Chapter 13 Antonia #2
I come. The orgasm hits at the exact moment Giada clocks the shoes, and the sound I make is not a word and not a moan and not anything I could reproduce if I tried.
It's the sound of a woman coming on a man's tongue while her best friend watches the realization dawn.
The sound fills the room, and my knees buckle as Matteo's hands grip my thighs to hold me upright under the dress.
Giada is cackling. Full, body-shaking, tears-forming laughter. She doubles over, grabs the bedpost, and laughs until she can't breathe.
"I'll see you both downstairs," she says when she can talk, wiping her eyes. "Don't wrinkle the dress. And Matteo?" She addresses the fabric at my waist. "You've got—" she checks her invisible watch "—forty minutes to get your shit together. Don't be late. I have a speech planned."
She leaves. Closes the door behind her. I can hear her laughing all the way down the corridor, and the sound of it is the most Giada thing in the world.
Matteo emerges from under the dress. His hair is wrecked. His face is wet. His mouth is swollen and his eyes are dark and the look he gives me from his knees is the look of adoration.
"You taste incredible," he says.
"Get up, fuck, Goddamn. Fix your hair. We have a wedding, and DON’T feed Gia, for the love of fuck. She will never let me live this down."
He stands and licks his lips, then wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and inhales deeply before he reaches into his pocket and pulls out my underwear.
"These are mine now," he says.
"Give them back."
"No."
"Matteo—"
"Consider it a wedding present." He puts them back in his pocket and adjusts his shirt and walks to the door. He stops, turns, and looks at me before giving me a wink. "See you at the altar, Castillo."
He walks out. I stand in the room alone, breathing hard, my legs still shaking, the aftershocks of the orgasm still rolling through me, and I turn to look at myself in the mirror.
The woman looking back is flushed and wrecked and wearing dark red and carrying two karambits and she's about to walk into a war room and marry a man who just ate her out under her wedding dress while her best friend checked the hemline.
I should be furious. I should be embarrassed.
But I'm grinning. The first genuine grin that has crossed my face since I walked into this compound.
I fix my hair. Straighten the dress. Check Vita and Morte in their pockets. My pussy is soaked and there’s nothing to stop the trails going down my legs. No underwear. The bastard took my underwear.
Time to get married.
The hall has been transformed.
It's not a church and it's not a venue and it's not beautiful, but the people standing in it have made it theirs.
Savannah has put flowers on the bar, wildflowers from somewhere that shouldn't exist in a building made of concrete.
Charlotte has arranged the chairs and there's a runner on the floor, dark fabric, simple, leading from the door to where Leone stands at the head of the room in a black suit.
The compound residents start fill the chairs.
Emilio and Savannah sit in the front row, his arm around her shoulders.
Claudio and Charlotte beside them, hands clasped together.
Alexandra on the other side smiling at me.
Soldiers in the rows behind, cleaned up, armed, every one of them carrying a sidearm under their jackets because the compound is on lockdown and Leone ordered everyone armed.
Carmelo stands at the front, beside the space where Matteo will stand. I stared when I saw the arrangement because Carmelo volunteering to stand as witness is the most unexpected thing that has happened in this compound.
Giada stands on my side. She's in a green dress that's too tight and too short and absolutely perfect. She winks at me when I walk in and the wink says I know what you did and I will never let you forget it. I roll my eyes back at her, but I’m smiling.
Matteo is at the front. He's in his dark suit, clean, composed, the diplomat mask reassembled after the activities of the last hour.
His hair is fixed. His shirt is buttoned.
The mark on his chest is hidden. His hands are at his sides, and the only sign that anything happened between us forty minutes ago is the slight redness around his mouth that could be razor burn but isn't, and the fact that my underwear is in his pocket.
I walk toward him, and everything falls silent as the room watches.
No bouquet, no veil, no performance of bridal softness.
I walk toward the man I'm marrying with the same stride I use when I walk into rooms I intend to own.
I come to stop beside him and he smirks, his eyes dropping down to my lips and back up as my cheeks flush.
