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“Contessa, I didn’t—”
“Fix it, Salvatore.”
He grimaces, jaw shifting as I cut him off. I still have the gun, and he glances at it, as if questioning if I’m threatening him. I feel the terrified eyes of my family on me. Half of them probably want me to pull the trigger; the other half, terrified that I might, and plunge us all into worse danger.
“I don’t need this to get my way,” I scoff. I offer it to him as it’s utterly worthless.
A handful of people cry out as I give the gun back over to him, as though I’ve lost my mind. As if I’ve shot the wrong man, my so-called fiancé dead on the floor.
Someone demands to know whose side I’m on. A gradual outrage and panic is starting to swell, even with Marcel barking orders and threats, Donny sagging against his grip.
“Enough!” I yell over them. “James Serra knew this was a set up, and he and my father shoved all of you in here with me to be bait. That man was no ally to anyone in this room, and he wasn’t my fiancé.” My eyes drift to Salvatore instinctually, at the utterance of that word. Our eyes do not meet. “I want to get us all out of here alive. Please, just let me do that—”
I look to Salvatore again, demanding answers without a single word uttered between us.
“A trade,” he finally says. “You come with me, and I leave the hostages behind. You are our ticket out of here. I leave with you, or none of us make it out. Those are the stakes. All or nothing.”
My heart clenches. It should be such an easy choice. Go with Salvatore. Free the hostages. It would have been so perfect, so ideal—
“No,” I say, softly.
Even Salvatore looks surprised. When he came up with this plan, I’m sure he thought I would crawl at his feet, begging for their lives, so happy to trade up mine to save them. I know better now.
“I was kidnapped into wedlock by you. Sold off by Noctus. Bought back by my father.
I’ll be damned if I am shuffled around as a part of another deal. You should beg me to spare your life and come with you.”
For a long moment, we size each other up, Salvatore reading me as if looking for one of my tells, some kind of bluff. My heart flares at his look, the soft, knowing smirk and adoration in his eyes when he doesn’t find one. The way he looked at me that first night, as if he had never seen anything he wanted more.
“I won’t beg for my life, Tessa,” he says, “I made that deal with myself a long time ago.
But I’ll beg for you. On my knees, if that’s what it takes.”
“Why?” I ask, his devotion tearing me in two. “Why do all this, why take such a stupid gamble for someone you think is so worthless—”
“I don’t think that—” he tries.
“You said it yourself, Sal. Over and over. You think I’m some weak, pathetic thing—”
“No, Tessa—”
“Daddy’s little—”
He pulls me into a sudden, searing kiss. His hand cups the small of my back, the other tightens in my hair. For once, he is not trying to overwhelm me with his touch and his proximity, he’s just desperate to stop me from saying those words, kissing them straight out of my mouth.
He clutches me to his chest and doesn’t let go, as if I might disappear from him again.
“Stop it,” he says, an order as much as it is a plea. “I should have never said it. God, I never meant it. I was the one who failed—the second I walked out that door and let all this happen. You were right. You asked me to stay, and I should have stayed. I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry—”
I’m sorry. Two syllables that sound so unnatural on Salvatore’s lips, as if he really never has said them before and they have a bitter taste on the tongue.
He kneels. For a moment, I think he really is going to beg me on his hands and knees in front of everyone here—I never really expected him to be that desperate. Salvatore doesn’t seem like a man who bows easily. But he drops down to only one knee and takes the engagement ring from his pocket.
Every person in the room watches him intently, his every motion regarded with suspicion and judgment. So many unfriendly faces, witnessing their most dangerous enemy drop to his knees—for me.
“I was going to force this on your finger tonight like I could make you wear it,” he admits, “like I could make it mean something. You’re mine, Tessa. To me, you’ll always be mine.
That’s just who I am. It’s in me, and I can’t change that. But if you want me to beg—this is as close as I’ve ever gotten.”
