Chapter 9 #2
Someone who headbutts Saint Andriani in the nose.
Everything happens so fast. I scramble for the door, and then I’m leaping out of the G-Wagon onto the pavement, the warmth of the morning sun hitting me and reminding me I’m still alive.
There’s a crowd gathered. Women in dresses and heels, men in suits.
They look like they’re here for a funeral.
Maybe mine, because Saint is growling and swearing, holding one hand over his nose as he lunges from the back seat of the car. Blood is gushing from between his fingers.
Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.
I break into a run, tearing off down the sidewalk, desperate to make my escape.
Pain shoots through my feet, but this is my only chance.
My heart is pounding as I turn the corner and sprint down the side street.
I may as well be running on spikes. These shoes weren’t made for this kind of punishment, and neither was I.
But that doesn’t matter. I’m hurtling myself forward with desperate purpose, arms pumping, feet pounding on the concrete.
Until my ankle overturns and I’m pitching forward. Before I can go headfirst into the pavement, I’m snatched up by an oversized Andriani. I’m not even sure which one.
“Wrong way,” he growls and then throws me over his shoulder.
And I instantly know who it is. He smells like pine trees and citrus and everything bad and good rolled into one. He’s in a black suit that fits him perfectly, clinging to his tight ass.
“Priest,” I gasp, the blood rushing to my head as he starts walking with me.
Long-legged strides that bounce me with every step.
“Put me down,” I demand when he refuses to answer me.
Still nothing. He just keeps walking, taking us around the rear of the cathedral.
I pound on his back.
That gets his attention. He smacks my ass. Hard.
“You don’t make demands of me.” Another spank. “And you don’t make problems for me.” Spank. “Understand?”
We’ve reached a door, and he opens it, stepping into the church.
My ass stings and so does my pride.
“Fuck you,” I tell him, blinking back tears as the grim reality of my situation hits me.
I haven’t escaped.
I’m trapped.
And I have no choice but to marry this monster.
He sets me on my feet abruptly. I have a second to take in my surroundings now that I’m right-side up.
We’re in a shadowy little hallway with a black-and-white-tiled floor.
It smells like musty church. The far-off strains of an organ are playing somewhere above us. We’re in the cathedral’s underbelly.
In the next second, his body is against mine, a hard wall of muscled power. His head dips low, so that we’re eye to eye, his palms flattened to the wall on either side of my face.
He’s furious.
“Do you have a fucking death wish?” he snarls.
“No. That’s why I was trying to escape.”
“Running away is going to get you killed.”
“Not if no one catches me.”
“Someone will always catch you, topolina . You’re in this too deep now.”
I shake my head, wishing that my body weren’t reacting to his. “I’m not in this. Let me go. I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to marry you. Let me go back to Iowa and forget any of this ever happened. You’ll never see me again.”
He doesn’t say anything. Just gives me a hard stare, his jaw rigid, eyes sparking with fury, like live electric wires downed by a vicious storm. My heart is still beating fast, so damn fast. But not just from my escape attempt anymore. Now, it’s partially because of him.
He drags a finger down my throat. Just one, stopping to rest in the hollow at the base. He’s so beautiful. I want to be immune to him, but Priest is as sexy as he is psycho. A devil with the face of an angel.
He moves his hand, palm flattening, fingers wrapping around me. “Do you know how easily I could snap your neck right now?”
He squeezes gently, proving his point.
I think he’s deadly serious about this threat.
But I also like the way his hand feels on me.
I like the power he’s exerting over me. The dominance, the control, his big body pressing into mine, trapping me here.
It’s something I never knew I would crave, and the knowledge scares me more than anything else.
“Do it,” I taunt him.
But he doesn’t listen. Instead, his lips slam down on mine, hot and demanding.
The kiss is cruel and it’s powerful and drugging.
His tongue is in my mouth, claiming, taking.
I should bite it, but I suck on it instead.
My hands are on his rock-hard chest, but I’m not pushing him away.
Instead, I’m grasping his expensive suit, clinging to him like a barnacle. Like I’ll fall apart if I let go.
And maybe I will.
My ankle throbs from the spill I almost took on the pavement. But my enemy is kissing me like his life depends on it, and I’m kissing him back the same way.
“Boss?”
The voice has him freezing and wrenching his lips from mine. Priest is still furious, glaring down at me like he doesn’t know if he wants to fuck me or tear me into tiny pieces and scatter them where no one will ever find me.
“What is it, Roc?” he asks without looking away.
A lock of dark hair falls across his forehead, and I narrowly resist the urge to smooth it away. It’s too wifely , and I don’t want to be this man’s wife. I don’t want to be his anything.
