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“You gonna marry that girl or what? Get this fucking family back on its feet.”
Sure as fuck I’m gonna marry her.
I reach for Vittoria. Ready to take her to the chapel right here, right now.
My fingers hit air. I turn to find her.
She’s gone.
Chapter Eighteen
“Mercy but murders, pardoning those that kill.” Romeo and Juliet
Vittoria
I open my eyes and blink, rubbing my hand along my head.
“You okay?” It’s a voice that sounds like Romeo’s but… different. Where am I? The last thing I remember, I was shoved to the floor when there was an attack, only this one was way more violent and deadly than the first. Bloodshed, broken glass, and Romeo’s rough body over mine…
I don’t recognize where I am, but these grounds are huge. With so many rooms and tunnels, I could be anywhere.
There’s a man next to me and I can’t see his face.
“Who’s there?”
“Cut the fucking small talk.” I hear the sound of a match being struck, then Narciso Rossi’s face lights up behind a cigar. Fear strikes my heart. Romeo said he’d kill me.
I look quickly to my left.
“Santo?”
His jaw is set, his hands in fists.
“Believe me when I tell you this is not my choice, Vittoria.” He shakes his head. “But I will be good to you.”
What?
I’m on a carpet with someone’s folded blanket underneath me, in a part of The Castle I haven’t seen before, with the lingering scent of something ancient and sacred. Every one of the windows lights up in stained glass with Biblical images. Jesus, kneeling under the weight of a cross, a crowd of angels gathered by a manger, Moses’s tablets of commandments.
Incense? I’m in a chapel. Why have I never gone to the chapel before, and what is Santo talking about?
Narciso stands by an altar beside someone else dressed in black. He lights a candle.
“No lights,” he orders. I wonder if he thinks they’d find us if there were lights in here. Makes sense. Wherever we are, they’d find us if there were lights.
I look down at my hands when I realize I can't move freely. I'm bound by the wrists and around the ankles. I try to piece this all together. During the commotion of the shoot-out, someone must've knocked me out and taken me. They must have distracted Romeo, too, because I can't believe that he would've let me be taken like this.
"He won't let you get away with this," I say to Narciso.
"As if he has a say? Shut up." I see the manic anger in his eyes, and know he's been plotting this. He never wanted Romeo to get the power to begin with. He knows that he will be fair, and that he wouldn't let Narciso use his bullying tactics. He knows that Romeo won't stand for this.
Narciso grabs a man beside him by the scruff of the neck and pushes him into a semi-circle of dim light near the candle. I blink in surprise. It's the priest from the other night. And then it dawns on me with such force I gasp. He's brought us here so that he can force us to marry.
The priest shakes his head. “This is contrary to God’s law. Marriage must be a mutual agreement. It nullifies the actual commitment of the couple if—”
Narciso shakes his head and draws a gun. Cocking it, he puts it to the priest’s head.
“Do it.”
I’m shaking as Santo takes me by the arm and drags me to the front of the chapel. I’m still bound, so I stumble. He quickly draws a blade. I flinch, preparing for pain on instinct, but he only bends and slices the rope at my ankles.
“Stupid girl,” he growls. “I told you I wouldn’t hurt you.” The angry grip on my arm says otherwise.
I whimper, unsure of what will happen next, my mind racing with possibilities. I can’t see where we’re located or what we’re next to, with the light so dim.
“What will this accomplish?” I say, my voice shaking. “What are you trying to prove? You won't get away with this. And you know that your family wins if I marry any of them, but Santo isn't one of the brothers.”
Santo flinches as if I struck him, and the grip on my arm tightens. "No one asked you for your input."
"Isn't that the problem? No one asked me for anything. I didn’t ask to come here. I didn’t ask for an inheritance or anything that belongs to any of you. I don't know why I'm the bad guy in this situation.”
Narciso glares, his eyes so narrowed I can barely see the pupils. “You didn’t do this? Fucking liar. You have no money. You have no friends. You have nothing but what we've given you, and you expect me to believe that you had nothing to do with this? I know who your father was, and I knew your grandfather.”
