Chapter 15
Ciara
The car arrives right on time.
Millie opens the penthouse door before the driver can knock.
“Good luck, love,” Millie whispers. It sounds like a prayer for the condemned.
“Luck has nothing to do with it,” I reply, stepping into the hallway without looking back.
The descent to the lobby is like a coffin lid slamming closed.
Finn holds the main door open, his eyes widening as I sweep past him.
The driver, a man I don’t recognize, holds a large black umbrella against the drizzle.
I slide into the back of the sleek Mercedes, gathering the tulle and silk around me like a shield.
The drive to St. Aidan’s is short. I spend it staring at the partition, breathing in through my nose and out through my mouth. Four seconds in. Four seconds hold. Four seconds out. I am calm. I am ready.
When we pull up to the curb, only one figure remains standing by the heavy wooden doors. My father.
The driver opens my door, and I step out into the wet, gray morning. Donal O’Byrne offers his arm. He doesn’t smile. He doesn’t tell me I look beautiful. He grunts his approval, which is more than I expected.
“He’s inside,” Dad says.
“Upright?”
“For the moment,” he replies, his voice devoid of humor. “Let’s not waste it.”
He pats my hand resting on his arm—a gesture that looks paternal to the gallery but feels like a shackle tightening. We ascend the stone steps, and the heavy doors groan open, spilling golden light into the gloom of the morning.
The organ swells, a heavy, vibrating chord that hits me in the chest. Every head in the pews turns. I recognize some of the faces. All tied to the life somehow. Politicians, CEOs, and men who bury bodies in the Wicklow mountains. They are all watching, waiting for the cracks to show.
I don’t give them the satisfaction. I lock my gaze on the altar. On Sean.
They’ve cleaned him up well enough. He is pale, his jaw set so hard I worry his teeth might shatter, but he is standing.
As I start the long walk down the aisle, his blue eyes snap to mine. There’s no warmth, no welcome. Just a raw, volatile intensity that sends a warning shiver down my spine. He looks like a man facing a firing squad, not a bride.
I can work with hostility. It’s indifference that gets you killed.
I lift my chin, drag the heavy train of lace and duty behind me, and walk toward the man who is about to become my biggest problem.
My father’s grip on my arm tightens one last time in a warning, not for comfort, before he stops at the foot of the altar.
He turns to Sean, eyes narrowing in a silent threat that screams break her, and I break you, before physically handing me over.
It’s a transaction, cold and simple. The transfer of property from one lord to another.
Sean steps forward. He takes my hand, and his skin is ice, but his grip is iron.
There’s a faint tremor in his fingers, a vibration of the energy he’s barely containing, but he doesn’t let go.
Up close, the damage is more visible. The shadows beneath his eyes are bruises against his pale skin, and the tension in his neck is a coiled spring.
He smells of peppermint mouthwash and starch, a sanitized version of the disaster I met in the penthouse.
“Dearly beloved,” the priest begins, his voice echoing in the vaulted ceiling.
I tune him out. The sermons don’t matter.
The promises of love and cherishing are lies we’re forced to speak or answer to a power higher than God.
I focus on Sean’s jaw, the way a muscle flickers as he grinds his teeth.
He hates this. He hates me. It’s fine. Hatred is honest. It’s cleaner than the fake smiles plastering the faces of the congregation behind us.
When it’s time for the vows, his voice is a low, rough scrape, devoid of emotion.
He says the words like a prison sentence.
I repeat mine with the precision of a soldier reciting rank and number.
He shoves the heavy platinum band onto my finger, the diamond large enough to be a weapon.
It fits perfectly, a heavy, glittering shackle that catches the light and mocks the darkness of the moment.
I respond in kind, ramming his ring on with force to show I’m not some little woman he can push around.
For better or worse, we are in this together.
We are bound. The spare and the broodmare. God help us both.
His kiss is chaste.
I don’t return it.
We sign the certificate like two automatons before walking down the aisle, hand in hand, in a ridiculous show of unity that neither of us truly feels.
It has stopped raining when we emerge from the church into the weak sunlight.
A Rolls-Royce is idling at the curb, ready to cart us off to the farce of a Reception, neither one of us had a hand in planning.
I can only hope Connor decided not to be a total dick, and it’s a dry one.
He knows I don’t drink, and if he thinks putting Sean in front of a bar is a good idea, then my estimation of him will plummet.
But I’m prepared for the worst.
Always.
Sean opens the door to the Rolls, and I slide in first, before he closes the door and walks around to the other side.
We haven’t spoken a single word to each other.
Not even our vows were directed at us. The car jostles as he gets in and slams the door, staring out of the window as the car pulls silently and smoothly away from the curb.
It’s a silence that is uncomfortable. We both know it. We are both fully aware of how awful this is.
I break it with the worst possible sentence I can muster, to show my utter indifference to this entire shitshow. “We need to consummate this marriage as soon as possible.”
He doesn’t look at me. He just scoffs quietly.
“I mean it,” I say, ignoring the driver and powering on. “If we haven’t consummated this marriage by midnight tonight, my father will annul it, and you will owe your dad another hundred grand.”
“Wow,” he says, still not looking at me. “You don’t pull any punches, do you? You that hard up for a fuck, Ciara?”
