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A brutal man who is crawling under my battered skin and taking hold of my heart with blood-stained hands and a sinister smile in tow.
I vowed to be his wife in name only but love is what demands I stay.
TRIGGER WARNING
This is an arranged marriage with an innocent FMC. Amidst The Chaos features gore/blood, a scarred heroine, punishment and abuse. It is for an audience of 18+
CHAPTER ONE
RONAN
I wanted to murder someone, pound my angry fists into their face and watch as their skull disfigured as much as my life seemed to be. I wanted blood, tears and the cry of pain to ease the fury rattling around me. It was an emotion I'd never experienced before. I wanted to soak into its abyss and expel it from my mind all at once.
“This is non-negotiable, Ronan. I didn’t sever ties with Reyes to marry anyone but Lola. You already know this,” Connor Brayford, my boss and closest friend, drawls roughly. He’s the only man I fear, and for good reason. He’s a man of impeccable honour to his family and equally vicious to his enemy. I was fourteen when I first watched him kill. He dismembered a man for catching his suit with the butt of their cigarette. He was sixteen at the time and had taken such pride and care in his work that I’d asked him to show me how to do it. It didn’t matter that the cigarette-wielding man was my father. The alternative would have been the loss of my own limbs. Instinctively, I knew Connor was a man never to be crossed. You were with him or against him. To this day, I’d lay my life on the line for him. Take a bullet without a second thought. But this… this cuts deeper than any knife.
My views on marriage vary from his.
Love and cherish are not words in my vocabulary. I’d much rather pour petrol on my upcoming nuptials and burn them than tie the knot with some faceless woman.
Staring out across the Brayford Estate, I try to gather my thoughts. I’ve never resented my boss. Until today. I fucking hate him for asking this of me. I keep my eyes nailed to the gardens. They are as well secured as the manor itself. It is my home, the only place I find solace, and now I will lose that too—that and my freedom. Tall trees bracket the property, their dark greenery pointing skywards and casting a dark ominous shadow around the periphery. Some say it’s what's hiding behind the walls that makes the manor such a foreboding place. I like the threat the property poses. Towering gates and security towers run the hundred acres of land, keeping us set back from prying eyes and, most importantly, far away from anyone stupid enough to breach the boundary.
Others believe the manor to be haunted. We know different. We’re the ghosts that haunt the land, terrorising the people beyond the gates. For the first time, I feel like one of those people. An indispensable outsider forced to do the boss's bidding.
Non-negotiable.
It’s a fucking life sentence.
I barely meet my boss’s stare over my shoulder.
“Come on, don't be a sourpuss. Reputedly, Cara Murphy is a real beauty.”
“How so? No one has ever seen her,” I growl, feeling the tension crawl onto my shoulders, and sit there, as heavy as the gargoyles lurking in the shadows of Brayford Estate.
Connor’s chuckle vibrates through my chest, causing my fists to clench and my eyes to narrow. My boss moves to stand beside me. Connor Brayford may be one of the youngest to head a mafia family, but he’s the most ruthless. I’ve been his second since before I hit puberty, and the arsehole is selling off my freedom like cattle to the Irish.
There is not an inch of me that isn’t repulsed by the idea, but I know it’s good for the syndicate. It’s another string in the tangled web of deceit he is weaving to keep his position at the top.
It’s a strong alliance for us.
Mostly it's an in, a way to infiltrate their ranks and learn more about the Irish.
With the Italians and Russians keeping a respectable distance, it’s important that we secure the stronghold by making a deal with the Irish. Since Connor’s impending divorce to Alberto Reyes’s daughter, tension has been high. Blood has been shed. Deals have been broken, and I’m the fucking glue to keep it from cracking further. We need this. He needs me to do this. Connor’s gaze burns into me, but I stare ahead, too enraged to meet him head-on and disrespect him with my scowl.
“When?” I crack my neck, accepting my fate. Marriage. I never cared for it. Had no intention of tying the knot. I sure as hell hope he doesn’t expect me to stay faithful.
“A week. Cara will be arriving here with her family the night before the wedding.”
“You’re too kind,” I mutter.
His hand lands on my shoulder. “I could never entrust this to someone else.” He could never trust himself. His marriage to Gabriela was short-lived. We don’t divorce in the syndicate. Connor Brayford broke the fucking mould, and I’m paying for his wandering eye. “She only needs to wear a band and carry your name. Become, in essence, a Brayford.” He buttons his suit jacket. “I owe you, brother.”
I may not carry the surname myself, but I am a Brayford through and through.
It has been the only name I associate myself with, and I will wear it with pride until my last breath. Ronan Michaels is a poor man's son, and Ronan Brayford is a killer.
“And Lola, how's that going?”
“She’ll come around,” Connor responds with confidence. His infatuation with Aidan’s younger sister was something I never anticipated. For years, he barely acknowledged her. He married Gabriela as requested and followed his father’s every order, bowed his head to every demand, and released a bullet for every mark. He was the assassin everyone feared, and the son none wished to see take the helm. And I got to participate in it all.
