Enthralled

by Darling, Giana

“When will you stop seeing the world in black and white. Your mother tried to teach you better,” Salvatore tried again.

  “Say my mother’s name one more time and I’ll put a bullet through your skull,” Alexander said calmly, leveling the gun. “Now, let Cosima go.”

  I could feel the starch leech out of Salvatore’s grip as he held me. Dante and I had both told him Alexander wouldn’t be reasoned with unless there was cold hard proof, but Salvatore wanted to give it a chance before the next part of our plan went into action.

  I made hard eye contacted with Alexander and hoped that his strange ability to read my thoughts hadn’t been transected by our time apart. Then, I tapped lightly on Salvatore’s toe before I let out a battle cry and twisted in his arms. I used my momentum to spun us so that my back was to the door and my father’s back was to Alexander and then… bang!

  I watched as Salvatore’s eyes widened in pained surprised as he was shot in the back. My throat worked hard to swallow back a sob as I pushed me off me onto the ground where he rolled over onto his stomach and lay still.

  Alexander ran toward me, my bag in one arm and the smoking gun in the other. He wrapped an arm around me and leveraged my out the door.

  “I think you killed him,” I whispered thickly.

  He barely spared a glance over his shoulder at the prone man before racing us both down the hall. A door to another hotel room opened down the hall as we pushed through the emergency exit and flew down the stairs.

  There was a car waiting at the curb, Riddick in the driver’s seat.

  My eyes burned with unshed tears as Alexander throw me into the back and then slid in beside me, barking orders to Riddick that I didn’t listen to.

  I stared out the window as we screeched away from the hotel in the Testaccio district of Rome and headed toward the airport.

  There was very little chance that Salvatore was seriously injured. The bullet had gone into his Kevlar coated back and probably only leave a bruise, but it surprised me how rattled I was by my own plan.

  I’d needed Alexander to have closure even though I didn’t believe Salvatore and Dante had killed Chiara. In fact, it was obvious that they loved her dearly and believed Noel had somehow been the one to kill her after she’d threaten to reveal his secrets.

  Some of those being that he’d kill his previous slaves.

  I didn’t know how much of that to believe given that I’d seen Yana, one of Noel’s slaves, at Club Dionysus a few weeks ago and he had been mostly kind to me during my stay at Pearl Hall.

  All I knew for sure was that this blood feud was going to get them all killed in the end and I didn’t want that.

  No, I couldn’t stand that.

  Not for Dante who I’d come to understand in my short weeks in Italy, was opposite to his brother not just in looks but also temperament. He was more Latin, passionate, moody and quick to temper, with a humour that could be cutting as the edge of a sword or hilarious enough to bring tears.

  Not for Salvatore, who I remained unhappy with despite his explanations. He was a father. I didn’t care if Mama ever took him back, he should have tried harder to make a positive difference in our lives. Despite my misgivings, my old hunger to have any kind of father figure stirred in my depths and I found myself spending most of my three week stay at his house helping him tend to his pet project of growing olives and listening to him speak of his plans to send Dante to America to take over the Camorra outfit there.

  I think it was more so that Dante could watch over Mama and Elena, but I didn’t press. Dante went by the last name of Salvatore in Naples, and it was obvious the two were bounded like father and son.

  Mostly though, I didn’t want that kind of death or criminal end for Alexander. As much as I sat in the field of poppies on Salvatore’s property and thought of the course my life had taken, I couldn’t convince myself not to love the civilized man or the beast that lurked beneath his skin.

  I wanted him to be free of his obligatory vendetta, free to fight his battles against the Order and his father so that he could live the kind of life he truly wanted.

  And so, I cooked up my plan to stage Salvatore’s death so that Alexander could move on from Chiara’s murder. It gave Salvatore and Dante the space they needed from police scrutiny to transfer for their resources and lives to America, while also allowing them to continue to look into Noel without his being aware they were still in action against him.

  It was a perfect solution to that one problem.

  Only the issue remained, what I was I going to do now? It felt impossible that I should go back to slavery, lonely but for the moments of the day Alexander carved out to use my body like a vessel for his pleasure.

  I craved more than his rare moments of affection and the title of slave.

  I wanted to be allowed to love him.

  “Are you okay?” Alexander asked, finally turning to me, his hands on my body searching for injuries.

  I blinked a him. “Physically, yes, but I think you just killed my father, Xan.”

  His eyes flicked with a strange light. “And if I did? Are you going to judge me for finally avenging the death of my mother? I’ve been trying to bring that man down for years by legal means but he was slipperier than an eel.”

  “Are you so sure he did kill her? I spent time with him while I was home and he seemed convinced of his own innocence,” I ventured. “I don’t think he was a good man, but then again, neither are you.”

