Chapter 5
Adora
My father’s voice cuts through the room like a whip, and my blood turns to ice. I twist in Vincenzo’s arms to see Dad standing in the doorway. His face is white with rage, and his eyes are locked on me, naked, covered in Pietro’s blood, and held in my enemy’s embrace.
Shame crashes over me like a tidal wave. I want the floor to open up and swallow me whole.
Dad’s seen me bruised before, beaten before, but never like this. Betraying the family. His eyes flare with murderous fury as he takes in every humiliating detail.
Vincenzo goes absolutely still. I feel every muscle in his body turn to steel, and I realize with a jolt that he and my father are seconds away from violence.
His hands slide down my body possessively. One arm around my waist, pulling me tighter against him.
Despite the shame, everywhere he touches burns.
I can feel the hard planes of his body through his clothes and the solid warmth of his chest, and my belly clenches in response.
I’m acutely aware that I’m naked in Vincenzo’s arms. My breath hitches, and my pulse races for reasons that have nothing to do with fear.
There’s an ache between my legs that I understand despite my inexperience with men.
I shouldn’t be feeling this about a killer, but my body doesn’t care about should.
He shifts against me, reaching between us for something.
A gun. He pulls a gun out from underneath his jacket.
My heart hammers against my ribs. He’s going to shoot my father and then me. Or my father is going to kill us both. Either way, I’m about to die.
But Vincenzo doesn’t aim the gun at anyone. He holds it in his hand down by his side, a casual threat.
“Do you want to die,” Vincenzo asks Dad, his voice calm and cold, “or do you want to give what’s been promised to me?”
His arm curls tighter around my waist, plastering my breasts against him.
“You want my daughter?” Dad’s voice is sharp with disbelief.
Everything’s moving so fast. Before I can process what’s happening, Vincenzo’s mouth descends on mine in a brutal, claiming kiss. Right in front of my father. He holds me captive while he devours my mouth like he owns me.
Heat floods through me despite my terror and shame, and I can’t help the small sound that escapes my throat.
When he pulls back, Vincenzo addresses my father, but I barely hear the words over the roaring in my ears. “I want her. If you don’t give her to me, I’m going to take her from you, and you’ll die a slow, painful death.”
Give me to him, like I’m property to be traded.
“What’s stopping me from putting a bullet through your head right now?” Dad snarls.
Vincenzo laughs. “What’s stopping you? I think you mean what’s stopping me. Nothing at all, but we’re going to do this right. You murdered my family, so you’re going to beg for my forgiveness by giving me your daughter. Then we’ll be even.”
My mind reels. He wants to marry me? After everything, he still wants to go through with it.
He kisses me again, harder this time, and I feel the message he’s sending to my father through the bruising press of his lips. I’m shaking again, but not from cold. From confusion and fear and something else I can’t name. When Vincenzo lifts his head, he’s still looking at my father.
“She tastes sweet. A Vici could never hope for such a perfect, innocent bride under normal circumstances.”
Dad’s face is a mask of barely controlled rage, but underneath it, I see his mind working. Calculating. Trying to figure out Vincenzo’s angle.
“I could take her now,” Vincenzo continues, almost conversational.
“Right here. Right now. With you watching.” His fingers trace my jaw, deliberate and claiming.
“But I’d like to savor your family’s humiliation.
I want what I was promised. Everything that comes with wedding and bedding a Montoni bride.
” His smile is sharp and cruel. “You’re going to give her to me properly.
In front of all of Malus. With your blessing. ”
Dad’s face goes white, then red.
“I’ll be waiting for you to set the date, Don Agnello,” Vincenzo says. “Don’t make me wait too long. I get mean when I’m impatient.”
Suddenly, he releases me.
The loss of his warmth is immediate and shocking. I stumble slightly, wrapping my arms around myself, trying desperately to cover my nakedness. My whole body starts trembling with cold and shame, and with the weight of my father’s murderous stare.
I can feel Dad’s eyes on me like brands. Judging. Disgusted.
I’ve never felt so exposed in my life.
Something warm and heavy settles around my shoulders. Vincenzo’s leather jacket. He’s taken it off and wrapped it around me. The shearling lining is still warm from his body heat, and I burrow into it gratefully, pulling it closed around my naked body. The trembling eases.
The jacket smells like him. Leather, gunpowder, and something darker.
Vincenzo heads for the balcony. Cold wind is blowing through the broken glass doors.
He’s leaving.
