AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I’ve been lenient with you. I’ve given you freedom and allowed you more than I should have. You’re fucking taking advantage of me now, and I’m losing my goddamn patience. We’re getting this pitiful excuse of a wedding done now!” He rolls his eyes at me, the exasperated expression appearing more desperate than he thinks.
“Lenient? Since the moment you took your father out of the picture, you’ve fallen into a pit of madness, slowly shutting down the person you were when we started going out. You’re a goddamn sociopath and I’ve been wondering if you’ve actually always been one, but you were just hiding the signs because of your father.” I pause for a moment, drawing in a breath. “There will be no other vows tonight, apart from this one… I vow that you will not be leaving this church with your soul still in your body, and your body won’t go past the old graveyard behind it. It’s my vow to you too… Father.” I slide my gaze to the man that stands between the pews. My brother behind him, but the gun is no longer aimed at his head. It’s in his hand still, though.
Ryan tries to pull me to him yet again, heaving as he grabs me with the other hand, but he stops the moment Vincent’s voice fills the church with blood curdling menace.
“I wouldn’t do that if I was you!” I look toward the man I love and freeze when I see all of The Sanctum, including some of their guys in the back, have guns aimed right at us. Ryan stills for a moment, and when he tries to step sideways, behind me, the cocking of Vincent’s gun echoing gently through the stone-walled church, makes him rethink the move.
“I should have sent Severin to jail all those years ago. And you too, Serpent. Then maybe I wouldn’t have had to deal with this goddamn charade now!” my father rasps.
Maddox steps right next to Vincent at the sound of his last name, his eyes dead-set on his friend, the questions so vivid in them. Yet he doesn’t say a thing.
I’m angry for him; he has no clue.
I can feel the pulse speeding under my skin, pins and needles spreading in a discomfort that makes me want to rage! Memories from that time flooding me! All the anger, all the confusion, the regret… the goddamn heartbreak!
“There are many sins for which you will pay tonight, Father, and don’t you think that taking Vincent away from me by blackmailing him is not one of them.” I can almost feel the mania in the strain of my eyes.
I’m done with this. I’m done with the fucking chatter. I’m done with my father, with Ryan, I’m done with it all.
“Wait. How the hell does she know that I threatened to send Severin to jail? I know for a fact she wasn’t aware then.” My father turns to Vincent, and I love the grin that quirks his devious lips.
“Because I told her.” He looks at Ryan and that grin has a destructive confidence in it. “When we helped her escape your house, and brought her into mine, where we stayed… for days.” He finishes that sentence in an almost lewd tone.
“You… you and The Serpent?!?!” Ryan hisses at me, and I can’t help the beautifully wide smile that forms on my face. “That’s it!!! I’m fucking done with this insolence! Father, get us fucking married, right now!” He tries to turn me toward the priest, who seems to have taken a few steps back from the altar, keeping his distance.
“No!” I hear my brother shout in the next moment.
“Don’t worry Cillian,” Vincent speaks, calm and collected. “He can’t marry them, not legally anyway.”
“What the hell do you mean?” My father takes a step forward past my mother, just as my brother aims his gun back at his head.
Vincent smiles a devastating smile at me.
“She’s already married.”
* * *
“To me,”Vincent adds.
The collective gasps are positively exhilarating. They’re not of congratulatory joy, they are pure, delicious shock.
“As of this morning, VincentThe SerpentSinclair is my husband.” I let that sink in for a moment. I’m a sucker for that dramatic effect. “It was a beautiful ceremony. After all your effort, Father, after all you’ve done, we still ended up together. You blackmailed him away from me, forced him to leave me to protect our friend, and then”—I laugh—“all these years later, it was you who brought us back together. I guess in a cynical kind of way, we have you to thank for it.”
“You whore!” Ryan rasps, giving me a look that used to infuse me with terror.
Only it doesn’t have the same effect on me now. I simply use it as kindling on my fire, and I want to make him burn.
“Says the man who forced me to watch as he fucked another woman?” I don’t miss the outraged gasp from one of the women in this room. “Spare me the righteous bullshit. This was our back-up plan. If something went wrong and he was unable to get to me before you saidI do,at least on paper it wouldn’t be legal. Your whole plan, your only plan, is ruined. Considering what happened tonight, I’m going to say it was a great one.”
“You’re a disgrace to this family!” My mother shouts from the pews, as my father suddenly charges out into the aisle, stopping in the middle of it and looking straight at me.
“I knew you were a lost cause, always so rebellious, always so insolent, but I never thought you would do something like this behind mine and your mother’s backs! You ruined everything, as you’ve done since the moment you were born.” My father perches himself on that high horse and it almost makes me laugh. But when he reaches inside his coat and aims his hand right at me, I realize I’m staring at the barrel of a gun. Maybe a second passes, and a loud pop splits my eardrums, the sound bouncing off the walls of the church, blood splattering all over me, adding to the carnage that already paints my face and dress.
I catch the moment of disbelief in his eyes, that very moment just before the light goes out, when realization strikes… and then he’s gone. Smashing down onto his knees first, then falling face down onto the floor, on a loud crack as his head makes contact.
A blood-curdling shriek makes me roll my head in discomfort, as my mother launches herself on top of my father’s lifeless body, and I can’t help but wonder… even now, as the man that oppressed her for so long is gone, even now she sees loss, not freedom.Jesus…
As her screams still fill me with exasperation, she reaches somewhere under my father’s body, and when she pulls her hand out, that gun is yet again aimed right at me. My muscles stiffen.
