Chapter 5
Angel
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Omar asked for the hundredth time as he adjusted my tie. If he asked again, I was going to put my fist through his face.
I wrenched away and looked into the entryway mirror.
Lara had forced me into my best suit this morning and picked out a lighter, dove gray tie because “weddings were too joyous for a black tie, mijo,” and for all intents and purposes, I was the very picture of a groom on his wedding day.
Except for the frown slashing its way across my face.
I tried on a smile, forcing the corners of my mouth upward, but that made me look even more demented.
I let my face relax back into its original expression.
“What would you have me do, Omar?” I asked, looking at my brother through the mirror.
“Defy Padre?” I sucked my teeth, making a tsk-ing sound.
“Do you want to be the heir that badly?”
The question burned in my gut. Even if he didn’t, there were others in the family that wouldn’t mind seeing me lose my place.
Omar grinned at me, all sharp teeth and asshole smile. “I would rather introduce my dick to a cheese grater.” He put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed; his expression flattened into something more serious. I got his message without words: I will stand by you, brother.
I shrugged him off. “It will be fine.”
Omar nodded once and reached out to squeeze my shoulder again. “Maybe you could stop glaring, then? You’ll frighten your pretty, little fiancée when she comes downstairs.”
My hands curled into fists. The need to punch my brother in the jaw returned full force.
“I don’t care how she feels.” It wasn’t a lie, but at the same time…
I didn’t care about Emma’s feelings. It didn’t matter what she was feeling.
But that didn’t mean that she hadn’t been on my mind over the last two days either.
She had become an irritation that my brain – and body – refused to let go of.
Omar snickered. “What a charmer.”
“Vete a la verga,” I hissed at him, which only made him laugh. I sank my fist into his stomach, hard. Omar’s eyes went wide for a split-second before he doubled over, groaning. I shook my hand and tried to ignore the throb in my knuckles.
Omar straightened back up; his good mood all but wiped from his face. Good, I thought savagely. This wasn’t a day for fucking smiles. “I could break your nose,” Omar said, “but Lili would kill me if I bloodied you up on your wedding day.”
“You could try it,” I spat back.
“Boys!” We turned, and Lili stood at the bottom of the main stairwell, glaring.
Though beautiful, Lili was tougher than most men that I knew; she had been training alongside us at the gun range since she was eight years old.
I had seen that same look on her face cause powerful men to cower. “No fighting today.”
We both nodded. “Lo síento,” I said. Lili rolled her eyes — she clearly didn’t believe me — and glanced up. A smile curled at the corner of her mouth. I tracked her gaze, and my chest went tight.
Emma came down the stairs in a lacy, white dress that was probably Lili’s, but it fit her body like she had custom-ordered it for herself; diamonds dripped down her neck and at her wrists.
Her hair had been curled and framed her face, and Lili had put makeup on her face.
She looks like an angel, I thought absently. It made me want to ruin her.
Don’t get hard right now. The suit wouldn’t hide a thing.
But then my eyes landed on the smile on her face, and it sparked an ugly rage deep in my gut. “What in the hell could you possibly be smiling at today?” I asked, putting voice to that anger.
Emma froze on the stairs, and the wide smile slipped a few notches before fading entirely.
Her eyes slid to Lili for a moment before she zeroed back in on me.
I watched her pull in a deep breath. Then, Emma rolled her shoulders back so that she was standing straighter than before.
She walked down the last few stairs and stopped in front of me.
“I apologize for trying to make the best of a shitty situation,” she said flatly. “I won’t do that in the future.”
Goddamnit. If she were anyone else, I wouldn’t stand for the defiance shining in her icy blue eyes. But the set of her jaw, the haughty way she held herself, it made me ache to touch her. To fuck her.
“We should be going,” Omar said, and his voice sounded far too amused. “Our appointment at the courthouse is in half an hour.”
Emma’s haughty expression —the one she’d conjured after the fall of her smile —faded around the edges. She wasn’t nearly as confident as she pretended to be. For that soft, Bambi look on her face, I fought against my own anger at the situation. I offered her my elbow. “Shall we?”
