Chapter 9
9
CELIA
I didn’t see Gabriel the rest of that day, though his very presence in the house felt like something I could feel. One of his men came to tell me to prepare myself for the club, and he’d carried my wedding dress, freshly cleaned.
The clean white of my gown had been altered, though, by black lace and a black sash at the waist. The sash was decorated with a heavy broach with both black and clear diamonds, glittering against the gold; I ran my fingertips over it, sure that each jewel was real. Gabriel had spared no expense; he never would.
This transformed dress was beautiful, but I was afraid of what it signified.
That night, I stepped out into the cold evening air, my breath fogging before me. A shiver raced down my spine, both from the chill and the anticipation of what was to come. The fabric of my dress clung to my curves, feeling as if it were weighing me down, as if I were being pulled into a dark pool, drowning.
Gabriel’s McLaren idled at the bottom of the steps. He stood by the open passenger door, a silhouette against the dim light spilling from the vehicle’s luxurious interior. With his hands in his pockets, drawing up his fitted jacket, and his broad shoulders, he looked like a god. When his icy blue eyes rose to meet mine, I felt an unfamiliar flutter of desire.
It was a terrible thing to have a crush on my husband.
“Do I look all right?” I asked, voice barely above a whisper.
His eyes roamed over me, leaving a trail of heat in their wake. It wasn’t admiration I saw in his gaze but raw, unbridled desire, and my heart beat an erratic tattoo against my ribs.
“You look beautiful,” Gabriel admitted, his tone rough like gravel. “But it doesn’t matter. You’ll be naked soon anyway.”
I lifted my chin against his crude words. He had doused the desire I’d felt for him in one brutal stroke. I’d dared to think I could enjoy tonight. But as much as I wanted Gabriel at times, I didn’t want Gabriel to touch me tonight. Not now, and not like this.
Dante emerged from the shadows, flanked by two of Gabriel’s men. His usual confident stride was hindered by their grip on his arms, and my heart sank. I knew what this was: punishment, a demonstration of power, a spectacle of humiliation for Dante, who cared for me and would have to watch as I was mercilessly claimed by my husband.
Please , don’t bring Dante . I wanted to beg, but I swallowed the words. Gabriel wouldn’t be impressed by my pleading.
Dante met my gaze, and the corner of his mouth lifted as he gave me a defiant wink, as if to reassure me or perhaps mock the whole twisted situation.
They shoved him into a second car.
“Get in the car, Celia,” Gabriel’s voice sliced into my thoughts, startling me into realizing I’d stared after Dante.
Without another word, I complied, sliding onto the cool leather seat. As the door closed, the world narrowed to just him and me. I glanced at him nervously.
The engine’s low growl vibrated through the leather seat. The drive through the city to the Obsidian seemed to be passing too quickly.
It was raining, pelting the windshield mercilessly, turning the streetlights and passing cars into a hazy glow.
The words were almost impossible to say, but I finally forced them out. “Do you have to bring Dante? Let him stay in the car. Don’t make him see…” I licked my lips. “I’ll find something to do for you. A way to help you with my father. Just…show him that mercy.”
Gabriel’s focus never wavered from the road, but his jaw tightened visibly. “So, you ask for mercy for him? Not for yourself?”
My hands were shaking. “I’m not afraid of you. But I’m afraid for him.”
He scoffed a laugh at that. “Dante has his role to play.”
I tried to read his handsome face in profile. Did he feel any of the desire for me that seemed to take him over sometimes? If he did…I could bear tonight.
But if he was going to be cold and distant, as he was now, and just thrust himself inside me in front of the crowd…I chewed my lower lip, trying to steel myself. But the thought haunted me.
Gabriel was so unpredictable.
And it made me think of another man, who had been so kind and steady.
“David would protect me from you,” I whispered.
The name hung in the air like a sacrilege.
For a brief moment, Gabriel’s impassive mask faltered, his grip on the steering wheel tightening until his knuckles turned white.
The two of us should both have missed him, should have both grieved him, and we should have been able to find solace in our shared memories…except David wouldn’t be dead if my father had never discovered us together.
The silence stretched taut as a wire, threatening to snap.
I leaned back against the seat, the leather cool against my skin, thinking of David’s laugh, a sound I worried now was more conjured by my imagination than my memory. His voice had been deep and warm, and he’d loved to whisper sweet, filthy-hot words into my ear. That seemed like another lifetime, another world, full of sunshine and love.
David’s voice felt stronger in my head ever since I’d heard him in my dreams, as if he were coming back to me.
Sometimes I wondered if I was going insane.
Sometimes I wondered if that would be the most merciful thing in my life.
As we sped by, the city lights blurred into streaks of gold and red, as if we’d descended into hell.
The city lights played across his features, rendering him either angelic or demonic by turns their intermittent glow. Either way, he was so beautiful; he really did have an inhuman beauty, with his sharp cheekbones, his defined jawline.
