AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I just feel like, if I had known, I would have paid more attention. I would have…”
“You can’t live on would haves.”
“Yeah,” she mumbles. Her distrustful gaze follows Salvatore as he leaves the house. He looks our way but gives us space, going to speak with someone else. He’s probably spreading the word to keep an eye on us. I see the way Kay looks at him. Like she’s just itching to get her hands on that gun Marcel took from her.
“It’s not what you think,” I say quietly. “He’s not terrible.”
She looks at me like I’ve lost my mind.
“What are you talking about? Not terrible?”
“He’s not terrible to me,” I try to explain. By her expression, I’m not convincing.
“This is the guy that kidnapped you?”
I nod.
“The guy who you’re engaged to?”
I nod again.
“So, he’s the guy you’re marrying at gunpoint, who’s not terrible.”
I hesitate.
“It’s not going to be at gunpoint.”
“Well, maybe it should be! Who even are these people? You disappear one night, you end up here, now you’re going to be married to some notorious criminal, which you are freakishly okay with—are you drugged?”
“No! I’m just—”
I don’t really know if there’s a word in the English language that describes my exact emotion. I look across at Salvatore, trying to find some way to explain him to her. Something to make this all seem rational, when even I know that it isn’t. It’s all primal and emotional and fucked up to anyone else.
“I might like him,” I say, feebly.
Kay stares me dead in the eye. I think she’s looking for signs of intoxication.
“…Stockholm syndrome,” she decides.
I roll my eyes.
“Do I look like a kidnap victim to you, Kay?”
“Can you and I walk out of here without someone pointing a gun at us?” That shuts my mouth pretty quickly. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. This whole thing is fucked, Contessa. You can’t marry this guy. I’m not going to let that happen to you. It’s the 21st century, women don’t get carried off to some neanderthal’s den to be a cave-wife. Not even in New York.”
I can’t do this. I can’t finally get a shred of contentment here and have Kay come along and rip it away from me.
Her eyes are just as sharp as her tongue as they sweep over me.
“What’s he done?”
“Nothing I haven’t consented to,” I say, surprised at how fervently I’m defending him.
“Consented to? …Are you fucking him?”
“There wasn’t anything else to do!”
“Contessa!”
