Shadows filled the corners of the room as the moon rose higher in the sky. Every tiny creak or shift of air made me jump as I waited for the beginning of the rest of my life to walk through the door. I kept myself from full out panicking by trying to figure out how many more years my new husband would live and imagining what I would do once I was a widow and free to do as I wanted.
Well, maybe not free. I’d never be completely free from the mafia. Especially not now. But at least I would be able to live alone, and I would be taken care of. As Luigi’s only remaining son, Luca would be honor bound to make sure I wanted for nothing once his father was gone. Which meant I would see him often. Luca and his two personal guards.
I immediately pushed the thought of Enzo away. He didn’t want me. I wasn’t about to let him take up any more space in my head. He could fuck right off as far as I was concerned.
I glanced around the room. The first thing I would do was sell this house and buy something smaller and more to my taste. Then spend whatever was left on furniture and decorations that I liked, because at that moment I realized that I’d never had even a space of my own that was truly me. Even the bedroom I’d grown up in was decorated the same way it had been since I was a child. I’d never thought to ask if I could change it.
When I couldn’t stand the silence anymore, I paced the room, my fingers itching with the impulse to pick something up and hide it on my person. Not that I had anywhere to put anything. But my father must’ve warned him about my little “quirk,” because there wasn’t so much as a pen lying around. Even in the bathroom, a gaudy explosion of black and gold, there was nothing on the counters except a toothbrush and a tube of toothpaste.
The door opened as I walked out into the bedroom. Luigi stopped in the doorway, his eyes roaming over my body. “You’re not my usual type,” he told me. “But I suppose you’re fuckable enough.” His mouth twisted in an expression of dislike. “I’ll let you keep that ring in your nose since it’s not too gaudy, but that damn pink hair will have to go. I can’t be seen with a wife who looks like she just escaped from the circus. I’ll have my stylist come do something about it tomorrow.”
It was the most he’d said to me since the wedding ceremony.
Shutting the door behind him, he turned the lock, and a chill slithered down my spine. I shivered, trying to pull his shirt closer around me.
Without looking at me again, he walked past me to the closet, pulling off his tie. “I need a son,” he announced. “An heir. And you’re going to give me one.” He hung up his tie on the hanger on the closet wall just inside the door. There was no emotion on his face. Well, maybe annoyance. “Once you’ve done your duty, I’ll give you your own room. But until then, you’ll sleep in here.”
“But you already have a son,” I told him. “You have Luca.”
“I do. And he grows more powerful every day. He plans to get rid of me, you know.” His dark eyes shifted to me as he laid his cufflinks on the top of the dresser. “But he’ll be rethinking that plan now that you’re here. Luca is soft when it comes to people he cares about. And he cares about Enzo. He would never do anything to harm you, because he knows his friend would never forgive him if he did.”
Nervous as I was, I couldn’t help but scoff. “You’re wrong. Enzo doesn’t give a shit about me.”
Luigi’s eyebrows rose in amusement. “No? You don’t think so?”
“I know so,” I told him. “He gave me back to my father.”
He unbuttoned his shirt, and my eyes dropped down to his barrel chest covered in gray hairs, only to shoot back up to his face when he said, “And that only proves to me how much he does care. That must be some kind of magic cunt you’ve got.”
This entire day had me mentally exhausted, and I frowned in confusion. I wasn’t very experienced in the dating scene, but it seemed pretty common sense to me that if a guy cared about you, he wouldn’t throw you away.
“Take off my shirt. You look ridiculous. Then get on the bed.” He paused, tilting his head as he looked me over one more time. “Leave the nightgown on.” Turning his back, he walked into the bathroom in nothing but his slacks and shoes, calling over his shoulder, “And if you touch my cufflinks, I’ll cut off your hands. They were a gift.” The door closed behind him, and I heard the shower come on.
So he was aware of my little habit. My eyes shot to the bedroom door, then the window, then back to the door as adrenaline rushed through my bloodstream. But I knew that even if I managed to make it out of the house, I wouldn’t get off the property. He probably had guards stationed out in the hall and in the yard below the bedroom. Tears filled my eyes, and I blinked them away. Come on, Sera. It’s time to toughen up. You’ve been through worse than this and survived. You’ll survive this, too.
