“I want you to do me a favor,” I said, glancing up into his deep brown eyes. “I want you to get ready in the living room and wait for me in the ballroom.” He was already shaking his head, but I placed my hand on his hard, muscular chest. “You can have Alek escort me down to the ballroom. I just want to have my entrance moment, even if it’s small.” I could tell he wanted todeny my request, so I pleaded with him, “Please, Lorenzo. We are being forced into all of this. I just want one slice of normalcy for my first wedding.”
“You’re asking me to put my trust in the Grave Digger, Bianca. Alek isn’t the giant teddy bear you seem to think he is.” The look he gave me was one of pure exasperation.
“He’s kept me safe so far when you weren’t with me. You said yourself the Russians seem to want us together, so why would they kill me now? It wouldn’t make sense.”
He grasped my upper arms. “I don’t know what their endgame is, Bianca. That’s what worries me. Men in our world don’t do anything without getting something in return for it. Kozlov is footing a hefty bill to see us married, why? What does he gain from it?”
“I don’t know. I try to stay out of the family business.” He was right and very wrong. Alek wasn’t a teddy bear–a blind person could see that–but I also trusted him. Call it gut instinct or women’s intuition, I didn’t know. I trusted Alek to keep me safe. A lifetime living in this world with my father and men just like him gave me a hairpin trigger when something didn’t feel right. With Alek, I didn’t feel that trigger switch. I couldn’t say that in my own house with my father or with his right-hand man, Gino.
“Good, you don’t belong there, Bianca.” His gruff words irritated me. I’d fought my way to get out of my father’s house and his world, but I was being pulled further into it. Lorenzo’s statement hurt more than I’d anticipated. I stayed out of everything with the family because I didn’t want a part of it. I wanted out, but it also meant I didn’t belong. His words were accurate, but also caused a spear of pain to hit me right in the chest.
“I don’t belong anywhere, Lorenzo.” I broke out of his hold on my arms and stepped away from him, but he didn’t let me go far.
“Yes, you do, Princess. You belong with me, and in less than an hour, you’ll belong to me.” He wrapped his arms around my waist and pulled me against his hard body. I fell into his embrace easily and accepted the kiss he slammed on my lips.
It was hard and brutal, filled with both irritation and longing. His tongue pierced the barrier of my lips and dove in to slide against my own. I felt his hand bracing my jaw, hard enough to control the kiss, but not hard enough to actually cause pain.
He pulled back from the kiss, but not before taking a gentle nip of my bottom lip. The small bite of pain had my breath hitching and my knees weakening. He could control me so easily with just a kiss, but that was nothing new. When I put up a fight against him, it was always for show. Always to mask how much I wanted him, how much I wanted to please him. Lorenzo stole my heart a long time ago, and I’d been fighting him ever since.
“Promise me something.” I couldn’t keep the plea out of my voice.
“What?”
“Promise me that you will take my father out before he takes you out. Because he will. We both know it. I could be marrying anyone, and no matter how close they are to my family, he would take them out for disrupting his plans.”
Lorenzo smirked and reached up to tuck my hair behind my ear. “Is this your way of telling me that you’d miss me if he killed me?”
I closed my eyes and bit back a sob. “It’s not a joke, Lorenzo. Promise me that no matter what yours and my brother’s plans are for him, if he comes at you, you will take him down first.”
He lifted my chin and placed a tender kiss on my forehead. “I can promise that I’ll try to take him down with me if he comes after me.”
It was as good as he was going to answer. If I knew one thing about Lorenzo, he wouldn’t break his word. He couldn’t promisethat he wouldn’t be taken out by this scheme, but he could promise to try. That was truly all I could ask for, so I nodded and gave him a kiss. “Thank you,” I whispered before pulling out of his arms.
I had less than an hour to get ready for my wedding. My hair and makeup were going to take the longest time, so I went into the bathroom and got to work, leaving Lorenzo behind to get dressed on his own.
***
“Lorenzo, I’m—” My words faded as I looked into the suite’s living room and saw it empty except for Alek standing there.
He let out a low whistle as his eyes took me in wearing the white formal gown I’d been trying on earlier. It wasn’t a wedding dress, but as close to one as you could get in a casino resort’s boutique.
“Vitale is one lucky man.” Alek gave me a confident smirk. “If you’re unsure about wanting to marry him, I can sneak you out the back or kill him, and I could marry you instead.”
I snickered. “I think that may be one of the reasons he was worried when I asked him earlier to let you see me down to the ballroom. Maybe he was afraid I would get cold feet.”
“Are your feet cold?” he questioned, his humor fading quickly.
“About Lorenzo?” I questioned. “No. I know what he’s doing and why he’s doing it. Are my feet cold because I’m worried about what this will all mean later on? Yes.” I sighed. “I never thought I would be forced to marry a man who didn’t love me or choose me because he wanted me, but because my father wanted to sell me off like a prized brood mare, and he was forced to protect me.”
Alek didn’t smile, but sat thoughtfully on the arm of the couch and studied me. “You sure that Lorenzo doesn’t love you, Bianca?”
“He hasn’t said he does. I know he likes me and cares for me a little, and I know it’s different than how he sees my sisters. If Giana or Nicoletta were being sold off like this, I think he would have done the same thing. I think he would have married them, but–” I swallowed hard. “I don’t think he would have had a problem keeping the no sex rule and keeping the marriage in name only if it were them.”
Alek chuckled softly. “I think you’re right on that one, but I don’t know that he would have gone so far as to marry your sisters either, Bianca. He would have found another way to protect them. I think the fact that it was you on the other end of this forced him into action.”
“How long have you known Lorenzo?” I asked curiously. I couldn’t believe that Alek and Lorenzo were close enough to know each other this well. It was a mystery to me how long they had known each other because I never knew my father to mention Kozlov or his organization. I’d never seen Alek come to the house, and neither Romeo nor Lorenzo ever mentioned the Russians.
“Probably four years now.”
