Chapter 9 #2
Dante is moving before I can think, closing the distance between us and hauling me behind him, one arm coming around my waist as he puts himself between me and Lorenzo. His body is rigid.
“Get her out of here,” he snaps to the men nearest us.
But Lorenzo lifts the gun higher, his face twisted with a kind of rage I have never seen before.
“Take one more step toward that altar,” he says, staring at Dante, “and I will paint this church with your blood.”
The room goes dead still. Even the screaming seems to falter.
Dante’s arm tightens around me. “You’ve got a lot of nerve coming into my territory and pointing a weapon at my wedding.”
Lorenzo’s laugh is raw and terrible. “Your wedding?”
His eyes slice to me then, burning.
“Tell me,” he says, his voice dropping into something quieter and somehow even more dangerous, “Did he buy you that dress before or after he decided to put his hands on what belongs to me?”
Something hot and furious tears through the shock and I step out from behind Dante before he can stop me, my pulse pounding so hard I can hear it.
“You do not get to call me yours,” I snap, my voice carrying through the church. “Not when you’re married to someone else.”
The words land. I see it in Lorenzo’s face—that quick, brutal flicker before the rage swallows everything else.
“That marriage means nothing,” he says.
“It means everything,” I shoot back. “You made vows to another woman. You do not get to stand here with a gun in your hand and act like I betrayed you.”
His jaw locks. “Elizabeth—”
“No.” My throat burns, but I keep going. “You lost whatever right you thought you had over me the second you married her.”
The church is so silent I can hear the candles sputter. Behind me, Dante’s hand finds the small of my back. Steady. Solid. A lifeline. I grab his hand and turn toward the altar.
“Come on,” I say, pulling him with me.
A gasp ripples through the church.
For one wild, impossible second, I think maybe that’s enough. Maybe if I keep walking, if I force the ceremony forward, Lorenzo will finally understand that he cannot break into my life and drag me backward just because he’s decided he still wants me.
We make it two steps.
The gunshot explodes through the church.
I scream, instinctively ducking as the sound slams into the stone walls and showers dust from above. People cry out. Several guests drop to the floor. Somewhere near the front, glass shatters.
Dante jerks me behind him, one arm thrown across my waist.
“The next one,” Lorenzo says, his voice cutting through the chaos with terrifying calm, “goes into Teresa.”
Everything stops. I twist toward the side aisle and find her. Two of Lorenzo’s men have Teresa pinned between them. One grips her upper arm hard enough to bruise. The other has a gun pressed to her ribs, half-hidden beneath his jacket.
Oh God.
“No,” I whisper.
Dante goes rigid. “If you touch her—”
“Then stop moving,” Lorenzo says.
He steps farther into the church, gun still in his hand. His gaze never leaves mine.
“You want to hate me?” he says. “Fine. Hate me. But you do not get to stand in front of that altar and give yourself to him.”
Dante’s body is a wall in front of me. “She is not going anywhere with you.”
Lorenzo doesn’t even look at him. He’s looking only at me.
“Choose.”
The word hits like a slap.
My fingers dig into Dante’s sleeve. “Lorenzo, please—”
“Choose,” he repeats, colder this time. “You walk to me, or Teresa dies in front of all these people. And she won’t be the last.”
A broken sound catches in my throat.
I look at Teresa. Her face is pale, but her chin is lifted, her eyes fierce even now. I look at Dante, at the murderous fury tightening every line of his face. At the guests crouched in the pews. At the flowers. The candles. The altar waiting only a few feet away.
This is what the dread was. Not nerves or fear of marriage.
This.
I can barely breathe. “Don’t make me do this.”
Lorenzo’s voice drops lower. “Then don’t make me prove I mean it.”
Dante turns his head just enough to look at me. His eyes are dark with rage and something sharper beneath it.
“Birdie,” he says using my real name, “don’t.”
My whole body shakes. I want to stay. God, I want to stay. But Teresa gives the smallest shake of her head, and I understand what she’s telling me.
Don’t let him kill for you.
My hand tightens once around Dante’s.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper.
His expression changes. It’s not anger, but something worse.
No, his eyes seem to say. No.
I let go of him anyway. Then I step around him.
My bouquet slips from my fingers and hits the floor, white petals scattering across the stone.
My veil trails behind me like surrender.
The church watches in horrified silence as I walk away from the altar and toward the man who came for me with violence in his hands.
Lorenzo doesn’t move.
He just waits.
When I finally stop in front of him, my heart is beating so hard I feel sick. Up close, he smells like gunpowder and cold air and the kind of rage that devours everything it touches.
“Let her go,” I whisper, glancing toward Teresa.
His eyes drag over my face, over the veil, the dress, the life I was seconds away from stepping into. Then, without looking away from me, he jerks his chin.
His men release Teresa. She stumbles free into the arms of one of Dante’s people, shaken but unharmed.
Relief nearly buckles my knees.
Lorenzo steps closer.
“Good girl,” he says softly.
I flinch.
Across the church, Dante sees it. Sees all of it. The way I’m standing here in my wedding dress while Lorenzo holds me like he’s already won. The way this moment has been ripped apart and rewritten at gunpoint.
His face turns to stone.
“This isn’t over,” Dante says.
Lorenzo’s mouth curves, but there’s no warmth in it.
“No,” he says, pulling me back against his side. “It’s not.”
Then his gaze drops. To my left hand. To the diamond Dante slid onto my finger only days ago when the engagement was announced. Something dark flashes across his face.
Before I can react, Lorenzo catches my hand in his and yanks the ring free.
I gasp softly as the metal scrapes over my knuckle.
He holds it up for one cold, brutal second, the diamond catching candlelight like a shard of ice.
Then he flicks his wrist and sends it sailing across the church.
The ring strikes the stone near the altar with a sharp metallic crack before skidding to a stop at Dante’s feet.
Lorenzo’s arm bands around my waist, hard and possessive, as his eyes lock on Dante’s.
“Keep your ring,” he says, voice low and lethal. “She’s coming with me.”
Then he begins backing us toward the doors, his men closing in around us. The church remains frozen—guests terrified, Dante’s soldiers armed but unable to fire without risking the people Lorenzo came prepared to use.
I look over my shoulder at Dante one last time.
At the fury in his eyes.
At the ring lying near his polished shoes.
At everything that might have been.
Then Lorenzo drags me out of the church, and the doors slam shut behind us.