Chapter 17
Lucy
Iwake before dawn and Damiano is asleep beside me on his stomach, his cheek pressed into the pillow and his curls falling over his brow. My heart flutters. What a beautiful sight first thing in the morning. How can I wake up next to any man but him for the rest of my life?
I stretch my arms over my head, and there’s a delicious ache deep in my core. It was the most perfect wedding night spent with the man I love. Too bad the man beside me is not my intended husband.
Damiano feels me moving around beside him, and without opening his eyes he reaches out and drags me to him. His warm, muscular body wraps around mine, and he rolls on top of me and seeks my mouth. My body lights up with pleasure, and I arch against him.
“I have to go,” I whisper between kisses. Damiano’s erection is working itself insistently between my naked thighs.
“I don’t want you to.”
“I’m getting married today, remember?”
“Fuck getting married.”
I pull back and give him an exasperated look. “You know I have to. It’s this or never seeing you again.”
Damiano opens his eyes, and there’s jealousy raging within them. He plants his hands on either side of my head. “Are you going to turn me into the other man? Will you give me crumbs of your affection while that idiot owns your body and your life?”
“I wouldn’t call giving you my virginity crumbs of my affection.”
His breathing is rapid and angry. “I won’t stand silently by in that church while you marry Andreas. If I hear him say his vows, and you saying yours, I’ll lose my mind.”
I stroke my fingers through his curls, trying desperately to calm his fury. “Please, Damiano. Don’t abandon me on my wedding day.”
He closes his eyes and mutters a string of curse words. When he opens them again, he says through clenched teeth, “I won’t, I promise. Even if it kills me, or if I kill everyone in that church.”
I take a relieved breath. “Thank you, Damiano. Now let me go, because I have to shower, put on my bridal lingerie, and be ready in thirty minutes for the hair and makeup artists that Mom booked.” I bought all new lingerie after Andreas wrecked the last set.
I couldn’t stand to look at what remained of them.
Devastation fills Damiano’s eyes, like he’s anticipating watching me go to the gallows rather than to the altar.
“Trust me, all right? I know what I’m doing.” I press a final kiss to his mouth and pull myself out of his arms.
As I walk out of Damiano’s room with tangled hair and wearing one of his T-shirts, Ariana sees me through her open bedroom door.
Damiano is sitting up bare-chested in bed.
Ariana’s eyes flicker with disgust as she realizes we were in bed together, but without a word she goes back to hunting through her jewelry box.
I enter my bedroom and catch sight of my bed.
My stomach clenches in panic, and my pulse races, as it has every time I’m reminded of Andreas’s body trapping mine, or of his vile, greedy hands ripping at my lingerie.
Today is my wedding day, and the thought that being subservient to him could be my fate for the rest of my life makes cold sweat break out on my lower back.
With the help of the experts Mom hired, within two hours, I’m transformed into a bride.
The bridal gown I dislike so much weighs heavily on my body.
The pins in my hair are too tight and dig into my scalp.
There’s a full-length mirror in my room, but I turn away from it without a glance.
I already know today is all wrong, starting with the dress, and ending with the groom.
My duty to the Barones is a heavy stone around my neck, dragging me down into heartbreak.
While I wait downstairs for the cars to arrive, I recite my vows under my breath. I wrote them myself, and I’m proud of them. They’re the only thing about this ceremony that’s me. Repeating them over and over is all that’s keeping me grounded and able to go through with it.
I hear footsteps behind me. Warm hands clasp my waist and turn me around.
It’s Damiano dressed in a suit, his jaw clean-shaven and smelling like cold, crisp aftershave.
My heart thumps with longing. His mouth was on mine last night.
His body moved against mine, in and out of me, hard and deep.
His hand was wrapped lovingly and possessively around my throat.
I cried in the shower as I washed the smears of blood from my neck.
I didn’t want to lose this little piece of us.
“You look beautiful,” Damiano breathes, and presses a kiss to my cheek.
I smile weakly. “No, I don’t. This dress is awful.”
“You are always beautiful.”
As he embraces me, I feel the gun holstered under his arm. Damiano is prepared for violence, even on my wedding day.
Ariana joins us without a word, wearing a simple pink bridesmaid dress, chosen by Mom, of course.
As the wedding cars, festooned with white satin ribbons, pull up the driveway, Mom and Dad come downstairs.