She didn’t trust me, the shadow in her eyes told me as much, but she slipped her hand into my arm after only a split-second of hesitation. “It’s better than dying, right?” she said, more to herself than to me, but I could see Omar smirking at me. I raised my middle finger at him over her head.
I walked her out of the house, tightening my grip on her as we walked over the threshold.
The thought might occur to Emma to run. I might have tried it myself if I was in her position.
But instead of tensing or trying to pull away, she leaned into me, seeking a comfort that I couldn’t —wouldn’t because I couldn’t stop the petty feeling in my gut —give her.
A large black Range Rover was parked, ready to go. Omar and Lili took the front seats, and I opened the back door for my bride-to-be. Emma paused, looking into the dark interior, and I leaned down. “Are you going to get in yourself, or am I going to have to put you in there?”
Emma glared at him, her shoulders tight, but she climbed resolutely into the back of the Rover and scooted as far from me as she could possibly get.
Though, as I settled beside her, I realized that she wasn’t cowering away from me.
Instead, she sat in her seat with her eyes forward, as if she were determined not to look at me.
Like I want her to look at me anyway, I thought.
My hands curled into fists. I was not a fucking child, and I refused to feel something as petty as passive aggression.
“You look —” Emma turned her head at the sound of my voice.
Her eyes were almost comically wide, as if she hadn’t anticipated that I would speak to her at all.
“You look nice,” I told her, almost gritting my teeth against the words.
Emma let out a snort. “You don’t have to do that,” she said.
“Do what?”
“You don’t have to make nice with me,” she clarified. “Honestly, you being nice is off-putting.”
Her words raised the hairs on the back of my neck.
Maybe Emma hadn’t meant them as a challenge, but I couldn’t see them as anything else.
“You don’t like me when I’m nice?” I asked and reached out to brush the back of her neck with my thumb.
A tremble ran through her, but when she tried to shift out of my grasp, I cupped the back of her neck, keeping her in place. “Would you rather I be cruel?”
Emma shivered again. “I’d rather you didn’t touch me,” she snapped and tried to pull herself out of my grip.
I didn’t let go. “We both know that isn’t true.”
I thought about pulling her against me and messing up all of the hard work that my sister put into Emma’s hair and makeup.
Let’s see if she’d like getting married looking like she got fucked in the backseat, I thought, but my sister shifted in her seat before I could move.
“Stop it, pendejo,” she hissed. “This is bad enough without you acting like a child.”
She was right, and I hated it. I let go of Emma and sat back in my seat, drumming my fingers against my thigh as Omar weaved around the traffic. In less than twenty minutes, we pulled into the public parking adjacent to the courthouse, and Omar parked the car in a shady spot.
Beside me, Emma took a deep breath, but she paused before she reached for the door handle and looked at me. “Do we have rings?”
“I have a ring for you,” I said. It was in my pocket; it belonged to my mother. Padre gave it to me, and if I didn’t know him so well, I would say he was bestowing me with something precious to him. Instead, it twisted the knife of this whole situation in a little deeper.
“And you?”
I hitched my eyebrow up in question. “Why should I wear a ring?”
“If you aren’t wearing one, why should I?” she shot back at me.
Omar chuckled from the front seat. “This is going well.”
“Shut up, Omar,” Lili hissed. She checked her watch and then glanced back over her shoulder at us. “We have to go if we’re going, or we’ll miss our appointment slot.”
I popped open my door and stepped into the Miami sunshine. Omar had opened the door for Emma on the other side, and when she climbed out of the car, the white of her dress gave her a literal glow that was hard to look at. Lili let out a little whistle. “I do good work, right?” she asked.
I glanced at my baby sister, who was grinning widely, and I dipped my head once. “You did good work,” I acknowledged.
Omar and I flanked Emma as we crossed the street to the courthouse.
There was a metal detector inside the door, but Omar slipped his hand into the security guard’s, and we were led around the velvet rope without passing through it.
“How —?” Emma started to ask, but she cut herself off and shook her head. “Never mind, I don’t want to know.”
“You get used to it,” Lili said as they walked up to the reception desk.
Emma snorted. “Doubtful.”
After being checked in, we were shuffled into the emptied courtroom where the justice of the peace waited. “The Castillo party?” he asked, checking the forms in his hand.