Leone speaks. The ceremony is short, direct, stripped of religious language and romantic cliché.
He talks about the treaty, about the families, about the arrangement.
He talks about choice, and the word carries more weight in this room than it would in any church because everyone standing here knows that choice is the one thing neither the bride nor the groom was given.
Until we were with the amendment and decided, silently and without conversation, that we want to get married anyway.
"Do you take this man?" Leone asks.
I think about the corridor. The gym. The bar. The room at eleven at night. The amendment. My father. The gym floor and the blade and the scratch. The dress and the mouth and the orgasm that hit while Giada was blabbering about food.
I think about a man who beat someone bloody for touching me and then spent twelve hours writing legal documents to make sure nobody owns me.
"I do," I say.
"Do you take this woman?"
Matteo doesn't hesitate. "I do."
Leone pronounces us married. The room is quiet for a beat and then Emilio breaks it with a whoop that makes Savannah roll her eyes and Charlotte laugh and even Carmelo's mouth moves a fraction of an inch.
Matteo's hand finds mine. His fingers lace through mine and the grip is firm and present and his palm is warm as he slides a ring on my finger, and I give him the same honor. He grabs my chin and pulls me in, kissing me with lips that smell and taste like me. I don’t know how long as stayed like that, but the next moment, he’s holding my hand and we’re facing the crowd as our new family warms towards us.
Giada hugs me. Tight, close, her face in my neck. "I'm so proud of you," she whispers, “so, so fucking proud.”
Savannah pours. The bar opens. Soldiers come forward with handshakes and nods and the particular awkwardness of armed men at a wedding trying to figure out whether they should clap or maintain tactical posture.
We're ten minutes into the reception when the first explosion hits.
The sound is wrong before the impact arrives.
A deep thud from outside, somewhere on the eastern perimeter, followed by a shockwave that rattles the glasses on Savannah's bar and sends a vibration through the concrete floor.
The overhead lights flicker. One of the fluorescent tubes pops and goes dark.
Silence for a moment and then chaos as everyone moves.
The soldiers go from wedding guests to combat positions in under three seconds.
Weapons drawn, chairs kicked aside, the two rows of celebration dissolving into a tactical formation.
Claudio is at the door with his sidearm out.
Emilio has Savannah behind the bar and his gun in his hand.
Carmelo doesn't move. He stands where he stood during the ceremony, hand on his knife, eyes on the door, and his other resting on the gun in his belt.
A second explosion. Closer. The walls shake and dust falls from the ceiling, and the lights go out entirely. Emergency power kicks in two seconds later, red emergency lighting that turns this space into something out of a horror movie.
Leone's voice cuts through the chaos. "Report."
A voice on the radio, one of the perimeter soldiers. "Eastern wall breached. Multiple vehicles. Armed hostiles. Castillo markings on the lead vehicle."
The room absorbs the information in a single beat. Marco Castillo didn't just refuse to sign the amendment. He sided with the Silent and declared war on the Bonaccorsos on the day of his daughter's wedding.
Matteo's hand is still in mine. His grip locks down.
I reach under my dress with my free hand and pull Vita from the hidden pocket. The karambit slides into my grip, finger ring on, blade ready. Morte follows with the other hand.
Matteo looks at the blades and then grins. He pulls me in and kisses me fiercely before letting me go. I am everything my father didn’t want me to be. The bride in dark red, two karambits, ring on her finger, husband's hand in hers.
"Ready?”
A third explosion rocks the building. Closer still. The perimeter is failing and the war is coming inside and the wedding that started with a mouth under a dress is ending with blood on the walls.
Leone moves to the door. "Battle stations. Everybody knows their positions. Carmelo, eastern breach. Claudio, western corridor. Emilio, get the civilians to the safe room. Matteo, Antonia, you're with me."
Matteo squeezes my hand once. “Let’s go, baby girl.”
I spin Vita in my right hand before giving Morte a kiss and nodding.
This is my life, and I’ll defend it until my last breath.