  “I’ve never killed an innocent woman, nor would I.”

  “No,” I whispered. “Bought you bought one to use against her own father.”

  “I hadn’t thought to kill him, only bring him to justice in whichever way I could. He destroyed my family.”

  “So, your plan worked,” I said with a tired, cynical smile that felt wrong on my face. “I was just the right bait to lure him out of hiding.”

  The last vestiges of triumph and adrenaline faded from his face and a battle-weary man sat beside me, fatigued by his demons and unsure of his own morality.

  “I know it may be hard to believe after what happened, but I stopped caring about that a long time ago.” He looked at his hands as if seeing blood there and muttered mostly to himself. “I thought I would feel better once it was done.”

  “Yet, you sent me to Italy.”

  He sighed, a sad sound like a toy deflating. “I didn’t know how to deal with what I was feeling.”

  “What a classic male excuse,” I said, even though I knew nothing of classic male anything.

  My experience was limited solely to Alexander and I doubted there was anything typical about his behaviour.

  I just wanted to push him over the edge of his own expectations into a new place where he could shine a better light on his life and choices. It had taken me three weeks with Dante and Salvatore to understand that live was rarely as cut and dry as we tried to force it to be.

  Alexander lifted his knee on to the seat between us so that he could better face me and sink a hand into my hair. He tilted my chin back just enough to make the angle awkward and my scalp sing with pain.

  The small act of domination centered me as it centered him.

  “No matter what happens, I’m never letting you go again. Do you understand me, bella?” he asked, his conviction hitting me like the strike of a gavel. “I want you, no, I need you to be mine in every single way you will have me.”

  I placed my hand over his wrist just to feel the strength of his pulse and use it as a metronome to set my own. “You have me already. You own me in body, spirit and currency. I don’t have anything left to give you.”

  “But you do,” he insisted, his hand tightening until I whimpered and my mouth bloomed open. He leaned close, licking at my upper lip then biting softly into the pillowy bottom. “You can give me your name so I can replace it with my own.”

  I blinked at him, trying not to lose focus as he dragged his nose down my throat and bit into the junction of my shoulder like an animal marking his m
ate.

  “Xan, what are you talking about?”

  “I want there to be no doubt in anyone’s mind—not for the Order, Edward or even Noel—that we are bound together and I will not allow us to be pried apart over anything. They can come for us if they want to, but when they do we will be cemented together in the eyes of law as man and fucking wife.”

  I’d never imagined the day of my wedding. My sisters talked about it sometimes late in the night when we should have been sleeping instead of whispering of veils and tulle gowns, but I’d only ever listened, happy to imagine their settings and my place at their sides.

  I had no dreams of my own, and a wedding felt like it should be a dream.

  I felt as if I was living one as I woke up on my nineteenth birthday and prepared for my life to change again just as dramatically as it had the year before.

  Mrs. White was already pulling the red velvet drapes open and directing the other maids to lay out my breakfast, air out the gown, arrange the make-up just so on the vanity for when the hair and face girls can to do up to the nines.

  I didn’t want to get out of bed.

  My stomach knotted, bound in Shibari knots as complicated as my feelings about my wedding day.

  In one sense, a great one, I was more excited than I’d ever been. The secret wish I’d germinated in the fertile earth at the center of my soul was about to bear fruit.

  I was going to transform from like Cinderella from slave girl to aristocratic in only a number of hours. Pearl Hall would be my permanent home and Alexander my forever Master.

  It should have been pure euphoria coursing through my veins, but it was tainted with the lead poison of dread.

  Alexander hadn’t made any declarations of love or any further steps to ingratiate me into his life. He still kept his separate bedroom and only joined me when it suited him. He was still demonstrative after sex and careful with me whenever something reminded either of us of the baby, but otherwise, he remained oddly detached.

  I worried he wasn’t marrying me for the right reasons. That he wanted a war with the Order and I reason to fight with Noel and I was the kindling and the flint.

  Just another tool for him to use.

  I was quiet after my shower as the group of servants fluttered around me, doing my hair, make-up and nails while they tittered about the guests and the food and, of course, the handsome bridegroom.

  “You’re so lucky,” the girl painting my lips a deep red told me. “He’s the loveliest bloke I’ve ever laid eyes on.”

  “Not everything pretty is good,” I told her somberly.

  When she only blinked at me, I smiled to soften the blow and she took my words to be a joke, laughing girlishly with her friends at my wit.

  “You look beautiful, love,” Mrs. White said, sniffing into a lace handkerchief as she stared at my finished complexion in the mirror.

  I did.

  In fact, I don’t think I’d ever looked lovelier than I did for my wedding.