“Yes, sir,” I said. “I’m Angel, and this is my fiancée, Emma Hudson.” Fiancée. Like we’d had some kind of spectacular engagement or something.
The justice of the peace introduced himself as Darrel Waters, and then he beckoned us over so that we could sign the marriage license with our witnesses.
After everything was signed, he arranged us so that Emma and I were looking at each other, holding hands.
“Could we skip the ‘dearly beloved’ stuff?” I asked him, eyes still trained on Emma.
The color was draining from her face; all of that bravado was failing.
Darrel chuckled. “Let’s just do the important bits, shall we?” he asked, good-naturedly. “Do you have the rings?”
I dug my mother’s ring out of my pocket.
It was a delicate gold circle, simple but elegant.
Omar and Lili were probably too young to remember when it graced her finger, but I wasn’t.
No doubt it would look just as beautiful on Emma as it had on her.
Maybe the weight of it wouldn’t kill her like it did my mother.
“No ring for you?” Darrel asked.
I shook my head. “Not just yet.” I smiled at him, warming it into something charming. Emma scoffed softly, and I squeezed her hands until I felt the bones rubbing together. I could see her fighting to keep her face neutral, and I eased off, still smiling.
“That’s becoming more and more common,” Darrel said with a sigh.
“Young men just don’t appreciate tradition anymore.
” He clapped his hands together. “Anyway, let’s get this show started.
” He gestured to me. “Do you, Angel Castillo, take this woman, Emma Hudson, to be your lawful wedded wife, to love, honor, and cherish, through sickness and in health, for richer or poorer, for as long as you both shall live?”
I clenched my jaw so tightly that it ached. “I will,” I said.
“Place the ring on Emma’s finger and repeat after me: ‘With this ring, I thee wed.’”
I slipped the delicate band around her left ring finger. “With this ring, I thee wed.”
Emma’s eyes grew wet. I watched her throat work to swallow her emotions.
“Now,” Darrel said, turning his smile to her.
“Do you, Emma Hudson, take this man, Angel Castillo, to be your lawful wedded husband, to love, honor, and cherish, through sickness and in health, for richer or poorer, for as long as you both shall live?”
She sniffled, clearly miserable despite her doing her best to hide it. “I will.” The words rang out, loud and clear, and sealed our fate. I could practically hear the clattering of a prison door.
“By the power invested in me by the state of Florida, I pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss your lovely bride, sir.”
Our gazes met, and I knew, with certainty, that it would be a mistake to kiss her. Pinning her against the wall in the holding cell had nearly been enough to undo me. But then she had the nerve to look relieved, like she knew that I wasn’t going to lean in.
I smiled and knew it wasn’t the charming one that I’d used on the Justice of the Peace: it was sharp and mean, and the hitch in her breathing shouldn’t make me smile more, but it did. She wanted me, and she was afraid of me, and the combination was addicting.
I leaned down and sealed my mouth over hers.
This was far from my first kiss – I had never been entirely fond of them – but I wasn’t anticipating a bomb to detonate in my gut.
She was soft, and her lips tasted like some kind of flavored lip-balm, and I couldn’t stop myself from reaching for her chin and tilting her just right so that I could lick into her mouth. Fuck, she tastes good.
Emma gasped. Her fingers dug into my forearms, though whether she was anchoring herself to me or trying to shove me away, I couldn’t be sure. I couldn’t focus on much besides the sweet taste of her mouth — it was the same as her lips. My head swam with the knowledge that she tasted that good.
I could have stood there and kissed her for hours, days even, if it was not for the soft clearing of a throat. I jerked away and glared at my brother, who was looking far too amused. “You have something to say, pendejo?”
“Just a reminder that Padre wants to meet your new bride.”
Fuck. I turned back to Emma, who was looking at me in a dazed kind of way.
She was my wife. Mine, my mind whispered darkly.
Something dark unfurled in my chest and took up space in my lungs.
Nothing had ever been solely mine before, and now I had a wife that was all mine.
I reached out and touched her cheek; clarity sparked in her face, but I noticed that she didn’t wrench herself away from me. “Let’s go home.”