But what if I couldn’t give him a son? What would he do to me? My birth control pills were in my bags that should’ve been here by now, so they must be in the house somewhere. If they weren’t discovered, I could continue to take them, and maybe he’d get tired of trying to get me pregnant and leave me alone. Or maybe he’d kill me and bury me in his flowerbed.
No. He’d just admitted that one of the reasons I was here was because he thought I’d serve as some kind of protection against Luca. And even though I knew it not to be true, if it would keep me alive, I wasn’t going to argue with him about it.
The water cut off, and I knew my time was running out. But I’d be damned if I was going to be draped across the bed waiting for him in this ridiculous excuse for sleepwear. So I stayed exactly where I was.
He wore nothing but a towel wrapped around his waist when he came out, his bow legs sticking out from the bottom, the nails on his toes thick and yellowed with age. I schooled my features so he wouldn’t see the disgust I felt.
“I see I’m going to have to teach you how to obey commands.” He didn’t sound put out about it. Quite the opposite, actually. Walking over to his dresser, he opened a small drawer on the top I didn’t notice before and pulled out a thick leather belt.
My heart jumped into my throat.
“Take off the shirt and get on the fucking bed.”
My immediate reaction was to tell him to fuck off, and I hesitated for just a moment. But that was all it took. Between one second and the next, he’d crossed the eight feet or so between us and I heard the belt whistle through the air right before it landed across my arm and shoulder with a sharp, burning sting that made me cry out.
Fury rose inside of me.
“Take off the shirt,” he ordered again.
“No,” I sneered. Defying him was stupid of me and wasn’t going to bring me anything but more pain and misery, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself.
The belt whipped through the air again, only this time I was prepared and twisted my body away from it. I wasn’t quite fast enough though, and it landed on my hip and wrapped around my ass, leaving a burning strip of skin through the thin material of the nightgown that hurt way worse than the first hit.
“Take. Off. The. Shirt!” he shouted.
“No!” I shouted back, bracing myself for another hit. I was backed up against the end of the bed, my eyes darting to either side, searching for an escape route. But I knew I wouldn’t get far even if I did manage to get around him. My blood boiled in my veins, and I wondered how much of a chance I’d have of wrestling the belt away from him. He was a man far from his prime, but he still had a lot of strength, as my stinging skin could attest to.
“I’ll whip the skin from your bones, girl. Don’t think I won’t!”
“Sera,” I gritted out between my teeth.
He frowned. “What?”
“My name is Sera.”
“I know what your fucking name is, girl. Now take off that shirt and get on the bed before I call in my men to hold you down. I’m growing tired of your games.”
If I was smart, I would do as he told me and stop fighting with him. I was only making things harder on myself by not doing what he demanded, and in the end, I wouldn’t win. I knew this. And yet, for some reason, I couldn’t bring myself to stop. Maybe it was a delayed reaction to all the things I was put through in Mexico. Maybe I was just sick and fucking tired of men trying to tell me what to fucking do. Of using me. Only to throw me out like trash when they were done with me.
Opening my mouth, I screamed and lunged for him, one hand going for the belt. But he avoided my hand and then backhanded me across the face. His ring slammed into my cheekbone, and I bit down on my cheek right before I went flying, landing on my knees on the hard floor. Pain jarred up my legs and across my face, and I tasted the coppery tang of blood.
“You fucking bitch!” Luigi stood over me, and I glanced up just in time to see him swing the belt toward my face. I ducked and covered my head, and it glanced off the back of my hands. But he recovered quickly, and I felt the crack of leather across my back.
I braced myself for another blow, but it never happened. The sound of shattered glass came from behind me, and I peeked up to find Luigi frozen in place with the belt above his head. He dropped his arm and started to laugh.
“Do not touch her again.”
The voice was so cold I felt slivers of ice slide over my burning skin, but it was also very familiar. So very familiar. Yet I had nothing to say to him, so I stayed where I was on the floor, although I did sit up onto my knees, wincing when they protested the change in weight, and wiped the tears from my face and the blood from my mouth.
There was a knock on the bedroom door. “Boss?”
