Thalia ignored the hand I offered, her gaze stuck on the hole in her father’s back. She took a single step closer, lifting her wedding dress up with blood-stained hands. The red marked the white fabric with handprints as her foot encased in a diamond studded heel peeked out from beneath the hem. She kicked her father in the side once, staring at him as if she expected him to move.
When he didn’t so much as twitch, she wedged that foot beneath his torso and heaved with all the strength in her leg. The heavy weight of Origen Karras’s corpse flipped to its back, eyes staring up at the ceiling with the glossed-over film of death. Thalia crouched down, staring at her father’s face with something like disbelief etched into her features.
The cane had driven straight through to the front of his chest, a much smaller hole evidence of the exit wound. Thalia touched her fingers to the edges of it, the vivid red covering her manicured nails. She pressed them into the wound, the wet sounds filling the church as I watched her. My head tilted to the side as I observed the woman I loved while she stared at the pulverized mess of what had been her father’s heart.
She lifted her hand from the wound, turning it over to stare at the blood as it dripped down her fingers toward her palm. Rubbing two fingers together as if she needed to test the viscosity of the liquid to know it was blood, she looked down at her father’s face once more. “I can see you bleeding, Father,” she said, her voice hollow and low as she spoke to the man who would never have an answer for her.
I swallowed, emotion clogging my throat as I tried to imagine what meaning her words held to her. There was some clear emphasis in her mind, something that had been drilled into her head time and time again, I had no doubt. I held out my hand again, my face turning soft as she turned tired eyes up to me. “Come home, Little One.”
“I don’t have a home,” she said softly, glancing back down at her father’s corpse before she turned her gaze to the carnage around the church. “I never did.”
“Your home is with me,” I said, reaching down to grasp her hand. I pulled her to her feet slowly, letting her get her footing in the red pool that made the wooden floors of the church slick. She stepped toward me hesitantly, holding perfectly still when I raised my hand to cup her too-thin cheek.
Blood covered her flesh, the stain of red a shock of color against her olive skin as I traced my thumb over her high cheekbone. Her wide, angled eyes drifted closed as I painted her face in the death of our enemies. I hoped one day she would come to understand that the bodies surrounding us were my sacrifice to her, my atonement for the way I’d failed her when she’d been a child looking to me for protection.
I touched my lips to hers briefly, withdrawing before she could protest the kiss, as if she didn’t need it just as much as I did. When I pulled back, I slid a hand behind her back and another behind her knees, scooping her into my arms. I wouldn’t force her to step over the carnage littering the floor, not with the way her dress would trail through the mess and risk getting caught.
I hadn’t been able to give her the dream-like wedding she deserved, having to settle for a union born in death and vengeance instead, but the least I could do was carry my bride over the bodies of her family.
She squirmed as I settled her against my chest, her head coming to rest against my shoulder as all the fight drained out of her. She cradled her hands in her lap, positioning them carefully as if she both didn’t know what to do with them and they caused her pain.
I stepped over the bodies carefully, leaving Rafael to supervise the cleanup and disposal while I tended to my new wife. Perhaps one day, I would return the favor if things with Isa didn’t go as planned.
My slate gray Koenigsegg waited for us at the front of the church, allowing me to lower Thalia to her feet at the passenger side. I reached down, grasping the hidden latch and lifting the door forward so that it slid on its hinges. Thalia raised an eyebrow at me as she watched, as if to say really?
“I like pretty things,” I said with a shrug, my gaze intent on her face. My meaning wasn’t lost on her, her cheeks flushing pink as she swallowed.
“We’ll get it all bloody,” she said, glancing into the interior of the very expensive vehicle. I’d already thought it through, covering the fabric of the seats temporarily. It might have been easier to just take one of the SUVs waiting back to my home, but something in me wanted to drive off with my wife in my car, leaving her abuse in the past.
I wanted the first car she rode in as my wife to be mine, to look over at her empty seat when I took the Koenigsegg to conduct business and have the memory of her covered in blood like an avenging fury imprinted on my brain.
I guided her into the car and settled her in the seat, bending down to lift her legs and pivot her into the car. She glared at me as I stuffed the train of her gown into the vehicle with her, the overly formal monstrosity only appealing because it was on her.
