My eyes widened as the corner of his lips lifted into a jagged crooked grin, something dark flashing across his eyes.
He was fucking prepared.
It was still Zaghan. The bastard knew what he was doing. Callan Raskov was the legally documented and verifiable name. Zaghan only existed as a phantom borrowing another’s body. If the marriage certificate ever read Zaghan, that would put his ownership of me at risk. Because I could later claim the marriage was nullified as there was no one named Zaghan, and this time, the law would stand by me.
Zaghan wouldn’t risk losing me over technicality. He wasn’t leaving any door unlocked, not emotionally, not legally, not even spiritually. Whether the priest said his name or not, he still got to claim me.
A hard squeeze of my hand racked me back to the scene playing before me. I glanced around, the priest was waiting for me expectantly and Zaghan was getting impatient.
I hadn’t answered the big question they asked me.
Thinking about that answer alone made my throat feel tight, as if an invisible noose had been wrapped around my neck, dragging me across a field of thorns.
The brick walls of the church began to close in, the pressing in my chest weighing a ton. When my lips finally parted, silence stretched for a moment, a second, a minute. The word that was sitting on my tongue wasNo. But as my gaze flickered to him, and the darkness in his eyes twinkled, I glanced to my left, and the gun was still very pressed to Kenzo’s head.
“Yes.” Three letters became the heaviest word I had ever spoken in my life as tears rolled down my cheeks. “Yes, I do.” It tasted like ashes and my throat felt like sandpaper.
The priest’s voice droned off as my world shattered in front of me. And in that cruel unfold of reality, all I felt was the weight ofthe cold ring that he slipped into my finger, the metal biting into my skin like a shackle.
My eyes momentarily snapped shut, more tears trailing a cold path down my cheeks. In the darkness of my despair, I finally came to terms with the fact that I had given myself away, not to a prince charming that I had dreamt of for years, not for love, but for the cruelest of bargains.
The priest declared us as man and wife, placing his hand on our heads and blessing the sacred union.
But this union was not sacred at all. It was not a vow either. It was defeat, a surrender to darkness.
42
BETH
Come sit on daddy’s lap
Everything felt like a nightmare, a cruel unending slumber.
I had scrubbed a hand continuously over my face and pinched my skin hard enough to bruise, but nothing changed. Nothing felt real. Except that it was real, and the reality belonged to me.
It had been an hour since we were driven from the church to the guesthouse, but an hour wasn’t nearly enough to process the wreckage of my life.
Fear coiled around my ribs, suffocating, and bitterness soured my tongue.
But more than anything. I was terrified.
And I missed Kenzo.
My gaze lifted from where I was sitting on the edge of bed the moment the door opened and Zaghan walked in. My lips parted to ask him questions about Kenzo, but I snapped them shut seeing a phone pressed against his ear. And he looked pretty angry at whoever was on the other end.
“What’s going going on, Seb?” he demanded, his steps lithe and impatient as he crossed the room to the table where a bottle of his infamous American whiskey sat, pouring himself a glass.
“It’s been over a week.” My eyes followed him as he walked over to the window, looking into the dark night. “¿Dónde coño está mi viñedo?” The latter was said in Spanish, and for a moment, I couldn’t help thinking about how utterly super attractive…and smart he looked, sounded whenever he spoke a foreign language.
So far, I had learned he spoke roughly about nine languages, Scottish, of course, then Arabic, French, Russian, Swahili, Chinese, Spanish, and others. The aforementioned were the ones I had overheard him or walked in on him speaking. And the strange thing about this discovery was the part where he would automatically adapt the local accent of each language whenever he spoke them. Every dialect swiftly turned into his mother’s tongue the moment he got into character. Commendably, Zaghan…or Callan was an intelligent man, not so far from a genius. But he was evil and that ruled out anything else.
“Arréglalo ahora,” he said, still in Spanish, as he veered away from the window, heading to the couch at the corner of the room and sinking into it. “O lo arreglo yo mismo. Y sabes lo que pasa cuando arreglo las cosas yo mismo.” He took a sip of his wine, a dark look crossing his eyes. “Estoy seguro de que estás intentando evitar tener demasiada sangre en las manos.”
I couldn’t help but wonder what he was talking about. It didn’t matter who he was speaking with. I hoped it wasn’t about me. But he hadn’t, for once, spared me a glance since he walked in, so I doubted it was about me. And I hoped the topic didn’t involve him having to kill another person in Braemont again. I wasn’t sure the people would be able to handle another loss.
“Come here.” His husky and commanding voice broke into my thoughts, shutting off the voices in my head.
My gaze flickered across to him. He was no longer on a call, and the wine glass was empty now, placed on the glass stool beside him.