“I’m fine,” Luigi answered. “Stay where you are.” He didn’t move away from me. “I was wondering when you were going to show up. Honestly, Enzo, I was disappointed when you didn’t try to stop the wedding.” He sighed dramatically. “But instead, you decided to interrupt my wedding night.”
I heard the buzz of a cell phone vibrating, and then it stopped. A second later, it buzzed again.
“I can only assume from the fact that someone is frantically calling you that my son doesn’t know you are here.”
“No.”
Still standing over me, Luigi threw his arms wide, the belt dangling near my face. I cringed away. “So? Now what, boy? What are you going to do?”
The silence in the room was palpable. I glanced over my shoulder. Enzo’s hands were fisted at his sides, his teeth clenched to together so tightly I could hear the enamel grinding off. But other than that…
Nothing. He was going to do nothing.
Luigi cocked his head. “All these dramatics…breaking my window…and for what, Enzo? For nothing.”
“Not for nothing. Sera is mine.”
My heart skipped a beat, my body traitorous, as always. But it didn’t matter. I was Luigi’s wife now. It was too late. He was too late.
“Yours?” Luigi laughed again, and then sobered just as quickly. “If I ordered you to kill her right now, you would. Just like you killed Alessandra.”
“No.”
“Don’t fuck with me, boy. Your loyalty is to your family. It always has been, and it always will be.” His voice lowered. “It’s why I trusted you with my son. You would die for him. I know that, and so does he.”
“So would Tristan.”
But Luigi shook his head. “Tristan would throw himself in front of a bullet because he doesn’t care if he lives or dies, this is true. But if he found someone who could take his pain away, he would betray Luca’s trust in a heartbeat. Unlike you, Enzo, he would choose. And something as trivial as loyalty to the family wouldn’t weigh on his conscience.” He walked around until he was standing in front of me, my face at the same level as his groin. He did it on purpose to make his point. I scooted back out of his reach, not that it would stop him from ordering me to suck him off in front of Enzo if he’d get a kick out of it.
“You don’t know Tristan,” Enzo told him. “And you don’t know me.”
“I think I do, boy. Now get the fuck out of my room and let me finish consummating my marriage.” Looking down at me for the first time since Enzo broke into the room, Luigi took a step toward me and grabbed me by the hair. I cried out as he started to lift me to my feet.
“I told you not to touch her again.” The warning came right before his gun went off behind me.
I jumped and screamed, my eyes going to Luigi’s face. There was a bullet hole in the center of his forehead. A second later, his grip on my hair loosened and he fell to the floor in front of me, his cell phone falling out of his pocket and sliding across the floor. Impulsively, I grabbed it.
The bedroom door handle rattled. “Boss! Boss! What’s going on in there?”
“We need to go,” Enzo told me quietly. A jacket was thrown over my shoulders and I was hauled to my feet. “We need to go now.”
My feet tried to gain purchase on the floor as he dragged me back toward the broken window. “Let me go!” My mind spun with everything that had just happened. “Let me go!”
Ignoring my protests, he grabbed me around the waist and forced me over to the window. Lifting me easily, he sent me out feet first onto the roof, never letting go of me as he followed me out.
“Enzo! Stop!”
His hand slammed down over my mouth, and he held me in front of him as he took me over to the corner of the roofline where a tree grew over the house. “Hang on,” he told me, using his strength and body weight to force me out onto a thick branch. I noticed for the first time that he was barefoot, and the hand that covered my mouth was slippery with blood. I didn’t know if it was his or mine.
Once we were out on the branch, he scanned the yard below us. “You can hang onto me and keep your mouth shut,” he said quietly in my ear, “or I’ll throw you off this branch. Either way, you’re coming with me to the ground. If you scream and bring Luigi’s men over here, all you’re going to do is get us both killed.”
Grudgingly, I nodded. He wasn’t leaving me much choice. Luigi’s guards would shoot first and ask questions later. And I didn’t want to die.
Enzo took his hand away from my mouth and turned me around, one hand hanging onto the branch above us. “Put your arms and legs around me and hang on.”
I did as he said, wincing as my body screamed in protest where Luigi had beaten me. Enzo began to scale his way down the tree. Above us, I heard the bedroom door bust open.
Enzo froze, and his eyes met mine. A look of determination crossed his features. “Don’t let go,” he said quietly.
And then he jumped.