Pulling on the door so that it slid into place, I walked around to the driver’s side. I’d expected Thalia to fight going with me. I’d thought she might try to run, but she stayed put as I slid into the driver’s seat and started the engine. It rumbled to life with a loud purr, and I pulled out away from the curb in silence.
The Regas estate was in what had once been our corner of the city. I’d remodeled it to my exact specifications, avoiding color wherever I could for a distinctly neutral space where Thalia wouldn’t feel like she had to question anything. She would know exactly what her bright, white and gray home looked like.
Only the fact that the rest of the families avoided the Regas Estate like it was a plague that could have them banished from the city had allowed me to perfect it without anyone being the wiser.
“Why did you do it?” Thalia asked suddenly, drawing my attention to where she wrung her hands in her lap. I couldn’t see through the blood covering her palms to examine the skin beneath, but I suspected she’d hurt herself with the swing of that cane, from the delicate way she handled herself.
“Kill your family?” I asked, glancing at her with a furrowed brow. I would think my motivations for the slaughter would have been obvious.
“Why did you have to use me to do it? Why marry me? You already have everything you could possibly want,” she said, looking at the car that surrounded her as I navigated the streets of Philadelphia.
“I married you because you belong with me,” I said simply, not giving her any more. I could make professions of love, could tell her all the ways I intended to worship her throughout our lives together, but she was still reeling, and processing the fact that she was not Thalia Hasapis but Thalia Regas.
“And what about what I want?” she asked, her gaze feeling heavy on the side of my face. I glanced at her, holding her intense stare for as long as I dared while driving. “What if I want to be free? To leave this twisted city behind me and go out into the real world?”
“What do you know of the real world, my flower?” I asked, attempting to keep my voice soft. Irritation leaked into it; the reality was Thalia didn’t understand that ugliness like this city was everywhere. She would never escape her family name and her ties to the city that had birthed her.
She would never escape me.
The bottoms of her eyes filled with moisture, the threat of tears pulling a sigh from me. I didn’t want to be harsh with her; not when I understood better than anyone that her entire life had been flipped on end.
She’d never had a job. Had no real skills, no licenses. She’d been completely at the mercy of the family that had raised her to be a wife and mother, but that was no fault of her own.
She turned her heated, teary stare away from mine suddenly, depriving me of her eye contact. It was probably for the best until we got to the estate, but I felt the loss within me nonetheless. I turned up the winding drive, through the trees that guarded the way to the Regas Estate just outside the busier part of the city.
I hadn’t changed the cobblestone driveway, even though the red hue would be lost on Thalia, suspecting she would appreciate the stonework of the circle it formed at the center. Left to her own devices, she was fond of textures and patterns that her eyes could process, lending interest to things that could have otherwise felt flat.
Pulling up to the dark gray front door surrounded by white, Greek-inspired columns, I brought the car to a stop and cut off the ignition. The white cladding of the house wrapped around the two upper decks that overlooked the driveway, a perfect place for security to keep an eye on anyone approaching. A man stared down at us from each platform, watching as I exited the vehicle and made my way around to pull Thalia from the car.
She stared at the house with wide eyes, and I realized that even with all that we had meant to each other as children, she’d never visited the Estate. She wouldn’t know I’d made changes to it for her sake, or even that it had ever been anything but the modern and comfortable home I’d transformed it into.
I placed a hand at the small of her back, guiding her toward the front doors as one of my security men opened them for us to enter. The foyer sprawled out before us with gleaming lines of white marble on the floor, light gray walls, and black, wrought iron railings ascending the staircase.
I guided her through the vast, open space to the kitchen at the back, her dress leaving a trail of blood behind her as we walked. I needed to get her changed out of it before my housekeeper threatened to kill me in my sleep, but tending to her needs was more important.
“Are you hungry?” I asked, making her look at me as if I’d lost my mind. I left her side in favor of moving to the kitchen island, leaving her standing in the center of the open-concept main room.
“How could I be hungry after that?” she asked.
“You need to eat something. You’re too thin as it is,” I said, wincing as soon as the words left my lips. She was too thin because of the diet her stepmother kept her on.
Thalia tore the shoe from her foot with frantic hands, hurling it across the kitchen at me. I ducked out of the way, narrowly avoiding the heel that had been aimed straight for my face. The vase on the island shattered across the counter, water flowing free while the narcissus flowers fell to the white-flecked onyx marble.