“Without you, Celia,” he finally spoke, his voice so void of warmth it sent shivers down my spine, “I wouldn’t have been left to bear these years without my brother. You think you know suffering? You’ve made me a stranger to the man I might have been.”
I glanced away, out the window, feeling a sudden chasm of grief. Sometimes it felt like I had been loved by David in another lifetime; sometimes it felt as if that violent scene unfolded yesterday.
“You only have yourself to blame that you have to deal with me.” His voice was a low growl. “Don’t use my brother’s name to try to make me feel guilt. To try to make me feel mercy .”
I swallowed my fear. It had been a terrible mistake to bring David up now. I should’ve known better than to try to manipulate him with guilt. I should’ve been soft, winning, clever.
But I couldn’t stop thinking about David lately. Everything jogged memories of him. Gabriel knew more than I did about those last moments, when David was shot, and I wanted his answers almost as much as I feared his wrath.
“I miss him so much,” I whispered.
Gabriel’s eyes—bright blue like the hottest flame—seemed as if they’d burn me alive. I turned away, burying myself in the thought that had been haunting me for weeks. Dante’s presence, his mannerisms, the way he grinned, were like glimpsing David in a distorted mirror. I kept obsessing over the possibilities.
Could David have survived? Had Gabriel made it seem as if he killed his brother…but he didn’t? Was that why Gabriel had been the one to pull the trigger?
His hatred for me, his sense that I’d taken away David from him, seemed real. But then, Gabriel and I had shared one moment of connection, and he’d turned into a raging dickhead immediately afterward.
Mafia men and their feelings.
At any rate, he didn’t want to hear about how much I missed his brother.
As the car slowed to enter the underground parking garage beneath the club, I braced myself for what lay ahead.
Tonight would seal our marriage with my shame. It was giving what should’ve been the most private, special moments of our marriage up to the amusement of the other mafia men.
And yet, beneath the dread, I felt defiance raging too. I’d indulged in my grief. Now I’d have to be clever.
The car rolled to a stop, the purring engine going silent as if holding its breath.
Gabriel came around the car to help me out. His movements felt assured…and predatory.
He offered his hand, probably not out of tenderness but as a claim of ownership. My fingers trembled as they slipped into his, the warmth of his skin belying the coldness that lingered from our earlier conversation.
We moved past the door that led to the daughters’ lounge. I’d never been past it to the elevator.
The elevator dinged softly; a sound far too mundane for the moment.
Gabriel led me inside, and as the walls closed us in together, I tried to keep from meeting his eyes. But I could feel him watching me. There was no escaping his proximity, nor the intent behind his gaze. It seared through the fabric of my dress, promising that tonight would be about his control.
But somewhere within me, a spark of resistance smoldered.
GAbrIEL
I escorted Celia to the bride’s dressing room, my hand firm on the small of her back, feeling as if I were steering her toward the gates of hell.
But to remain in alliance with the other families, the ritual had to be done. After she started babbling about David, I should’ve felt better about delivering her up to this punishment. After all, she was clearly still as obsessed with David as he had always been with her. Both of them had gone mad with their love for each other, both had spun out of control.
I would assert control if she couldn’t.
The dressing room was draped with velvet, a gilded cage for my strange, bright light. But perhaps caging her was the only way to keep that light from being extinguished, given her more self-destructive tendencies.
“Hello, Celia,” Sofia greeted her. Her husband was the caretaker of the club, but Sofia felt like its heart.
Its depraved, broken heart, no matter how beautiful she was.
Her raven hair was pulled back into a sleek chignon, and her lips, the color of ripe pomegranates, parted in a practiced smile as she greeted us. Sofia was known for her poise and her ability to soothe even the most frayed nerves with her gentle demeanor and soft-spoken words.
So, she was certainly the opposite of her husband, the most famous dom in the city.
“You look absolutely breathtaking,” she told Celia, looking her over with a warm smile. Her chocolate brown eyes rose to mine with what felt like genuine affection. “Gabriel, you’ve chosen well.”
I nodded, offering a tight-lipped smile. The Obsidian had never been my favorite place. If I had my way, I’d never bring Celia inside these walls. I liked how she was an ice queen, cool and self-possessed on the outside though she was secretly sweet and vulnerable. I wanted all that vulnerability bared to me; I wanted to break her and make her obey.
And I wanted to possess every bit of soft submission as my own, while she remained haughty and imperious to the rest of the world. She didn’t belong here where men fucked and punished and used their wives for everyone to see.
But there would be no escaping tonight’s events.
Sofia took Celia’s trembling hand in hers, leading her to a plush sofa. Celia’s wide eyes flickered to me one last time, a silent plea for rescue.
It was strange that she looked at me that way.
“There, there,” Sofia murmured, brushing a stray lock of hair from Celia’s face. “It’s natural to be nervous, but you must trust that everything will be all right. You and Gabriel will be together. Focus on him and the way he loves you, and nothing else will matter. You’ll forget the audience is even there.”
Celia’s lips parted, her eyes wide and terrified. She looked at me.
I turned my back on her and stepped out into the hallway, the weight of my decision pressing heavily on my shoulders. I made my way to my own dressing room.
