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5
TEMPEST
“You meddling littlebitch!”
We’re back in the city, after Charles all but threw me into his car and hauled me here to the elegant old-money apartment he keeps on 5thAve and 89th, overlooking Central Park. Under normal circumstances, being called a “meddling little bitch” by your own grandfather would probably be traumatic.
Except it takes more than mean words to actually traumatize me at this point. Furthermore, I could give a shit about what Charles thinks of me, and even less about what he says to my face.
Right now, I don’t give a shit about anything aside from the smug sensation throbbing in my veins.
“Do you have any fucking idea what you’ve just done?!”
I smile benignly at my livid grandfather. His face is suffused red, and the bald dome at the center of the silver ring of his cropped, thinning hair is shiny as he snarls at me.
“Sure.”
I haveeveryidea of what I’ve just done. I’ve just inked myself toDante, in unholy fucking matrimony.
I allow a shiver to drag its nails up my back before I ignore it and steel my nerves. What I’ve just done and what it will cost me doesn’t matter, because it’s a cost I can easily afford to pay. My life is already almost over, but at least what I just did stops Maeve from forfeitingheryoung life as well.
All the same, my gut twists as I finally digest the reality of the situation.
I’m marrying Dante.
I tremble.
Dante of the cold, piercing blue eyes and the heart of black ice, who rules his kingdom of sin with an iron fist and a lethal will.
Despite our dad’s best efforts, it’s kind of impossible not to cross paths with mafia types as a member of the Black family. But while I’ve never been intimidated by the mafia men I’ve met before, for some reason, I don’t have that same cavalier attitude when it comes to Dante Sartorre.
With him, I feel real fear. I also feel anxiousness, and doubt, and a humming sensation of danger at the back of my neck.
But of all the things I feel when I think of Dante Sartorre, the worst is the one burning like a hot ember in the very center of my chest.
Heat, of the forbidden and horribly wrong variety.
When I think of Dante, what I should be thinking of is the danger that comes with a man like him. I should be focused on the fact that he runs an organization very similar to the clandestineone I’ve been hunting down. Or the fact that not only am I marrying him, but that I’ve justtricked himinto that marriage, by pretending to be Maeve when I drove up to his house to sign that goddamn blood marker.
If he wasn’t a fan of me before, he sure as hell isn’t now.
Thatis everything that should come to mind when I think of Dante. And yet instead, all my traitorous and possibly deranged mind seems to be focused on is the chiseled line of his jaw.
The soft but masculine curve of his lips.
The electrifying spark of blue flame in his eyes.
The way a dark power emanates from him in a way that pulls every single trigger within me.
“Answer me, you little fucking bitch?—!”
“That’s enough!”
My hazy, murky, horrible thoughts about Dante shatter. Whirling, my brows arch in surprise as my brothers come storming into Charles’ office.
Gabriel glares at our grandfather with an icy glint in his eyes. “I said that’senough, Charles,” he seethes.
“Excuse me,” our grandfather snaps. “Last I checked, this ismyhome, and we’re discussingmybusiness, which your littlecuntof a sister just fucked?—”
