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“How can I help myself when my bride is so beautiful?” he murmurs.
I look over his shoulder, expecting to see the other three looming behind him with a collection of smirks and sneers on their faces. I crane my neck as I peer into all corners of the room.
“Where are your friends today?”
The smile dies on Salvatore’s face. “Why are you looking for them when I’m standing right in front of you?”
“I was just asking—”
“Then don’t,” he snarls.
I stare at him, open-mouthed. His mood has changed as quickly as it did the night of my birthday. From polite to murderous in seconds.
“Excuse me.” I reach up to my veil to draw it down over my face.
He grasps my wrist. “No. Don’t hide that beautiful face away. I’d like to kill every man who looks at you, but I crave to see you even more.”
If he were Vinicius I’d accuse him of empty flattery, but I don’t know where I stand with Salvatore. He’s had me second guessing everything he’s done since that first kiss.
I draw the veil over my face with my other hand. “If I have to marry one of you then I’ll remain in mourning.”
His bride in black, to despise and destroy, till death do us part.
“Not one of us.Me. I’m going to marry you.”
I pull my arm from his grasp. I don’t know when or how it was decided that I’m going to marry Salvatore. Dad and the four men must have made the arrangement when I was upstairs in bed, paralyzed with grief beneath the blankets.
I wonder how much I’m worth. A few contracts? Building permission for a new skyscraper? Whatever it was, my father will have come out on top. He always does.
“What do the other three think of your arrangement?”
“How about you shut the fuck up about the other three?” he says through his teeth.
I don’t understand how he can speak about his friends with so much venom. Unless…they’re not friends anymore? Is that it, Salvatore won, but the price was his friends? Dad used me to drive a wedge between four powerful adversaries.
My eyes flick up and down Salvatore’s muscular, suited body. “I feel sorry for you. You came to my house so certain of yourselves. You declared to me that you couldn’t be bought, and yet look at you. You sold out, and now you’re alone.”
“That’s a sharp tongue you’ve got for someone who’s learned first-hand the price of disobedience.” Salvatore glances meaningfully at my throat.
My knees start to tremble but I clench my fists and remain on my feet through sheer force of will. “You’d throw my mother’s murder in my face the day I bury her? I know I’m more useful alive than dead right at this moment. I may as well say what I really feel while I’m still able.”
“Enjoy it while you can. Fifty weeks left, and counting.” He gathers up the edge of my veil, puts his lips close to my ear and murmurs, “For me, it will feel like an age.”
His lips find the soft skin behind my ear and he plants a slow kiss there. My future husband lingers where he is, inhaling the scent from my neck. I have fifty weeks to find a way out of this marriage. My mother died to save me from this match. I can’t let her sacrifice be for nothing.
Salvatore draws back, his blue-green eyes dark and gleaming. “If you ever need anything, you can count on me. Always.”
To do what? I’m in school. My problems are my mother’s death, math homework—andhim.
I stare at his chest through my veil, willing myself not to fall apart in front of him.
And then finally, he’s gone.
I plant my palm against the table and take deep, ragged breaths. How dare he come to Mom’s wake and gloat over my suffering. I stare around the room and down the hall, peering into the rooms beyond. Dozens of people are standing in groups, eating tiny sandwiches and talking. No one knows the truth about what happened that night except me, Dad, and four dangerous criminals.
I could scream it at the top of my lungs.
Mom was murdered.
