Chapter 11
Cecilia
I’m escorted outside through the halls of the palazzo with Mikhail close behind me and a guard leading the way, as if I’m already one with the man I’m supposed to marry—an intruder, not someone who lived here her entire life.
Tears burn my eyes, falling down my cheeks in warm streams. My legs feel laden, each step more difficult than the one before it, yet I keep walking, because I refuse to let this monster drag me out of my home like a sack of coins.
Cesare’s voice booms behind me, reverberating off the walls. I whip my face toward the sound, toward my father’s office from which I’ve just come out.
“Wait! Just fucking wait,” he calls out, rushing after us. “At least let her pack. What the fuck is wrong with you?”
Mikhail snorts. “My wife won’t be needing anything from you anymore. Step away, consigliere. We’re leaving.”
Cesare doesn’t relent. Instead, he steps in front of me, blocking my way. “No,” he says.
I look up at him, all scared and teary-eyed, and he drowns me in his gaze. It’s wild and furious, like someone just set fire to his house. It makes me want to reach for him, because he’s the only comfort I still know.
“Cesare—” I step forward as a warm, foreign hand grips the back of my neck. All the air is knocked out of my lungs when I’m dragged into Mikhail’s hard chest. My skin tingles and burns, as if whatever darkness he’s made of is seeping into my pores. “Take your goddamn hands off me!” I cry out.
But his grip only tightens, a sign of the power that lies beneath his rough exterior. If he wanted to, he could crush me right here, right now.
“What’s the meaning of this?” my father’s gruff voice calls as he makes his way toward us. “Cesare, step away. You’re forgetting your place, son.”
I don’t fail to notice the way Cesare’s shoulders beg to cower at his command, but he resists it. He straightens, pinning his Don with a defiant gaze.
“No,” he says, the word clear and resonant. I bring my trembling hands in front of my face, holding my breath. He could die for this—for me. What the hell is he thinking?
“Son…” my father warns.
“Don’t do this to her. It’ll destroy her.”
My father walks past me until he’s right in front of Cesare. More guards gather around, pointing their guns at my friend like he’s the one being unreasonable.
“Please, don’t hurt him,” I mumble, reaching for his shirt. “Don’t—”
But my father jerks his head to one of the guards behind Cesare, and it’s enough for the man to grab the consigliere’s wrist, planting his hand on the wall beside him.
The guard takes out a knife, and Cesare watches me with a sad smile, mouthing the words ‘don’t look’.
He knows exactly what’s coming, and within seconds, his hand is impaled by the blade, straight through the middle.
It twists, and Cesare groans in pain, his tendons snapping and his flesh becoming a mushy mess right before my eyes.
Oh, God.
No, no, no…
I scream, a strained, terrified cry that has me gasping for air.
“Christ,” Mikhail mutters, grabbing my arm and dragging me past my friend before my nausea kicks in. I thrash and kick and scream, but no one stops him from taking me outside.
All I can hope for at this point is that Cesare will be okay.
“You will go with this man, and you will be his wife.”
I’m alone in the backseat of a Mercedes, my father’s words ringing through my head over and over, cementing the reality—a tomb around my body, dark, lonely, and terrifying.
I tried to tell him back in his office about everything Mikhail put me through—the stalking, feeling crazy for hearing things everywhere I walked.
But just like that night at the party, he refused to listen, as if none of it mattered.
All the while, Mikhail stood there and watched me beg for my freedom, probably amused at my desperation.
That goddamn bastard! I’ve never felt more humiliated.
And Cesare… He stood up for me and paid the price for his defiance.
I pray he’s still alive, that my father will forgive him.
I can’t believe he did that for me. The image of his bloody hand pounds through my head, an incessant knocking at my sanity.
I fight to rid my mind of it, to keep myself from spiraling into a panic attack, so I scurry over to the window, looking out at the men still talking in the driveway.
Mikhail stands there, bored and impassive, hands in the pockets of a fresh suit. His face bears the marks of all his recent brutalization, though it looks like it’s healing. My father, brushing his ringed knuckles against his wrinkled jaw, says something to him then nods. I can’t hear them.
I wasn’t allowed to pack, didn’t even get to grab my phone. My piano—my beautiful piano—is still in the palazzo. No one offered to ship it out to wherever I’ll end up.