“ Scusa ,” his bodyguard says from somewhere down the hall. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
My heart has never pounded so hard. And I’ve never felt more alive.
Priest’s fingers are still wrapped around my neck in what I suspect is a deceptively loose hold.
“Care to explain why I caught my wife running down the sidewalk?” he asks casually, still not bothering to look in Rocco’s direction.
“It may have something to do with Saint’s broken nose,” Rocco responds, his tone flat.
I bite my lip. I broke his nose? That explains why my head aches almost as much as my ankle. Part of me feels guilty. The other part of me knows I did what I had to do.
“You punched him?” Priest asks me softly.
“I…headbutted him,” I admit, not proud of myself. “I didn’t mean to break his nose.”
“Fuck,” he swears, then releases me so quickly that I have to struggle to keep from falling over in my uncomfortable heels.
My back is pressed to the cool wall, my palms flattened on either side to keep me steady.
The familiar musty church smell of candles, old wood, and books replaces Priest’s intoxicating scent.
Which is just as well, because I swear to God, that combination cast a spell on my ovaries.
He stalks over to Rocco, and the two of them confer quietly.
I can’t hear what they’re saying. Maybe they’re plotting to kill me.
Trying to figure out a good place to dump my body.
Idiot that I am, I’m still dazed from those kisses.
From the way Priest sets me on fire, the way my body reacts to his.
No ex has ever made me feel the slightest hint of what he does.
It’s wrong and it’s terrifying.
I don’t even know who I am right now, dressed up in a designer gown and heels that cost more than everything I own and about to marry a mobster. A mobster who worked his way up the ladder by mercilessly killing all his father’s enemies.
Slowly, I push away from the wall, wondering if I can take advantage of Priest’s and Rocco’s distractedness. But Priest’s head swivels back to me instantly.
“Don’t even think about it,” he bites out. “You’ve caused enough trouble for one day.”
“I’m a lot of trouble. You should probably take that into consideration.”
He chuckles, the sound like velvet and whiskey, and then gives me a slow, wolfish smile. “I like trouble.”
Nothing works against this man. I’ve fought him every step of the way. And I’m still standing here in the basement of the church where we’re about to be married, wearing the wedding dress and shoes he picked out. Never mind that they’re gorgeous. Never mind that they fit perfectly.
“Maybe I’m the kind of trouble you can’t afford,” I tell him boldly. “I’m not some quiet Mafia wife who does what she’s told and looks the other way.”
I don’t know why I’m even saying this. I have no intention of being Priest Andriani’s wife. Even if he forces me into a ceremony today, even if I sign my name on the license, I’m going to get out of this hell. One way or another. I’m not giving up my life.
He strokes his jaw, looking at me thoughtfully, and I try not to notice how beautifully stubbled the sharp angle is, try to keep the unwanted attraction I feel for him—as magnetic as it is electric—at bay.
“Don’t worry, topolina ,” he says with the smug look of a man who knows he’s hot as fuck and isn’t afraid to flaunt it. “I keep my women in line.”
His women.
I think about taking off one of my shoes and throwing it at him, the same way I did with his camera.
But I clench my jaw instead. “Keep them in line all you want. Just know I won’t be one of them.”
“Not to interrupt, boss,” Rocco says then, “but Amedeo’s through security. We good to go?”
For a minute, I forgot Rocco was here. It was as if Priest and I were the only two people in the world, locked in a battle of wills and want.
Amedeo.
My cousin Amedeo.
The one I vaguely remember from my childhood, who used to give Leo and me cherry cordials at Christmas whenever there was a Revello family gathering.
They were disgusting, but I ate them because I wanted male approval and God knows I didn’t get it from my father.
And now, Amedeo is trying to kill my father, plotting to become the new don.
If what Priest says is true, Amedeo will kill me too.
Priest is still looking at me, his eyes practically burning into me, like he can see inside to a place I want to keep hidden from the world. “I’ll leave that up to Luna.”
I lick my lips, and it’s a mistake, because I taste him. Whiskey and sex and everything I shouldn’t want.
“What do you mean, you’ll leave it up to me?”
“Easy way or hard way?” A muscle in his jaw ticks.
“The easy way is you marry me in front of everyone waiting upstairs. The hard way is you keep fighting me, and I’m going to have to take out your cousin and all his men.
Who knows who’ll get caught in the crossfire?
It’s going to be messy. The choice is yours. ”
He’s playing games with me again. Sick games. Acting like I have a say in this nightmare when we both know I don’t. It’s either do what he wants or people die. I die.
“Easy way,” I bite out.
But he hasn’t won. Because the war between us is just beginning, and I have no intention of letting him emerge the victor.
I’ll destroy him and every last one of the Andrianis before I’m done, and I’ll do it in my brother’s name.