Marcus was waiting for me, his expression blank as always. My right-hand man would accept whatever decision, no matter how strange, I made for tonight.
“Bring Dante in,” I told him.
He nodded and left to retrieve him from the car.
When he entered with Dante a few minutes later, Dante glared at me with defiance. Stupid defiance, the same as I’d seen from Celia when she tried to bargain to protect him.
“I hope your trip here was comfortable,” I said, knowing damn well it hadn’t been. Marcus had put Dante in the trunk, and Dante was not a man who fit easily into a trunk.
“Why did you want me here?” Dante’s jaw was tight. His eyes were dark and shadowed.
He and Celia were both twisting themselves apart tonight, coming apart in the madness they’d created for each other. What a pair of fools. But still.
I felt affection for these two idiots.
The bruise on his cheek was a stark reminder of the power I wielded, and yet, in that moment, it felt hollow. I approached him, my fingers tracing the mark, a brand of my authority.
Dante jerked his head away, his dark eyes glaring at me. He wore a different face now, but it was the same glimmer of defiance mixed with fear I’d seen just before I shot him. He hadn’t known I’d switched the bullet with a blank. He hadn’t trusted me, and he’d liked me a lot better then.
He was an ungrateful little prick, then and now.
“You don’t even appreciate her,” Dante said quietly, but his words felt damning. “You don’t have to do this. You could stop it.”
“Oh, shut the fuck up,” I told him. “For our family to rise again, I need a wife. For me to take a wife, we have to go through this stupid ritual. You’ve never been able to see the big picture.”
His eyes, that once looked up to me with so much pride and respect, blazed with contempt.
I moved toward the window and drew the curtain aside so I could see out to the viewing area where the men began to fill the seats. They were like vultures circling a carcass, eager for the feast. Beyond that was the bed, shrouded in darkness for now. The spotlight would come on later.
I had walked the arena, musing over what had happened tonight, picturing what it would look like: the spotlight on my back, the shadows falling, the way my shoulders and back would block her from the crowd behind us. It was the one nod to maintaining a woman’s modesty even as they defaced her. They wouldn’t be able to see much of her body, unless I chose to expose her.
It was part of taking my place in this world: taking not just a wife, but a political alliance with another family and cementing it with an act of vulnerability. I couldn’t spare Celia. That would doom us both.
“There’s got to be another way,” Dante told me. “You don’t understand what she could be. To you. She could be a powerful wife, a powerful ally. You don’t have to be alone?—”
I scoffed, though the sound held little conviction. “I’ve been alone all these years because you were focused on her and not our family. You won’t do what has to be done…so I must.”
“You’ve always figured out how to get what you wanted.”
I shook my head, a wry smile tugging at my lips. “No. This is our world, Dante. We don’t get to choose; we endure. And so must she.”
But it occurred to me that under the right circumstances, she might not even care about the eyes watching her. I’d seen in the shower, when she revealed her fantasies to me, that Celia had depraved tastes.
She just couldn’t admit yet how much those tastes extended to me.
The faces of the men in the viewing area blurred into a sea of entitlement. They were here for a show. While I would always do whatever had to be done…if I fucked her out in that arena for the first time, would I lose the fragile connection I had with Celia? The one that I needed for what would come later?
Her eyes lit up sometimes when I walked into the room, no matter how much her hands trembled sometimes when she tried to speak up to me. She’d been beaten and abused, and it showed, but her spirit was so bright. Somehow, the rest of the world didn’t see her.
I fantasized about forcing her submission, but never about extinguishing that light.
I turned back to Dante. “You’re right. I do have a choice.”
Dante’s eyes narrowed. “What are you planning?”
I stepped closer, the air between us charged with a tension that had been building for years. “We’re going to switch places. You will take my place with Celia.”
For a moment, Dante was speechless. That was refreshing. I’d enjoyed making him pretend he couldn’t speak, that was for sure.
“Why?” he finally managed.
“Because I don’t want her to suffer. At least, not in that way.” She didn’t trust me yet, and she wouldn’t feel safe if our first time was in front of this boisterous crowd.
But she already loved Dante.
She would be happy.
Dante’s face was softening as if I were his hero, once again, and it disgusted me. Could nothing break Dante of his naivety?
“And besides,” I added. “You and Luca have both apparently been hypnotized by this woman’s magic pussy. I don’t want to be drawn under her spell too.”
He sighed.
“Why aren’t you happy? All you want is Celia.”
He gave me a look that said I would never understand, which sure as hell seemed true when it came to him.
One of my men knocked. “Sir? It’s time.”
No one would see my face. Dante looked like me from behind, with our tall, broad-shouldered frames and dark hair.
“I’m ready,” I said.
When he left, I gestured at Dante. “Hurry up. Undress.”
“Thank you,” he told me.
“I’m not doing this for you. I’m doing it for my own amusement.”
But he looked at me with that look again, the one from when we were kids, as if I were a hero.
I’d never be anyone’s hero.