“I’m so sorry my body is a disappointment to you, you fucking dick!” she yelled, the rasp of her voice evident as she raised it. I had no doubt the scream in the church had taken something from her, as the agony of beating her own father with that cane had been torn from the deepest part of her.
“That wasn’t what I meant,” I said with a wince, raising placating hands to try to calm her down as she bent down to grab her other shoe.
I only had so many vases.
“What could you have possibly meant, then?” she asked, raising the stiletto in her grip and waving it at me in warning.
This was a trap.
I moved quickly, surging to close the distance between us. She gasped as she threw the shoe, narrowly missing my head as she spun and made to run away from me. The predator in me rose to the surface, the need to chase her down surging through my blood.
But it was far too early for any of that—Thalia’s trauma too recent. When I chased her down and took what was mine, she’d be an entirely willing participant in the games we would play. I wrapped my arms around her stomach, her body squirming tightly to get away from my grip. “I meant that they starved you, λουλούδι μου,” I said, my voice harsh as I held her tight to contain her thrashing body.
Her desperation to get away was far worse than I could have imagined, as if she was trapped in the trauma response where she expected violence to follow her outburst. I had no doubt her father would have beaten her bloody if she’d ever thrown something at him.
I lowered to my knees, keeping her encased in my grip as her legs slipped out from under her. Turning her around and laying her out on the marble floor, I placed a hand on either side of her head and leaned my body over hers. She reached up with panicked hands, aiming for my face with nails crusted with dried blood. Pinning her hands next to her head, I tried to shut out the way her throat worked to swallow as she closed her eyes tightly.
“Let’s get one thing straight,” I said, the fury tinting my voice the exact opposite of what she needed to hear from me in those moments. But the very thought that I might have hurt her, that she expected me to abuse her, set my blood on fire and threatened to make me boil over until I destroyed everyone and everything in this godforsaken city. “I will never hurt you.”
She opened her eyes slowly, peering up at me between long, mascara-covered lashes with those amber eyes that seemed to belong more on a wolf than a human woman. “You say that now.”
“You just threw a shoe at my head,” I said, raising a brow as I leaned down and rubbed my nose against hers. “I think if I was going to hurt you, it would be now.”
“I’m not hungry,” she whispered, the words soft in the space between us. The fight went out of her, the stubborn woman who’d thrown a shoe at me all but disappearing as exhaustion claimed her. She looked so damn tired, as if she could fall asleep on the spot, and sadness lingered on her face as she turned her head away.
I wasn’t sure what I’d said to put her over the edge, but I slid my fingers free from her hands and glided them over the bare skin of her forearms as I sat up.
Sitting back with my ass on my bent legs, I dropped my palms to my thighs and stared at the limp body of my wife as she lay on the floor, probably waiting for me to take what most men in the six families believed was our right. “Alright, Little One,” I said, standing and holding out a hand to help her to her feet.
She took it hesitantly, as if sealing her fate, and let me pull her up and use that hand to lead her back to the foyer so we could go up the stairs. She lifted her wedding dress off the floor as we made our way past the trail of blood she’d left when we entered, much more conscious of the mess she was making.
Like I cared.
The way she lifted her dress with perfect poise to ascend the stairs, her posture straight despite how tired she must have been, was more reminiscent of the photos I’d seen of royalty than anyone who existed in modern day Philadelphia. Her face was a blank mask, carefully shielding every emotion from me as I guided her up to the bedroom we would share.
Christian had already had her belongings delivered, a team unpacking them while we were occupied with our wedding vows. Thalia glanced around the room as we stepped inside, taking in the sight of the book that had been carefully perched on her nightstand at home.
Books were splashes of dark ink on white pages. Entire worlds at her fingertips that she could experience the same as anyone else.
In all the months I’d spent watching her, I’d never seen her without one.
“This is mine,” she said, stepping over to the nightstand on the side of the bed that she preferred to sleep on. She ran her fingers over the cover that was covered with a splash of red leaves, her eyes turning longing as she spun to look back at me in question.
“You’ll find all your belongings are here,” I said, clearing my throat. “The ones you would want to keep anyway, which wasn’t much, I must admit.”
There was a moment of silence as she sank her teeth into her bottom lip, her face ambivalent as if she couldn’t decide if she wanted the answer to the question forming inside her head.
“How would you know what I want to keep?”
