I give the servant girls a dark look.
“If you touch me down there, I will kill you,” I warn them. I have limits, and they’re being tested. This is one place that I make a stand. My body, my choice. I snatch a silk robe off the back of a chair and storm into the bathroom, putting my back up against the door and closing my eyes.
What happens after the wedding, I’m not sure.
The only thing I know for certain is that things are going to change around here. Three months of living in this prison, and it’ll all end tomorrow. One way or another.
Grey and I lie close that night, taking turns pressing our mouths to one another’s ear so that we can talk without being overheard. If anyone were to watch, it might seem like we were fucking. The thing is, I clearly have some twisted sense of loyalty. Sleeping with Grey feels like … betraying the club? How ridiculous is that, to care what the club thinks when they’d kill me on sight?
Beast would kill me on sight. Crown would kill me on sight. Grainger would probably happily kill me on sight. Even Sin would …
I push the thoughts aside.
“We can have a good life, Gidge,” Grey tells me, putting his hand on the curve of my waist. My body likes the heat of it, and it’s been so long since I … well, I can’t even masturbate here. There’s no privacy, and I’m a red-blooded woman with needs. Maybe I should just do it, fuck Grey Wolfe? Why not? He’s going to be my husband tomorrow. And if we don’t fuck on our wedding night—and trust me, people will be watching—then I likely won’t live to see another sunrise.
I tell myself that I’m just going to do it. That tomorrow, after the wedding, I’ll sleep with him.
My heart lurches in my chest, but I put my hand over the top of his anyway. I made my decision when I screwed Sin and stole his keys, when I Tasered Crown, when I took off with his bike and crashed it.
It’s over.
I have to accept that.
“Okay, Grey,” I tell him, because it really is the best choice. Marry him. Take over his empire. I could have power here—eventually. That is, if Giulia doesn’t kill me first. “Let’s make a pact, okay? No matter what happens, you have my back, and I have yours.”
He smiles at me and leans in, pressing a light kiss to my lips, like a promise for tomorrow.
“Deal,” he says, and then, when I try to turn over, he moves his hand to my face and holds me there. Even though it’s pitch-black, I can see the reflection of the moon in his pale irises. “For all my faults, I never lie. I will have your back, Gidge, no matter what.”
I cover his hand with mine and close my eyes; that’s how we end up falling asleep.
Together.
I can’t shake the feeling of wrongness when I wake up that morning.
The sun slants through the stained-glass windows above our head, and I can hear the distant sound of birds chirping. Still, even with all that peacefulness, I feel uneasy, almost sick to my stomach.
Sharing an espresso and tangling our bare feet together under the table doesn’t help either.
When Grey gets up to leave, I follow him.
“Be careful today,” I tell him as he hesitates in the doorway and looks back at me. He smiles, reaching up to brush some hair behind my ear.
“It’s a wedding, not a war,” he says with a chuckle. “We’ve got this, Gidge.”
I watch him go, that sense of foreboding filling me as Giulia’s servants pour into the room and start their primping and plucking. My brows are tweezed, makeup expertly applied, hair coiffed. I dress myself in the lingerie that Giulia selected—which, if you think about it, is weird as fuck—and then allow the girls to put me into the jewel-encrusted poof that serves as a wedding dress.
If I were to get married of my own free will, I’d wear a white leather jacket. That would be my dress.
The thought goes as quickly as it comes, a fraction of a wish leftover from a life I can never lead, one that I thought I hated. But the more I let myself think about it, as I’m tucked and tied into my dress, I realize that it wasn’t that I hated the life … I just hated being a second-class citizen within it.
I want to ride a bike, I think with a longing that burns. I want that smell of leather and motor oil, of hot pavement and weed, booze and sweat and bullshit.
“I just need to pee.” I slip into the bathroom before I really lose myself, my mind spinning in a million different directions.
I remember that night that seems so long ago, the one where I took four outlaws into myself and said goodbye to the very last scrap of my innocence, and I crave it with a desperation that makes me quiver. The need is so intense that I end up sitting on the bathroom floor with my head in my hands. I didn’t just sleep with four outlaws because I was a broken girl with too much pain.
I slept with them because I was an old soul trapped in the body of a bird with clipped wings. I slept with them because there was something in each of them that I liked. That … if I let myself think too hard about it, that I loved.
I only ever wished for them to love me back.
“Fuck.” I stand up and punch the mirror as hard as I can, breaking the glass, making my knuckles bleed. The red stains the lace at the end of my sleeve, but there isn’t much I can do about it now. When I head back into the bedroom that I’ve been sharing with Grey for the past several months, Giulia gives a tsk-tsking sound as she looks me over.
“You animal,” she says, but even though the insult is light, the derisiveness cuts straight through me. “Take the sleeves up and give her the lace gloves instead.”
I stand there like a statue, refusing to react even when the pins of the seamstress get stuck in my skin. It’s not enough blood to stain, so what does it matter anyway?
The girls finish in record time, and a sea of mafia creeps in tuxedos show up to escort me to the chapel. One of them even has an Uzi hanging around his neck. I ignore it all, falling into myself, and doing my best to remember that I make smart choices—even if they’re difficult ones. Becoming the bride to the heir of the Grey Wolfe Mafia is not a place I thought I’d ever find myself, but it does give me the leverage necessary to punish Cat. To punish the Don. To find the goons he sent to do the deed and punish them, too. That’s the important thing to remember.
I’m doing this for my sisters.
The Don is waiting outside the doors to the chapel, looking dapper in his tailcoat, like he’s on his way to a white tie event. His shoes are as shiny as his hair, but his smile is like a machete, swung with careless ease straight toward my heart.
“Hello, my darling daughter-in-law,” he purrs, watching apathetically as the servant girls connect the flowing train to my dress. It weighs me down, all of those crystals, all of that lace. I can barely stand the feel of it. “Since your father isn’t here to give you away, I thought it might be nice if I took his place.”
As I stare at him, that anger builds into a crescendo inside of me. I’d like nothing more than to kill this man. Instead, I hear myself saying, “that’d be nice, thank you.”
He reaches out and cups the side of my face, but not in a loving way. There’s a careful control to his movements that says he’s used to getting what he wants, that he’s used to submission and obeisance. I let him think that’s what he’s getting as he hooks his arm with mine and we wait for the live orchestra to start playing Canon in D Major.