My stomach plummets.
The intruder isn’t my family at all.
It’s Leonardo Chiaroscuro.
One arm wrapped around a woman’s waist, he has the other hand pressed against the door beside her head as he pins her to it with his body. She giggles giddily at the unexpected way they fall into the room, and he chuckles darkly as he continues to devour her lips.
Her moans of pleasure as he plays hockey with her tonsils turns my blood to ice.
A fist closes around my throat as I watch in stunned silence while my fiancé makes out right in front of me less than an hour before the rehearsal dinner for our wedding.
I would be humiliated if I weren’t so shocked by the sting of rejection that brings tears to my eyes.
The burning jealousy that rises like fire up my throat mingles with the salty flavor of my unshed tears, and a strangled chokerushes from me before I can get my emotions under control. “Leo?”
He freezes, one hand firmly planted over the staff worker’s breast, the other pulling her hips more firmly against his crotch as he pauses his conquest to turn his head as if he only just realized they had an audience.
“Sora—I mean, Miss Tanaka,” he says, smirking unapologetically at using such a familiar form of address while he’s in the midst of groping another woman. “I didn’t see you there…” His eyes trail down my body as if truly seeing me for the first time, and as he registers the dress I’m wearing, a heat flickers to life behind them that makes my blood boil.
He’s fooling around with another woman, and he has the gall to check me out in the middle of it?
“What thehell?” I demand, my composure obliterated as it takes everything in me to hold back the tears. “You’re supposed to be getting ready forour wedding rehearsal. Or did you forget?”
“Don’t worry, Princess. We still have plenty of time.” He grins wickedly as he turns his gaze back to the woman still wrapped in his arms, indicating the ‘we’ he was referring to. “I’ll be there. I’m just… savoring my last moments of freedom.”
Pain lances through me, and I wrap my arms defensively around my torso. Ihatethis world I was born into.
Only in the Mafia could my family sell me off to an Italian man-whore with just a contract and a marriage license, and for what? The man I’ll be given to doesn’t even want me.
I can see the misery waiting for me as plain as day, the lifetime of cruelty and betrayal, the role where my worth will be measureddirectly by how many heirs I can produce and how perfectly I can silently obey my husband’s commands.
I hate this life I’m trapped in.
But I can’t simply walk away.
There’s nowhere I could run to where they wouldn’t find me. I’m worth too much as a token to be traded, a commodity to be utilized. My father would no sooner let a prize horse leave his stables.
“Get out,” I whisper, my hands trembling with anger, and I fist them at my sides as I storm toward Leo.
“Oh, calm down. It’s not like you expected any different, right,Cattiva?” Leo teases playfully, but he does take a step back, pulling his woman of the hour along with him.
“It’s nice to know you can at least live up to one expectation,” I hiss. “Now do me a favor, and go screw your whore somewhere I won’t have to watch!”
Grasping the door, I slam it with such force that the artwork on my bedroom wall shudders. Then the tears come hard and fast.
I allow myself three minutes to grieve my fate before I have to pull myself together.
Because the only thing more humiliating than having to marry Leonardo Chiaroscuro is crying over him.
Yes, he’s gorgeous. And smart. And capable of being incredibly charming—to everyone but me, it would seem.
But he’s determined to punish me simply because he would rather screw his way through half of Chicago than marry me, andI’m starting to dread this ‘living hell’ of a marriage he’s prepared for me.
Taking a deep, steadying breath, I march into the bathroom to splash water on my face, and by the time I’ve rinsed the salty tears away, I’ve reclaimed my iron grip on my self-control. I won’t let him break me. I refuse to be a part of Leo’s games.
As soon as I think the word, I get the intense sense that he burst in on me with that woman on purpose.
Maybe he’s still trying to make me back out of the wedding. If so, he failed. I won’t back down.
