CHAPTER1
Enzo
Luca’s voice, low and urgent, filtered through the fog of rage that blocked out everything and everyone other than the woman standing in front of the altar. He grabbed the front of my shirt, and slowly, the red haze on the outskirts of my vision shifted.
“Enzo. Listen to me. You cannot react.” I tried to look around him, but he wouldn’t allow it. “This is what he wants. He’s using her to get to you, hoping you’ll start something. I know what you’re feeling. Trust me, I do. But if you do anything right now except sit back down in that fucking pew, it will give him the excuse he needs to take me out. To takeallof us out. So sit the fuck down. We can’t win this, my friend. Not today.”
What he was saying finally infiltrated, and I blinked as his pale face came into focus, his blue eyes wide and locked on mine through the lenses of my sunglasses as he tried to get through to me.
“Sit. The. Fuck. Down,” he ordered. “Donotmake a scene.”
I wanted to obey him. I’ve always obeyed him, ever since he rose to the position of underboss and Tristan and I vowed it with blood and honor. But I couldn’t think. Couldn’t move.
A soft hand took mine.
“Enzo.”
I looked down to see Veda’s hand gripping mine, and then my eyes rose to her face. She was scared. I didn’t like it when she was scared.
“Please,” she whispered.
The music had stopped. We were the only ones left standing. Abruptly, I took my seat, still holding Veda’s hand to anchor me to the spot. With a sigh of relief, Luca sat down on her other side. Tristan said something to him and he shook his head, then smiled at Veda and took her other hand before giving his attention to the people standing at the front of the church.
I stared straight ahead as the priest began the ceremony. I couldn’t look at Luigi’s new bride. Couldn’t watch as she agreed to spend the rest of her life with a man who was old enough to be her father. Or grandfather, even. A man who had ordered me to kill my wife without an ounce of emotion.
And I had. I’d done it. To prove my loyalty to him and his son. A loyalty he didn’t deserve.
I felt Luigi’s eyes on me. He was fucking enjoying this. He expected me to make a scene, perhaps threaten his life, just as Luca said. As a matter of fact, I’d bet he was counting on it.
But I wouldn’t give him the fucking satisfaction. So I sat my ass in the pew and showed nothing of what I was feeling, even as I burned alive from the inside out, the back of my neck prickling from the curious eyes of many of the guests wondering what the fuck was going on. But I refused to show any reaction to the fact that the woman who haunted my every waking moment and possessed my dreams was marrying a man I hated.
Inside, however, I was screaming.
As the ceremony dragged out, the roar in my head grew louder until I could only hope my memories of this day would become nothing but one big blur. However, that wasn’t the case. For I would remember every specific detail, each one like a razor blade cutting into my skin over and over and over again. The priest droning on and on. The restless movements of the guests. And the murmured responses of the man and woman standing in front of the altar.
At one point, I must’ve moved or made some sound, for I saw Luca lean over Veda in my peripheral.
“Keep it together, Enz.”
I glanced over at him and then down at my hands fisted in my lap. Slowly, I relaxed them.
Sera’s shaky voice penetrated my violent thoughts. “I, Serafina Cordaro, take you…Luigi Morelli, for my lawful husband. To have and to…hold…from this day forward…for better, for worse…for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health…” Her voice tapered off, and I couldn’t stop myself from finding her, standing there looking so fucking beautiful she burned my eyes and made my heart skip.
“…until death do us part,” she finally finished.
The buzzing began in my ears and slowly spread throughout my body until I was physically shaking with the need to pull out my gun and shoot the man standing in front of her. Only Veda’s hand on my arm stopped me from doing it. If I shot Luigi here, in front of so many of his friends, the entire place would erupt into gunfire. Sera could be harmed. Or Veda. Or any of the other innocent women or children in the church.
I couldn’t be the cause of such a slaughter. Not again.
So I tore my eyes away from her and kept my ass on that hard, wooden pew, stewing in my rage and disbelief as this hoax of a ceremony went on, and I stared at the statue in front of me until the scar below my left eye throbbed painfully with every beat of my heart. The scar from the bullet I’d taken.
For her.
To saveher.
The crowded church erupted into cheers as Luca’s father put his slimy mouth on my Sera’s sweet lips. Lucky for him, he kept it short and sweet, or I wouldn’t have been able to control my reaction no matter what the consequences. By the time the music started again and the newly married bride and groom turned to face their guests before making their way back down the aisle together, every muscle in my body ached from holding myself so still in the pew.
I jumped out of my seat and crossed in front of my friends, shaking off the hands that tried to stop me. I stood at the head of the aisle, watching the woman I wanted more than anything in this life walk away from me as another man’s wife.