The insult lands precisely where he wanted it to, but I don’t bite.
Instead, I crawl onto his lap, silk and tulle be damned and grind down on his dick.
I need this over with so it’s legal, and I haven’t gone through all of this for nothing.
I know my father. He will annul this out of spite to Connor if he gets even a whiff of chasteness.
It’s a deal breaker, and everyone involved knows it.
I shuffle my dress around so I can feel him stiffen underneath me. At least he is capable if nothing else.
“What are you doing?” he asks, his tone ice cold.
“What does it look like?” I slide my hands up his chest.
“Don’t be absurd,” he says. “We are not doing this now.”
“When then? When you are too drunk to stand?”
His hands clamp onto my hips, fingers digging into the silk and the flesh beneath with bruising force.
The air in the car instantly turns heavy, charged with a violent sort of static.
His eyes darken, the blue swallowed by black, and for a split second, I think he might actually do it.
I think he might tear this expensive dress apart right here on the leather seat just to shut me up and prove he’s not the impotent drunk I’ve accused him of being.
Instead, he lifts me.
It’s effortless, insulting in its sheer display of physical dominance. He deposits me back onto the seat beside him like I’m nothing more than a misbehaving child.
“You think you can bait me, Ciara?” He looks back out of the window, but his voice is a low, dangerous rasp. “I am not a performing monkey for you or your father. I’ll fuck you when I’m good and ready, and not a second before.”
I smooth the tulle of my skirt, refusing to let him see the adrenaline spiking in my blood. He’s volatile, a live wire stripped of insulation, but he’s in control. That’s a start.
“Don’t wait too long, husband,” I reply, my voice steady and cool as glass. “My father isn’t known for his patience, and I have no desire to be a widow before the ink is dry on the certificate.”
Sean turns away, staring back out the window at the gray Dublin streets.
He knows it’s not a threat. If this fails, if my father comes back for his hundred grand, Connor will blame Sean, and I don’t want to think what will happen.
The car descends into a silence simmering with too many emotions to deal with. His. Mine. The ghosts of our fathers.
I turn away and stare out of the window as well. It’s better than staring forward, where I can still see him in my periphery.
As we pull up to the hotel where the Reception is being held, I feel his hand clamp around mine. I stiffen as we now have to face everyone on a social level, which is going to be torture.
“Leave us,” Sean clips out to the driver.
He scarpers without a word.
A spike of fear shoots through me as Sean’s gaze bores into me. “Let’s get one thing clear, Ciara. You are not in charge here.”
“Someone has to be, and so far, that hasn’t been you.”
He hisses. “Do not ever ask me to fuck you in front of another man, ever. No other fucker will ever see you in that position. Am I making myself clear?” His gaze is a frozen lake of rage, and I meet it with the same force. His hand tightens on mine, crushing it. “I said, am I making myself clear?”
“Perfectly,” I say through gritted teeth, not giving him the satisfaction of pulling my hand back.
He nods and lets me go. I resist the urge to rub my hand, but then he is looming over me, grabbing my hips and pulling me flat on the back seat of the Rolls. His hands go up my dress, shoving it up my thighs before he unzips his pants.
His cock is rock-hard, and I glare at him as he leverages himself over me.
His fingers glide over my bare pussy, and he smirks. “That desperate, wife?”
“Prepared.” The word barely leaves my lips before he slams into me, and I bite down on a gasp that's half shock, half something I refuse to name.
He groans in surprise as I sheathe him in heat and damp.
Always prepared.
But the truth is, the slick heat between my legs isn't just preparation. It's want. Ugly, inconvenient want for a man who hates me as much as I should hate him.
But God, he fills me completely, brutally, and some dark, hidden part of me sings at the invasion.
I lock my jaw and refuse to make a sound.
His hand plasters against the window over my head as he withdraws and shoves his cock back into me.
It’s a punishing rhythm, devoid of tenderness, fueled entirely by the friction of our mutual disdain.
He drives into me with a possession that borders on violence, his breath hitching in ragged gasps against my neck.
I bite my lip to keep from making a sound, refusing to give him the satisfaction of hearing me unravel, even as my body betrays me, tightening around him in response to the sheer, raw force of him.
This isn’t love. It isn’t even lust. It’s a turf war fought with skin and sweat.
He doesn’t last long. The tension of the last week, the sobriety, the rage, culminates in a few sharp, grinding thrusts. He groans, a low, guttural sound that vibrates through my chest as he comes inside me, sealing our fate with a biological finality that no lawyer can argue away.
His weight collapses onto me for a heartbeat, and I feel the pulse of him inside me, the warmth of his release. My body clenches around him involuntarily, chasing a pleasure I won't allow myself to reach.
Not here. Not with him. Not like this.
I've given us what we needed. That's enough.
He tears himself away as if burned. The loss of contact is abrupt.
He zips his pants up, his face a mask of stone. “Only needs my pleasure, right?”
“Right,” I echo, smoothing my skirts down with hands that I force to remain steady. I check my makeup in the rearview mirror. Perfect. I look like a bride, not a woman who just got ravaged in a parking lot to save her own skin.
Without another word, he opens the door, gets out and slams it so hard, the car rocks violently.