Page 68 of Bene

Nothing attractive.

“Stop it,” he hissed, his first show of nastiness to her in a long while. The last time it had been when he caught her with a guy she’d been sleeping with in high school during her senior year, and he had possession and jealousy issues to handle. “You knew this was fucking inevitable, Vanna. I’ve been telling you for years what I wanted. How is it my fault that you just continued to ignore me, huh?”

“Because no wasn’t enough? Because me saying I don’t like you wasn’t a good answer for you, or—”

“You don’t get a choice, that’s the problem.”

Vanna laughed.

Bitterly.

Yes, it was a problem.

For her.

Not him.

“You’ve been comfortable, you know,” he said, head tilting down so he could murmur those words in her ear. “Comfortable thinking you were free … that you could do whatever the fuck you wanted; that you weren’t one of us, Vanna, but surprise, you are. All that shit you wanted? The life you thought was yours? That was an illusion, and I let you have it as long as I could, but now I’m tired of waiting, and I want what’s mine.”

Right.

Yeah.

Because that’s all she was to him.

Just a thing.

Something to have.

A trophy.

With the title wife.

“I’ll never love you,” she breathed, “never want you. There isn’t one single part of you that makes me need you, and you’ll know it for every single day we’re together. If you’re going to force me into a marriage with you, then I will make sure you suffer for it, too. I hope you know that.”

“Is that a threat?”

His grip on her suddenly took her breath away. Vanna almost dropped the tray again. Still, she held her composure, refusing to show Mario how much he affected her, and not in a good way, either. Sure, he didn’t scare her, not really. If he thought he could beat the compliance into her, then she had news for him.

It still bothered her, though.

“Not a threat,” she replied cuttingly, sneering up at him before she yanked her arm right out of his hold, and before he could stop her, took a step away from him. Out of his reach entirely. “It’s a promise.”

“You were always meant to be mine.”

“Only in your mind.”

“But who is the one getting what they want here, Vanna?”

Yeah.

And she wouldn’t soon forget it.

Mario would ruin everything for her. She’d known it from the start. All of her plans, the vendetta—something she struggled with for reasons she wasn’t quite ready to admit—and just her life. This man would ruin all of it. But damn him if he thought she wouldn’t fight for it.

“I’m still my own woman,” she told him, “and you’ll treat me like it until a marriage certificate says differently.”

Mario tipped his chin up. “And what does that mean?”