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CHAPTER FOUR
ITWASHISwedding day. His secretary had informed him firmly on Friday that this was to be the happiest day of his life.
He’d done his best not to laugh at her. Because she was sincere and just because he didn’t possess the ability to see the world in such a pure fashion didn’t mean he had to destroy the illusions of others.
Dante had never been under the impression that this would be a joyous day for him. Rather, he had always known that it would be a calculated move that benefited him in some way.
But this... This was not what he’d envisioned.
They had put the wedding together very quickly, and Min had been lying low in the meantime, rarely leaving her parents’ house, at his express command.
Though she had told him with great umbrage that she didn’t need him to command a single thing because she was completely happy to hide until they had made things legal between them.
Security. That was all. Just added layers of security.
Dante was not a man who believed in taking unnecessary chances.
He was standing in the back room of a cathedral sanctuary with his future father-in-law and his future brother-in-law standing on either side of him.
He had not imagined that Robert and Maximus would be in that position. Had it been another scenario, he would have imagined they were offering support. As it was, he had a feeling they were making sure he didn’t run away.
It was all a bit close and familial for his taste.
He would always appreciate what Robert King had done for him, and if he had a friend, Maximus King was the best one he possessed.
But the way that they were with each other, the ease that the family had with one another, had always made his skin itch.
He was not familiar with these sorts of dynamics. Not privy to the way families typically acted with one another. He didn’t understand. He hadn’t grown up with it.
If he had siblings, then he didn’t know any of them. His father had never been part of his life, and his mother had died early, and even before then she hadn’t exactly been the model of maternal care.
He wasn’t angry about those things. It was simply life.
Life, in his estimation, was not fair, from conception.
You could be born into a family like the Kings, or you could be born into the streets of Rome as he had been.
You could have a father like Robert King, or a father like Isabella’s who was threatening the life of her mother and trying to drag her into a criminal underworld that was no place for anyone, let alone a child.
These things were accidents of fate and there was no point railing against them.
There was only making decisions about what you would do with the things you were given.
Dante believed that firmly.
He had made the most of what he’d been given. He had been given a hand up, and he had taken hold of it.
But that didn’t mean that he felt completely comfortable with his situation, or his position.
In some ways, he would have imagined that Maximus would be with him on his wedding day in this capacity. He just hadn’t imagined he would also be related to the bride. And that was where the connections became uncomfortable.
“If you hurt my sister,” Maximus said, smiling and clapping his large hand on Dante’s shoulder, “I’ll kill you myself.”
There weren’t many men who stood at eye level with Dante, but Maximus was one of them. With ice-blue eyes and blond hair, he was a Viking counterpart to Dante’s fallen angel.
He would never have thought of something so fanciful, but when they had gone out together in the past, women had made such comments.
Which gave Maximus’s threat a lot more weight. After all, Maximus had seen up close Dante’s appetite for beautiful women, and he imagined that his friend’s believing that such an appetite had spilled over onto his younger sister was something that was never going to sit easy with him.
