Someone in the congregation screams, and there’s mutterings.
He’s dead.
The man who was supposed to be my husband is now a corpse.
My heart hammers. Am I saved from this marriage after all? But my god, is that even the word? I’ll have to go back to my family. Since the arranged marriage hasn’t happened as Robert wanted, will he insist I have the usual Essex Cartel virgin auction? And Robert is going to be angry. I can already see it in the set of his jaw.
“I’ll have the Witham territory as partial payment of his debts. And to make up the rest, I’ll be taking this,” Bethnal says as he holsters his gun.
What? The gun?
Bethnal approaches me and bows, and for a second, I think that’s it. Then I’m over his shoulder and a shriek escapes me. I shove at his back and squirm as he carries me, and I bump with each quick step. I kick my feet, but I’m really high, and he holds me tight. So, so tight.
I look up at my brothers’ furious faces and Bethnal’s men neatly backing out of the church. No one is lifting a finger to rescue me.
Bethnal steals me away.
I’m not getting married. I’m saved from a marriage that might have been worse than death and this is an opportunity. A chance to escape to a new life.
Because it hits me. I’m being kidnapped.
2
ZANE
“Turner, plan B,” I tell my second-in-command on the phone. My captive girl sits next to me in the armoured SUV as we head away from the church faster than is advisable or legal.
Turner swears colourfully.
“I know,” I reply. “You’ll get a pay rise.”
“I don’t want to take over that shitshow,” Turner grumbles. “What happened to ruining the wedding, reminding Witham who he was beholden to, and ensuring there wasn’t anything too grubby about the marriage?”
What indeed? All that exploded when I saw Witham’s bride, and a creature inside of me went berserk.
She’s mine. I have to have her, whatever the cost.
“The plan changed. Deal with it.” Turner will. He was as horrified as I was at what we discovered this morning, and has been loyal to me since before I took over Bethnal Green.
I hang up and regard the girl I just kidnapped. She’s gorgeous. Her body is slender, and the white silk hugs her curves. Her long brown hair has a slight wave that gives it movement and life. But it’s her face that captivates me in a way I can’t begin to explain. She’s perfect.
My heart rate won’t lower. My cock is solid.
I have never responded to anyone like this before. I’m one of the grumpiest and most violent members of the London Mafia Syndicate, but I don’t abduct women.
And neither do I fall in love.
Never, in fact. I thought I was immune, or incapable.
“Wedding crashers usually just drink the booze, you know that, right?” she says, smoothing her dress over her knees, and glancing around the car nervously. She’s remarkably calm, all things considered, but her pulse in her neck is as frantic as mine.
I have the rash desire to bite her there and feel her heartbeat against my lips. To hold her life between my teeth, and consume her completely. I want to lick her all over then bury my cock in her.
Keeping from mauling her is taking all my strength.
“I took the best thing on offer,” I reply instead, and it’s true.
Something that should never be mine. She’s obviously young and innocent, and quite aside from the fact I’m a London mafia boss and she’s a Maldon mafia princess—part of the Essex cartel who regularly cause problems for London—there’s the age gap. I’d like to comfort myself that I’m at least not as ancient as her now-dead almost-husband, but it doesn’t change anything. I’m too old for her.
