33. Zarina
ZARINA
“ M arcus, dear.” Mother turns to greet him with open arms, welcoming the interruption like it’s expected. “You’re simply dashing this evening.”
“Thank you.” He presses a kiss to her cheek, holding my gaze the whole time. “I couldn’t help but dress to match my fiancée.”
“You two make quite the pair.” Mother looks between us like we’re the apple of her eye, and I hold back a snort.
“Who’s your fiancée?” I fake ignorance. “I haven’t seen any bridge trolls in attendance tonight.”
“Zarina Giovanna,” Mother chastises.
Marcus shakes his head, faux fondness on his face but a malicious glint in his eye. “I very much enjoy our verbal sparring. I think I’ll enjoy it when we’re married even more.”
Mother pats my arm. “I must return to your father, you know how he gets when he drinks champagne.”
I grab hold of her wrist with the same strength and grip she always uses on me, my nails digging in between the tendons. She cannot leave me here alone. With him. “I’ll come with. There’s a sur?—”
“I was hoping to speak with you,” Marcus says, and despite the innocence of his words, goose bumps prickle over my nape. The emptiness of the hallway becomes tangible in the way it compresses the air around me. I can hardly breathe.
“You already have.” I try to push Mother toward the door, me with her.
But she pats my hand, forcibly removing it from her wrist. “Zarina, don’t be rude to your guests.”
“Now he’s a guest?” I snap.
She steps out of reach. “Don’t be too long, hm? There are the toasts to give.”
Mother slips through the door, the noise of the party clattering against my ears. It echoes discordantly off the walls, into the carpet. I don’t spy Pat through the crack of the door, can’t depend on them to protect me. I let my hand fall to my skirt and sink surreptitiously into my pocket, through the hole I cut at the bottom, to grasp the handle of the knife sheathed at my thigh.
The door shuts again, and Marcus’s friendly demeanor drops immediately. “Alone at last.”
“Speak your piece,” I say. Even though I know this will be more than a conversation.
His gaze ravages me as effectively as his hands could, promises of violence and malice dancing behind his eyes. For him, this is fun, a bit of foreplay before the main event. If I could vomit on command, I would.
He finally speaks. “You clean up well for a bridge troll.”
“Flattery won’t earn you safe passage,” I quip.
“Would you prefer force?”
“Payment, actually.” I affect relaxation, like I actually believe this is a simple tête-à-tête and won’t turn into attempted assault or worse.
“How much?” Marcus relaxes, too, like he thinks me as daft as I pretend to be.
“More than you could afford. ”
“Money isn’t a problem for an Accardi.” The implication that it would be a problem for a Gallo hangs heavy between us.
“I wouldn’t take payment in money.” I clear the knife of its sheath. “But flesh would be commensurate.”
Marcus grins, and it almost feels genuine. Like he’s having fun trading barbs. His face isn’t lined in aggression, playing the part of the alpha male with access to too many guns and not enough empathy. For once, he looks like a person rather than a caricature. He’s almost handsome. It’s more disconcerting than if he were to break out in choreographed song and dance.
I take a chance, hoping for an honest answer. “Why do you want to marry me, Marcus?”
His defenses don’t draw up immediately, and I think, for the first time, we’re speaking to each other rather than the masks we present to the world. “The same reason you don’t want to.”
“Which is?”
“The black hole inside of me demands it.”
I frown. “Demands you marry me?”
“No, power.”
My brows shoot up in surprise. How could Marcus see himself in me? We’re nothing alike. Nothing .
But a whisper rises inside me, directly out of darkness lined in gnashing teeth that is never satisfied, that voices my worst impulses. I try to deny, to argue logically against it. I would never use people or violence the way Marcus does. I would never force someone to marry me for the power it would bring me.
Except I would. I did.
Am I not using Tamayo as a veritable human shield? Am I not willing to endanger her entire family to keep myself safe? If things go wrong, if I cannot escape Marcus Accardi’s hand in marriage, I would murder him and start a war. I would convince Tamayo to marry me first. I would do anything it took to secure myself a future untethered to the man before me, anything to attain power that does not depend on being tied to anyone else. Let alone a man.
Marcus sees that in me. Someone as hungry for power as himself. But we are different. He’s willing to act without conscience, never forced to function within the societal chains of feminine expectation. Empowered and sheltered and privileged, Marcus is the unchecked version of my own monster.
I don’t care what he sees. I won’t be his pawn. “Find another princess.”
“But none are quite as deserving to be queen.” He chuckles, and that sliver of authenticity disappears, tucked behind his black eyes and condescending tone.
