I can see him clearly now. Every line of him. The scar on his jaw. The set of his shoulders. The way his hands hang loose at his sides, relaxed, ready. He looks like exactly what he is. A man who has put people in the ground and slept fine after.
A widower. An executioner. A man who buried his wife and never replaced her.
Until now.
That thought hits like a fist to the sternum.
I stop walking. Father doesn't. He keeps moving and I have no choice but to stumble forward with him or rip my arm free and cause the kind of scene that will get my sister hurt.
"Father." My voice comes out steady. I'm proud of that. "Whose wedding is this?"
This can’t be happening. This cannot be happening.
He doesn't answer right away. We're five feet from the altar now. Close enough that I can see the exact shade of Rafael's eyes, that flat, unreadable green, close enough to catch his cologne cutting through the incense.
He smells expensive and dangerous and I need to stop noticing things about this man immediately.
Father leans in. His breath is warm against my ear.
"Yours."
CHAPTER TWO
GIA
I'm sorry, what?
The word is still bouncing around my skull when my father releases my arm and steps back, smooth and unbothered, like he just handed over a coat at a restaurant instead of his daughter's entire life.
He leaves me there.
Standing beside Rafael Caruso.
At the altar.
And then the priest starts speaking.
"No."
The word comes out before I even decide to say it. It hits the stone walls, the high ceiling and ricochets back to me in the sudden, suffocating silence of three hundred witnesses.
I don’t fucking care.
"No." I repeat, stepping back from the altar, my heels sharp against the stone. "Absolutely not. This is not happening!”
My father immediately returns to my side, grabbing my arm. "Gia, do not?—"
"Don't!" I yank against his grip and something in my chest has snapped clean, something that had been holding for the entire drive and the whole walk down this aisle and it is gone now. “You do not get to do this. You dragged me to a church in the middle of nowhere without telling me a single thing and you expect me to just stand here and —"
"You will lower your voice, Gia."
"I will not lower my voice." I turn to face him fully. My hands are shaking. I can feel it. "You are literally selling me to a man I don’t know. Without telling me. So no, I will not lower my voice, I will not comport myself appropriately, and you will have a scene."
The church is absolutely silent.
Three hundred people look like they’re holding their breath.
My father's face goes cold, internal calculation behind his eyes, and I hold his gaze because I am so angry right now that I cannot feel scared.