Something sharp and painful twists inside me. He’s going to leave me here with my father. After killing Pietro, after those kisses, after he demanded to marry me, he’s just going to leave.
I should be grateful he’s going. He’s dangerous and no doubt going to use me as a weapon against my father.
But all I feel is a crushing sense of abandonment.
I press my lips together and say nothing. I can’t show weakness. Not in front of Dad.
Vincenzo pauses at the window, one foot already on the balcony. He turns back to look at my father, his eyes cold and deadly.
“I found her half dead tonight. If anyone lays a finger on her or hurts her in any way, I’ll cut their fucking heart out.”
The threat hangs in the air. Then he’s gone, disappearing into the night like a ghost.
I clutch his jacket tighter around myself, my heart sinking as I realize I’m alone with Dad now. Pietro’s corpse is on the ground, and there’s blood everywhere.
I should be relieved Vincenzo is gone, but the ache in my chest says otherwise.
“Adora,” Dad says, his voice deadly quiet. “Come here.”
It’s not a request. It’s never a request with him.
My legs feel like they might give out, but I force myself to walk toward him. Each step feels like walking to my own execution. I clutch Vincenzo’s jacket tighter, the leather warm against my bare skin, and I see Dad’s eyes track the movement.
When I’m within reach, his hand shoots out and grips my jaw, hard enough to make me gasp.
“This happened because you ran away,” he says, his voice flat and cold. “Pietro’s dead because of you. That Vici bastard is making demands because of you. Every problem I now have to fix is because of you.”
“I didn’t—”
His grip tightens, cutting off my words. “I’m going to have to fix your mess, Adora. And you’re going to help me do it.”
“How?”
“It’s not your place to ask questions,” he snarls, and releases me with a shove. “That man will marry you over my dead body.” He looks at me with cold calculation. “Go to bed. You look terrible, and you smell like that Vici bastard. I can’t stand the sight of you.”
I clutch the jacket tighter and turn toward the door on trembling legs.
Behind me, Dad’s already on his phone, barking orders. “Get someone to clean this mess up. I want Pietro’s body gone within the hour and that window fixed by morning.”
Like Pietro was nothing, and he didn’t serve our family for twenty years.
Even going so far as to murder Mom on Dad’s orders.
The words rise up my throat. Pietro told me what you did. He told me he killed her for you. How could you do that to Mom? But I swallow them back down. The confrontation I want to have will end with me beaten and sobbing on the floor.
I climb the stairs to my bedroom, Vincenzo’s jacket clutched around me. My legs are shaking so badly I nearly fall twice. When I finally close my door behind me, I lean against the wood, gasping for breath.
I stumble to my bathroom and turn on the shower, standing under the spray until the water runs clear. Pietro’s blood swirls down the drain, dark and thick at first, then gradually fading to pink, then finally nothing.
But I can still see it.
When I close my eyes, all I see is Pietro’s blood spraying across my face. The wet sound the knife made each time I drove it into his chest. The way his eyes went wide and empty.
I scrub my skin until it’s red and tender, but I can’t wash away what I did.
I’m a killer. Just like Dad. Just like Vincenzo.
When the water starts to scour my skin, I turn it off and wrap myself in a towel. I return to my bedroom and pull on an oversized T-shirt, then crawl under the covers. The sheets are cold and unwelcoming. Everything in this house is cold.
Except Vincenzo’s jacket.
I reach for it where I dropped it on the floor, pulling the leather into bed with me. It’s heavy and warm, still carrying his body heat. I press my face into the shearling lining and breathe in the scent of him.
The scent should repel me, but right now, wrapped in his jacket, I feel safer than I have in weeks.
Hot tears spill down my cheeks, soaking into the leather.
I’m such a coward. I should have confronted Dad and demanded answers about Mom. I should have screamed at him for the massacre, for dragging me back here, and his plans to use me to murder Vincenzo.
But I just stood there and took his abuse, and then obeyed like I always do.
I clutch Vincenzo’s jacket tighter, burying my face in the shearling.
He’s dangerous. He’s using me. He probably hates me.
But when he held me tonight and wrapped this jacket around me, I felt protected. He threatened to cut out the heart of anyone who hurt me.
Dad’s never made such promises.
Fresh sobs tear through me, and I press Vincenzo’s jacket against my mouth to muffle the sound. I can’t let Dad hear me crying. Can’t give him another reason to call me weak.
But here, alone in the dark, I let myself break.