Lorenzo steps closer.
“Good girl,” he says softly.
I flinch.
Across the church, Dante sees it. Sees all of it. The way I’m standing here in my wedding dress while Lorenzo holds me like he’s already won. The way this moment has been ripped apart and rewritten at gunpoint.
His face turns to stone.
“This isn’t over,” Dante says.
Lorenzo’s mouth curves, but there’s no warmth in it.
“No,” he says, pulling me back against his side. “It’s not.”
Then his gaze drops. To my left hand. To the diamond Dante slid onto my finger only days ago when the engagement was announced. Something dark flashes across his face.
Before I can react, Lorenzo catches my hand in his and yanks the ring free. I gasp softly as the metal scrapes over my knuckle. He holds it up for one cold, brutal second, the diamond catching candlelight like a shard of ice. Then he flicks his wrist and sends it sailing across the church. The ring strikes the stone near the altar with a sharp metallic crack before skidding to a stop at Dante’s feet.
Lorenzo’s arm bands around my waist, hard and possessive, as his eyes lock on Dante’s.
“Keep your ring,” he says, voice low and lethal. “She’s coming with me.”
Then he begins backing us toward the doors, his men closing in around us. The church remains frozen—guests terrified,Dante’s soldiers armed but unable to fire without risking the people Lorenzo came prepared to use.
I look over my shoulder at Dante one last time.
At the fury in his eyes.
At the ring lying near his polished shoes.
At everything that might have been.
Then Lorenzo drags me out of the church, and the doors slam shut behind us.
10
Birdie
“I hate you,” I mutter as I sit buckled into the seat on Lorenzo’s jet.
He doesn’t answer.
That only makes the rage inside me climb higher.
The cabin is quiet in that expensive, controlled way that makes what just happened feel even more unreal. My bouquet is gone. My veil is torn. But I’m still in the wedding dress he ripped me out of the church in, the ivory silk spread around me like a mockery.
And beneath it, hidden by the careful cut of the bodice and the fall of the skirt, is the secret he still doesn’t know.
My stomach tightens.
But how long will I be able to keep this baby a secret?
I turn my head and glare at him. “Did you hear me?”
Lorenzo sits across from me, one hand loose on the armrest, the other still marked faintly with powder from the gun he brought into a church. He looks maddeningly calm for a man who just destroyed my wedding.
“Yes.”
