Chapter 6
Chapter Six
Tommaso took one look at his mutinous bride and experienced a spasm of emotion he couldn’t begin to explain.
If he narrowed his eyes, he could blur out the wine stain splattered over her dress and the grubbiness of its lace skirt from where his sister had thrown herself on the floor.
He could imagine the dress as pristine and fool himself into imagining Gabriella’s eyes glowing with happiness.
The only glow in her beautiful eyes was the same glow he knew was radiating from his. Loathing.
“Let’s go,” he said curtly.
Gabriella had attended mass at the Espositos’ private chapel every Sunday from the ages of sixteen to eighteen.
It was the chapel where she and Siena had received their First Holy Communion when they were seven and been Confirmed when they were fourteen.
For their First Holy Communion, they’d both worn the traditional white dress and veil.
Though Gabriella had always hated being forced to wear anything girlie, that day she’d been as giddy and giggly as Siena to be wearing what they’d both called wedding dresses.
She remembered them holding hands on the short walk to the chapel, discussing who they’d marry when they wore real wedding dresses.
“I’m going to marry Stefano,” Siena had declared, to which Gabriella had laughed her head off.
Stefano was one of Lorenzo’s ‘strays’ as they were called, young men who’d been in and out of trouble with the police and taken under Lorenzo’s wing to make real men of them.
The girls had been too young to understand what ‘making real men of them’ entailed or meant.
Gabriella had laughed because Stefano was even older than Mattia, the oldest of Siena’s brothers.
“He won’t be too old for me when I’m a grown-up,” Siena had retorted to Gabriella’s observation that Stefano was ancient. “We can get married at the same time: me and Stefano, and you and Rico.”
“Rico?” Gabriella had screamed. “No way. I’m not marrying him.” Of all the Esposito boys, Rico was the one she was closest to; the son happy to kick a football around with her.
“But if you marry Rico, we’ll be real sisters,” Siena had said earnestly, and for some reason Gabriella’s stare had flickered to sixteen-year-old Tommaso, and her heart had sighed.
Was that when her crush on him had begun, she wondered miserably. Did it really go back that far? She’d always thought it started with those erotic adolescent dreams, but had they just manifested something that had already been there?
There was no time to wonder about this any further for Edoardo stopped the car outside the chapel, and her tight heart lurched.
Siena was waiting outside wearing a black bridesmaid dress.
Gabriella stepped out of the car unaided, determined not to trip over the lace and taffeta, and faced her. Siena’s malevolence was strong enough to taste. Give her a knife and she would pierce it through Gabriella’s heart without blinking.
They must have made the strangest sight, she thought bleakly as they silently entered the chapel.
The bride in her stained dress walking down the aisle with the groom in his black shirt and trousers, no jacket or tie, the pair of them followed by the bridesmaid doing her best impression of the grim reaper.
In the front pew stood Valeria and Mattia wearing the same black outfits they’d worn the day before for Lorenzo’s funeral.
Even the priest had got the memo and wore black.
But then, he was in the Espositos’ pocket.
The Lord alone knew the hoops he’d jumped through to make this wedding happen at such short notice.
If Maria had ever married Tony in West Side Story, would she have faced this level of hostility?
But if Maria had married Tony, it would have been for love, and that love would have been mutual. They would have faced the hostility together.
Fighting back a swell of tears that had risen without any warning, Gabriella swallowed and lifted her chin. Her heart shouldn’t long for the impossible. The only thing she and Tommaso had in common with Maria and Tony was that they were doomed.
The priest kept the service mercifully short.
When it came to reciting their vows, it was a toss-up between which of them made theirs with the least meaning: Tommaso with his mocking tone or Gabriella with her belligerence.
She needed to be belligerent, in body language and mindset. It was the only way to get through it.
The ring Tommaso slid on her finger felt like a handcuff. She hated that she felt…not resentful, but something she couldn’t pinpoint…when his wedding finger remained bare.
And then came the immortal words. “You may now kiss the bride.” Not from the priest but from Siena.
As quick as a flash, Tommaso turned to his sister and drawled, “I only ate an hour ago, so I’ll give that part a miss.”