This conversation is pointless. I pick up my skirt. “I must get back.”
“And I must feed the beast.”
My fists are clenched, one around the tulle of my dress, the other around the leather handle of my knife. Marcus holds my gaze, and I hold his, two mountain lions waiting to pounce. I breathe in a steady inhale. Marcus squares his shoulders. The black hole inside me is chomping at the bit, ready to be fed. I suppose his is, too.
The moment I exhale is the moment I draw my knife.
Too slowly.
Marcus snatches my wrist as it clears my pocket, his other hand grabbing my throat. His signature move at this point.
I smile despite his hold and wish I had blood in my teeth to show him just how much danger he’s in. “I told you I’d do worse the next time you touched me.”
He leans in, mouth so close to my cheek I can feel the heat of it. “What can a trapped kitten do against a lion?”
A lot, actually. I slam my knee into his groin at the same time I drop the knife to my open, waiting hand. Marcus is too busy feeling the pain pulsing from his vulnerable family jewels to notice the switch. My smile widens as I catch the handle and rear back to finally gut Marcus like the pig he is.
A secondary door in the hallway bursts open.
Marcus’s cousin, Dan the Snake, who was recently bailed out of jail, saunters into the hall. His face is smooth as a baby’s ass, hiding the rotten core inside.
And then three other doors open, a dozen armed men marching out of them.
Marcus blocks my stab, twisting my wrist until I’m forced to drop the knife. It falls to the carpet with a muffled thud, yet he doesn’t stop twisting. “No pound of flesh tonight.”
“I’ll find my moment,” I mutter.
He smirks, like he’s looking forward to it. “I’ll be waiting.”
“What’s the plan, then?” I snap.
Marcus rubs his thumb over my wrist in a soft caress, as if he’s not bending it so viciously that it’s on the verge of snapping. “We have a priest waiting at Saint Christopher’s. Your parents will meet us there.”
Understanding floods over me. Mother did more than leave me alone with Marcus to talk despite my attempts to escape with her. She dragged me here , into this hallway without foot traffic, without restrooms, only doors leading to empty rooms. Except for the one with a glaring, red exit sign above it.
The betrayal shouldn’t hurt. This is expected, truly. They’ve done nothing to show me they have a singular concern for my well-being or happiness since they ambushed me with news of the deal they brokered with the Accardis. The one that sold me off like a medieval princess meant to bring peace to her kingdom.
Still. It hurts. A deep and aching pain that won’t soften anytime soon.
I bury it deep enough that Marcus won’t see, deep enough that the gnashing teeth grab hold of it and swallow it down whole. Like all the other betrayals, it will remember. “The Council won’t stand for this.”
Marcus kicks my knife down the hall behind me. “They won’t have a choice, not with the full power of the South and West against them.”
I shake my head. “My parents are idiots.”
“Yes.” He yanks on my wrist, shooting pain up to my elbow.
I follow after him, unwilling to be dragged like a wayward child. “The Gallos will cease to exist altogether after this.”
“Most likely,” he agrees.
We walk toward his men, who rush forward to meet us. I wish I was a hurricane. I wish I could toss them against the wall, rip their guns out of their hands, drown them in a tempest.
Marcus keeps my wrist in his harsh grip. “They negotiated your survival, at least.”
“How kind.” If I were a hurricane, the tears threatening to fall would be rain lashing against their skin. Not a sign of helpless rage. Not a weakness .
Marcus snorts. “You mean foolish.”
I do. Nothing will go according to whatever contract they signed. And they should know that. “I assume you’ve already made plans to remove them from the equation.”
“After our first child.”
The thought of Marcus touching me in any way that would result in pregnancy causes nausea to churn in my gut. “I will abort every cursed cell that takes root.”
“Hard to achieve when you can’t leave the house, hm?” He jerks my hand up to his mouth by his hold on my wrist and brushes a kiss over the meat of my palm.
I gag. “I hate you.”
“Save the passion for our wedding night, dear.”
The exit door opens ahead of us, Marcus’s horde of men lining the hall and cutting off any hope of an escape route. Guns ahead, guns behind, guns beside. The only way out is through that door. Each barrel counted dwindles the small possibility I have that, maybe, I can find a way out of this.
As the distance closes between us and kidnapping, the hopeless reality of that likelihood sinks in. I am alone and unarmed and weak. I want to be a hurricane of force, but I am not. And Marcus’s painful grip on my wrist, the barrel of each gun pointed at me as we march down the hall, reinforces that fact.
I am a sheep. And I am being led to slaughter.
to be continued…