How has every decision and action I’ve taken in my life, all of which have been to protect Lucy, brought us to this hellish end?
As I hold her while she sleeps, pieces float through my mind.
Her strange compliance. The hard calculation in her eyes. Her insistence I listen to her wedding vows.Tomorrow doesn’t matter.The way she said Andreas couldn’t be killed unprovoked, as if she was waiting for provocation.
For a moment, I wonder if Lucy is planning something.
But no. That’s impossible. If Lucy had a plan, she would have told me.
17
Lucy
Iwake before dawn and Damiano is asleep beside me on his stomach, his cheek pressed into the pillow and his curls falling over his brow. My heart flutters. What a beautiful sight first thing in the morning. How can I wake up next to any man but him for the rest of my life?
I stretch my arms over my head, and there’s a delicious ache deep in my core. It was the most perfect wedding night spent with the man I love. Too bad the man beside me is not my intended husband.
Damiano feels me moving around beside him, and without opening his eyes he reaches out and drags me to him. His warm, muscular body wraps around mine, and he rolls on top of me and seeks my mouth. My body lights up with pleasure, and I arch against him.
“I have to go,” I whisper between kisses. Damiano’s erection is working itself insistently between my naked thighs.
“I don’t want you to.”
“I’m getting married today, remember?”
“Fuck getting married.”
I pull back and give him an exasperated look. “You know I have to. It’s this or never seeing you again.”
Damiano opens his eyes, and there’s jealousy raging within them. He plants his hands on either side of my head. “Are you going to turn me into the other man? Will you give me crumbs of your affection while that idiot owns your body and your life?”
“I wouldn’t call giving you my virginity crumbs of my affection.”
His breathing is rapid and angry. “I won’t stand silently by in that church while you marry Andreas. If I hear him say his vows, and you saying yours, I’ll lose my mind.”
I stroke my fingers through his curls, trying desperately to calm his fury. “Please, Damiano. Don’t abandon me on my wedding day.”
He closes his eyes and mutters a string of curse words. When he opens them again, he says through clenched teeth, “I won’t, I promise. Even if it kills me, or if I kill everyone in that church.”
I take a relieved breath. “Thank you, Damiano. Now let me go, because I have to shower, put on my bridal lingerie, and be ready in thirty minutes for the hair and makeup artists that Mom booked.” I bought all new lingerie after Andreas wrecked the last set. I couldn’t stand to look at what remained of them.
Devastation fills Damiano’s eyes, like he’s anticipating watching me go to the gallows rather than to the altar.
“Trust me, all right? I know what I’m doing.” I press a final kiss to his mouth and pull myself out of his arms.
As I walk out of Damiano’s room with tangled hair and wearing one of his T-shirts, Ariana sees me through her open bedroom door. Damiano is sitting up bare-chested in bed. Ariana’s eyes flicker with disgust as she realizes we were in bedtogether, but without a word she goes back to hunting through her jewelry box.
I enter my bedroom and catch sight of my bed. My stomach clenches in panic, and my pulse races, as it has every time I’m reminded of Andreas’s body trapping mine, or of his vile, greedy hands ripping at my lingerie. Today is my wedding day, and the thought that being subservient to him could be my fate for the rest of my life makes cold sweat break out on my lower back.
With the help of the experts Mom hired, within two hours, I’m transformed into a bride. The bridal gown I dislike so much weighs heavily on my body. The pins in my hair are too tight and dig into my scalp. There’s a full-length mirror in my room, but I turn away from it without a glance. I already know today is all wrong, starting with the dress, and ending with the groom.
My duty to the Barones is a heavy stone around my neck, dragging me down into heartbreak.
While I wait downstairs for the cars to arrive, I recite my vows under my breath. I wrote them myself, and I’m proud of them. They’re the only thing about this ceremony that’s me. Repeating them over and over is all that’s keeping me grounded and able to go through with it.
I hear footsteps behind me. Warm hands clasp my waist and turn me around. It’s Damiano dressed in a suit, his jaw clean-shaven and smelling like cold, crisp aftershave. My heart thumps with longing. His mouth was on mine last night. His body moved against mine, in and out of me, hard and deep. His hand was wrapped lovingly and possessively around my throat. I cried in the shower as I washed the smears of blood from my neck. I didn’t want to lose this little piece of us.
“You look beautiful,” Damiano breathes, and presses a kiss to my cheek.