Dad wears a dark suit. Mom is in a pencil dress with an embroidered jacket, and she’s wearing a large, decorated hat.
She examines each of us critically, hunting for faults. The Barones are going to be on display before all of the important people of Malus today. We can only be perfect. Anything less than that is unacceptable.
After twitching folds of my skirt, straightening Damiano’s tie, and adjusting the strap of Ariana’s dress, she says, “Very well,” and walks out of the front door to the waiting cars.
Dad follows her out of the house without a word to me.
“We’re so proud of you, Lucy,” Damiano mutters, glaring after them. “How beautiful our daughter looks on her wedding day.”
It’s sweet of Damiano to care how they treat me, but even if they did say those words, they wouldn’t mean them.
My bouquet is laying on the hall table, and I collect it. The flowers are uninteresting and pale, and not what I would have chosen.
I’m supposed to ride to the church in the second car with Dad, but Damiano insists on being the one with me instead. It causes an argument because it’s “not how things are done,” but eventually Mom gives up, and she, Dad, and Ariana get into the car in front of ours.
As we drive along, Damiano helps me arrange my voluminous skirts, and while I’m distracted, he steals a kiss.
My eyes close as warmth and love spread through me. I want to linger in this kiss, but I quickly pull away. We’re driving through the busy streets of Malus, and people love to peer inside wedding cars for a glimpse of the bride. “Damiano, someone might see.”
“Let them see. You won’t deny me this while you still belong to me.” He takes my face in his hands and kisses me again.
I don’t have the strength to push him away. His lips move over mine with heartbreaking tenderness. As we break apart a few minutes later, gasping slightly, I catch the driver’s eyes in the rearview mirror, but he quickly looks away.
The church where I’m going to marry Andreas is the same one we frequent for Christmas and Easter services. The outside is gray and forbidding, and inside it’s cavernous and always freezing.
We all meet outside the church, and I listen to the voices and music from within.
Damiano’s expression is hard and his whole body is taut.
Mom and Dad stand several feet from us, as silent and cold as strangers.
Ariana is lost in her own miserable world, no doubt anticipating her own fate on these steps in a few months.
I insisted upon this charade. The full wedding experience befitting a beloved Barone daughter obediently marrying a Montoni man, before Mom and Dad wash their hands of me forever. They can’t wait to be rid of me.
“Come along, Damiano,” Mom says crisply. She has a seat in the front row, and Damiano will join my fiancé at the altar. Dad moves to my side because he will be walking me down the aisle, but he still doesn’t look at me as he offers me his arm. Ariana will follow behind.
Damiano grips my waist and says tightly, “I don’t want to leave your side. Let me be the one who walks you down the aisle.”
“Damiano, go inside that church.” Dad’s eyes are glinting with so much anger that I wonder if he noticed us kissing in the wedding car.
I cup Damiano’s cheek and gaze up into his handsome face, my heart aching with longing for him. “Please, Damiano. You have to go inside so you will be there when I arrive at the altar. I won’t be able to do this without you, and I must do this.” I lower my voice and whisper, “For us.”
Damiano doesn’t understand what I mean, but he will soon enough.
He presses one last kiss to my lips, not caring that Dad is standing right there, and looks deep into the eyes. “You will always be mine.”
My fingers slip through his, and my throat feels tight as I watch him walk away from me.
Dad has to tug sharply on my arm when it’s time to walk down the aisle.
I put one white satin heel in front of the other, and a shiver goes down my spine as the massive church opens up before me and the music sweeps over me.
There are roses at the end of every pew, and they’re filled with people who have come here to witness this spectacle between the Barones and the Montonis.
They will fill all of Malus with gossip about this wedding for days, weeks to come.
What happens here today will strengthen our two powerful families or shatter them.
In the crowd, I glimpse Adora standing beside her tall, dangerous husband, and her amber eyes are filled with concern for me. She’s the only person beside Damiano who’s truly here for me.
I’m vaguely aware of Andreas standing at the end of the long aisle next to the priest. I seek out Damiano, my pillar of strength.
Our eyes lock as I approach the altar, my heavy gown dragging on me, and my fingers white-knuckling my bouquet.
I’m so focused on Damiano that it’s a shock when Ariana takes my flowers and Dad propels me toward Andreas before stepping away.