Tommaso couldn’t stop his mind from recalling Gabriella’s flinch. He hadn’t even been looking at her, but he’d noticed it, just as he always noticed everything about her.
He would not feel guilty about it. He’d rather kiss a baboon’s arse than put his mouth to Gabriella’s, no matter how deeply his lips ached to feel their succulency. Kissing was an affection that had no place in their marriage.
Her eye makeup had smudged since she’d applied it.
He had a feeling she’d deliberately left it smudged and that the streak of red lipstick she’d smeared when wiping her mouth had been deliberate too.
With her grubby, wine-stained dress, she looked like a bride from a Gothic horror film.
‘Celebrating’ their marriage as they were with his family over a meal prepared by his mother’s chef, she picked at the food on her plate as if worried it had been poisoned.
She was right to be worried. She was sharing a meal with three people who’d treated her like blood from the moment of her birth and now despised the air she breathed
Four people, he corrected himself. There were four of them dining with her. It would have been five had Rico not refused to attend.
“Why is the rat eating at the table with us?” Siena asked, breaking the oppressive silence with pointed malice. “Shouldn’t it be locked in a cage?”
“A tempting thought,” Tommaso agreed. “But as she is now my wife and the news of our wedding has been released to the world, it is best not to give our enemies any unnecessary ammunition.”
The Espositos’ enemies, and possibly some friends, were circling.
Their father’s death without a chosen successor for the empire he’d created meant an anointing was needed.
Rico had ruled himself out and wanted nothing to do with the choosing.
Their mother’s involvement in the empire had only ever been limited.
Which left Tommaso, Mattia and Siena. Between them, they ran the components that made the celebrated public part of the empire.
It was the shadowed part that their father’s lack of a chosen successor threatened.
Whoever controlled the shadowed part controlled the public part.
The latter couldn’t exist without the former.
Now that their father had been laid to rest, their period of mourning was over. It was time to decide who would be the new empire figurehead. Any enemy wishing to make a move for control would be preparing to strike.
Tommaso had fed the news of his marriage through the media channels he controlled as a means of bolstering his public profile.
Being married added gravitas, something he was very much aware that his volatile, hard drinking and womanising reputation needed.
That it gave additional protection to Gabriella against his family’s malevolence was purely coincidental.
If it would have been difficult to make her disappear without questions being asked before, now it would be impossible.
“Speaking of our enemies…” Mattia said.
Tommaso raised an eyebrow.
Mattia looked at Gabriella. Of all the Espositos, he had the best poker face. “Not in front of the rat.”
Tommaso turned to the woman at his side. Gabriella’s stony face was nearly as good as Mattia’s. Her plate still had as much food on it as when it had been presented to her.
Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out his phone and called his driver. “Edoardo, I need you to take my wife home.”
The three women sat around the table cringed in unison at wife.
Gabriella absently rubbed the gold band resting on her wedding finger. She was sitting on the velvet chaise longue in Tommaso’s dressing room, staring at the racks of clothes that had been added to it in the hours they’d been gone.
While she’d been pledging her life to a mockery of a marriage, her new husband had arranged for half his dressing room to be turned over to her and filled with more clothes than she could wear in a lifetime.
Clothes for all occasions. Jewellery too.
Lots of it. Makeup. A department store’s worth.
The only singular item of anything was a bottle of her favourite perfume.
Every time she looked at the bottle, her heart raced. She couldn’t begin to explain why.
The vast majority of the clothing was stuff she would have chosen to buy. There were even three drawers full of oversized hoodies. Not only that, but the bathroom had been filled with toiletries identical to the ones in her own home.
How had he done it in such a short space of time? More importantly, why had he done it?
She didn’t dare assume that all this clothing meant she wasn’t going to be kept a prisoner in the bedroom. When she’d risen to leave with Edoardo, Tommaso had caught her wrist and whispered in her ear, “Wait in the bedroom for me. Keep the dress on.”
Maybe the evening dresses were to be worn for his eyes only, paired with the sexier underwear for her to perform a striptease for him. To tantalise him. She didn’t like the flush of heat that thought provoked.