Once I entered that office, my fate was sealed.
I was sold like a piece of land by the man I was raised to love, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.
As I sit here, searching for any sympathy in his brown eyes—my eyes—my father seems miles away, like a distant relative who doesn’t even know my birthday.
A shadow whisks away my sun as my new captor approaches the car, taking his seat behind the wheel. Instantly, the energy shifts, and as he starts driving, the place I’ve called home my entire life remains where it’s always been: unmoving.
The menacing glint in Mikhail’s eyes sharpens when I catch his gaze staring back in the rearview mirror.
It’s cold, frigid, every bit of amusement gone.
The one kindness he offered me in that basement when he helped with my panic attack feels like it never happened.
Did he do that just to make me keep visiting?
I dig my fingers into the leather chair, feeling stupid. He wasn’t interested in me at all, but in what marrying me would get him. Of course he was. He orchestrated this whole thing from the start. I don’t know how or why, but every fiber of my being tells me he has.
“You tricked me,” I say, the words leaving my mouth before I can stop them, raw and breathless.
The familiar, contemplative tilt of his head again. “Tricked you? I believe the word you’re looking for is saved. I saved you, sweetheart.”
I lean in. “I had a life! You may have thought it pointless, but it was my life!”
“And now, it’s mine,” he says, very matter-of-fact.
Rage flickers beneath my skin.
The road winds and curves out of the Ferrara estate, the pavement roaring under the car’s wheels as it leads us onto the highway.
Mikhail speeds up, my back pushing into the chair behind me with inertia.
My stomach churns, and I swallow, trying not to puke.
Not because I care about what he’d think, but because I don’t know when I’m going to eat again.
If he tries anything, I’ll need all my strength.
He’s taking me to New York, my father mentioned in his office. But New York is far away, too long a ride for us to undertake alone together. If I could put a mountain between us, I’d do it in a heartbeat.
As if he’s thinking the same about me, Mikhail’s fingers fumble with the touch screen until music fills the small space, shutting down any potential conversation. Instantly, we both wince.
It’s my father’s car, and Andrea Bocelli’s Con te partirò comes on from his playlist. Italian words pour in—lyrics about being together, about dreaming of your lover when they’re away.
It only adds more fire to my frustration.
At the very least, it seems to be bothering him as well, because he ends up turning it off, leaving only strained silence between us.
By the time Mikhail pulls over, I have no idea where we are.
There are no street signs, and we have mostly been riding on the highway. In fact, this entire break makes no sense at all, because there’s nothing around us other than cliffs, water, and the horizon.
He kills the engine and then exits without a word.
Retrieving something from his pocket, he leans against the car as if he has all the time in the world.
I poke my head out from the pretzel position I’m in, deciding to follow him outside, needing fresh air after being locked in here with him for hours.
The breeze rushes at me the second I step out, cold enough to raise goosebumps on my arms.
“What the hell are you doing?” I ask, hugging myself.
Cigarette dangling from his mouth, he doesn’t even look at me as he mutters, “Robbing a bank.”
I blink.
Condescending prick.
“I get that you’re smoking. I just want to know why we stopped!”
“So impatient.” He flicks his lighter on and off as he stares out into the distance. “If I were you, I wouldn’t get too excited for the job. Marrying me will mean… Let’s just say my sexual tastes are well outside your range.”
I scoff and blink with incredulity, my lips forming words that never take on a sound. What could he possibly mean by that?
I know what sex is, obviously. Despite my lack of experience in this department, I’ve seen it play out in a video once, when I caught the guards watching one.
The woman had her back to the man who hovered over her, thrusting.
She moaned, he groaned, and they seemed completely unfazed by the camera recording them.
Everything happened too fast for me to think about how it made me feel.
The guards shut down the video when they saw me.
Is that what Mikhail is talking about? Not that I’d ever have sex with him.
“Have you stopped to think that maybe, you don’t know everything about me?” I ask.
He puffs out smoke above his head that disappears into nothingness, watching me from under thick eyebrows. “What are you saying, sweetheart? That you enjoy being spanked?”
I suck in a breath. Spanked?
“Tied up? Choked?”