Chapter 395 397

Chapter 395 397
She tenses visibly, but she doesn’t cringe away or refuse him. She takes a step forward and presses her lips to his cheek in the lightest of kisses before she backs away.

The Greek’s face twists into anger. “That is not worth the sacrifice I’ve just made for you,” he snarls. “Make me believe you mean it.”

The gap between this moment and the next feels like it lasts a lifetime. Renata standing there, tall and lithe and beautiful. Her hair like dark silk. My heart aches with how bad I want her. How wrong this is to make me watch this shit.

Renata closes her eyes.

Leans forward.

All the pain I’ve been dealt is nothing compared to this. To watching her give herself up to another man. To a fucking beast.

I’ll take a thousand needles to the skin, a thousand punches to the gut if it means never having to witness this shit.

But just as I go to turn my head away, my good friend Karl snatches my face between his meaty, bloodstained hands and forces me to look…

Right as Renata’s lips touch the Greek’s.

I strain against my bonds and try to roar, though almost no sound comes out and I’m tethered too tightly to my wooden boards to do much more than tremble the metal chain-links.

My vision goes red. The only thing I can see is all the ways I’m going to kill this motherfucker when I get free.

He doesn’t know it yet. And neither do I—I don’t know how I’ll get out of here, or when, or what it will cost me.

All I know is this: sooner or later, that moment will indeed come.

And when it does, I’m going to make him hurt.

49

Renata

Three Days Later

“How is he?”

Rokiades looks at me with obvious annoyance. “How the fuck am I supposed to know?” he demands. “I don’t want to see the Irishman’s face any more than necessary.”

I take some comfort in that. If Kian was still being tortured, I’m pretty sure Rokiades would be there to see it. He’s sadistic like that. Petty and sadistic.

“Part of our deal was that you would make sure he was comfortable.”

“And part of the deal was that you would start playing the fucking part,” Rokiades hisses at me. “You don’t look like a happy bride to me right now.”

I grit my teeth. “That’s because you insist on forcing me to wear that hideous dress.”

I gesture towards the gown that’s hung against the back of the door. It’s a massive frilly confection with puffy sleeves and a low neckline.

Rokiades narrows his eyes. “That was my mother’s dress.”

“That makes sense,” I remark. “I don’t know how to break this to you, but that dress went out of style around the time you were born. So five hundred years ago, give or take.”

The head seamstress who’s about to take my measurements exchanges a glance with her two assistants. Something that doesn’t go unnoticed.

“Lola, take the girls and go outside,” Rokiades orders without bothering to even look at them.

The older woman bows her head deferentially and snaps her fingers at the two young girls behind me. They follow her out of the room.

I square my shoulders as Rokiades gets to his feet. He walks to me slowly. His stomach seems to have doubled in the last few days. I have noticed that he’s been eating a lot more lately—stress eating, perhaps? I sincerely hope so. He’s got good reason to be stressed, from what I can tell. I may be confined to my bedroom most days, but that doesn’t mean I don’t hear things.

There have been attacks all over the city. Irishmen attacking the Greeks and the Italians alike. Things are escalating fast.

And it seems that without Kian’s leadership, the attacks are both brutal and leave no room for diplomacy. Everything I’ve heard has been pieced together based on scraps I overhear from my own guards.

None of it sounds good for Rokiades.

He leans down in front of me, giving me an eyeful of his stained grey whiskers. “I have been very generous with you,” he warns. “Too generous. Don’t make me regret it.”

I look down, biting back the retort on my tongue.

“Kiss me, Renata.”

I raise my face up, but I refuse to look at him as he leans the rest of the way in. His fat, dry lips scrape against mine. The whole time, I hold my breath, stay deathly still, and pray for it to be over.

He pulls away in frustration. “You call that a fucking kiss?”

I stay silent.

“There’s no life, no passion behind it! It feels like I’m kissing a corpse.”

I want to tell him to get used to it, but I clamp down on my tongue instead. I can feel his eyes boring into me. He’s annoyed with me—angry even.

I know this isn’t just about me, though. The noose is tightening. And he’s getting nervous.

The wedding date was moved forward three weeks. As best as I can guess, the Lombardi loyalists and the leadership of the Mariani family are both reluctant to commit to the alliance with the Greeks before the wedding actually takes place.

I hadn’t put up a fight when Rokiades broke the news to me about the change in timing. He didn’t like that—I’ve fought him on everything else, so why not this? But I let him be as suspicious as he wants.

I just need to protect myself… and the child I’m carrying.

Instinctively, my hands twitch towards my stomach, but I suppress the urge forcefully.

This child is nothing short of a miracle. I spent the first few days after the revelation in denial. The doctor who’d examined me a lifetime ago in the wake of my rescue from the bikers had told me in no uncertain terms that I was damaged beyond repair. That I’d never be able to bear a son or a daughter.

But Dr. Lenore is certain.

“There are lacerations in your womb,” she’d explained, “but they’re not so bad that they can prevent you from getting pregnant. The human body is remarkable. It’s amazing how it can heal itself against all odds.”

I’d been only nineteen when I was told I would never be a mother. I suppose I was young enough and broken enough that the news felt almost like a blessing back then. Why would I want to have children? To perpetuate the cycles of violence and unhappiness I’d been born into?

No, it felt like the inability to get pregnant was a good thing. As I’ve gotten older, that has changed so imperceptibly, so slowly I didn’t even notice until now.

It isn’t that I want to have a child, per se. I just resent the fact that I’d been robbed of the choice. And now… well, there hadn’t been much of a choice involved.

But I am pregnant.

With Kian’s baby.

And somehow, it’s hard to find the downside in that. Except for the fact that I’ve agreed to marry another man. One minor hiccup.

“I’m going to expect more from you from now on,” he says, straightening up a little.

“More?”

“The talking back needs to stop,” he says firmly. “I expect you to be respectful and courteous at all times. I expect obedience at all times. I expect submissiveness at all times.”

I tense, but I know that agreeing to his terms are the only way to get what I want—Kian’s life intact. “How do I know you’ll hold up your end of the bargain?”

He narrows his eyes at me. “I told you O’Sullivan will not be touched and he hasn’t been. Not since you and I came to our little arrangement.”