Damien still tried to force Lana to marry him. If Sam and John hadn’t helped Lana run away, he would have been successful.

“And what about me?” My voice shakes. “You and Lana both get your happily ever afters, and I’m just supposed to pretend?”

It takes every ounce of self-control I have left not to cry. I’m resigning myself to a future of unhappiness. Of days and nights filled with the same face. A charade of putting on a daily show. The perfect housewife. What if he wants kids? Then I’ll have to pretend that I don’t hate the man they came from?

And if I leave? If I run?

Who am I without my family?

“It doesn’t have to be forever, Madi.” John touches me gently on the arm, like he wants to comfort me but isn’t quite sure how. I know he doesn’t mean to tear my hopes and dreams apart, but he won’t tell Sam no. Especially not if he agrees with him.

And Sam doesn’t deserve to be in prison, not when I know there’s no chance he ever killed his father. Marcus was good at setting people up when it suited him. Everyone was just another pawn in his game.

“Okay,” I whisper. John gives me a small smile. It’s meant to be reassuring, I think.

"Thank you, Madi.” He squeezes my hand before using it to gesture forward. We need to enter the room now. I have to slip my mask back into place and pretend I’m not falling apart at the seams as I join my rehearsal dinner.

Adrian watches me as my heels tap against the concrete, his eyes sparkling as I get closer.

He’s victorious, a king at the head of the table. He has the career, the money, and now the cherry on top. The girl.