  My hair was curled in big, loose waves spilling to my waist, only one lock pulled back over my left ear and pinned with one of the poppies from my field. The dress had been chosen for me by Alexander, just as my entire wardrobe at Pearl Hall had been, and as with the rest of his choses, it suited me perfectly. It was Grecian style, clasped over the shoulders with golden closures shaped like thorns with a deep dip in the front and back that exposed huge swathes of my summer kissed skin and the indecent swell of my breasts. It was the perfect dress to complement my thorny pearl and ruby collar, which glistened as regally as a crown at my throat.

  I looked like a princess ready to walk down the aisle to her prince.

  Tears surged to the service for what felt like the hundredth time already that day as I thought of the lie in that illusion.

  I was no princess and Xan, for all his titles and money, was no prince.

  We were just to thoroughly fucked up people who had found a little solace in each other.

  And I was the idiot who had gone above and beyond that to fall in love with him.

  “Jesus, marra,” Douglas said, showing up in the doorway to my room with both hands clasped over his mouth. “Would you just look at your pretty face?”

  I couldn’t help but laugh at him as he came forward to brush a kiss against my cheek.

  “I just had to sneak a peek atcha before the ceremony so I dashed up from the kitchen. They’re probably making a right mess of things, but this was worth.”

  “Thank you, Douglas,” I said, taking his hand in a squeeze before I could let him leave.

  I wished desperately that any one of my siblings or Mama was there, but Douglas was the next best thing and I wanted him to know that. Stupidly, tears filled my eyes as I looked at his chocolate brown gaze, and I couldn’t properly voice the sentiments.

  “I know, ducky,” he told me softly, patting my hand. “I know. Listen, I’ll be out to watch the ceremony before I chain myself to the kitchen for the feast. I’ll be the one cheering inappropriately at the back.”

  I nodded, still overcome by tears and then beamed when he ducked down to press a quick kiss to my cheek again before taking off.

  “Are you ready, honey?” Mrs. White asked, checking the clock on the vanity. “It’s time to go down to the chapel.”

  Each step I took toward the little chapel attached to the house tripped my heartbeat into a higher cadence.

  What if he stood me up?

  What if Sherwood came and put a stop to the proceedings?

  What if I was making the best biggest mistake of my life?

  But more, what if I wasn’t?

  What if every hard decision and bad moment in my life had led me to exactly this moment where I was supposed to be? What if Alexander was my reward for a short life hard lived?

  What if this was my happily ever after?

  I swallowed thickly as we reached the closed arched doors to the chapel and Mrs. White helped me throw the delicate veil over my head before giving me a delicate hug and then dashing into the room so she could watch the ceremony.

  My hands fidgeted with my bouquet of poppies as I looked at the ceiling and tried to calm my racing breath.

  “Are you sure about this?”

  I froze and then slowly turned to face Dante, who was leaning languorously against a pillar behind me. There was a cigarette wedged into the corner of his mouth and it curled the sweet scent of Italian tobacco into the air.

  “God, don’t cry,” he demanded when he saw the tears rush to my eyes.

  “I’m so happy you’re hear,” I told him, because I was emotional and it was true.

  Somehow, Dante had mired himself in my story as an improbably villain and a surprising white knight.

  “Cosi, are you sure you want to marry him? You have options. Salvatore has a car waiting by the gates and we can spirit you away to America with Alexander none the wiser.” Dante moved forward to run his fingers gently over my cheek through the veil. “It would be a shame to waste this once-in-a-lifetime beauty on someone who didn’t deserve it.”

  Tears trembled in the overfull trough of my lower lids, but I valiantly fought to keep them from spilling over.

  “I love him,” I whispered brokenly even though the feel of it in my hair felt like glue, holding the dangerous and ill-fitted parts of my life and personality together in careful unity. “Dio mio, Dante, I love him.”

  He sighed and placed his heavy hands on my shoulders. “I can’t say I’m surprised. You’ve been through a lot and in some ways, he’s pulled through for you. I even think, in his own fucked up way, he loves you too.”

  “Maybe,” I said, as if I wasn’t hoping for the same thing with every breath in my body.

  “I’ll stick around until the end, just in case you need me,” he promised before he leaned down to press a kiss to my check.

  I wanted to believe I wanted need him, but my bad luck ran so deep I felt as if I was a black cat.

  He stepped away from the door, the sound of his sh
oes fading as he moved down the hall.

  A moment later the swell of the wedding march sounded over the chapel’s ancient organ and the doors flew open to admit me.

  There were pews filled with people. Villagers from the town down the hill, people from Alexander’s company who had travelled in from London, distant relatives and a few hand-picked men from the Order. I recognized no one, but then again, I wasn’t looking at the pews.

  My eyes were locked on Alexander where he stood before the alter in a dark grey metallic suit that perfectly matched the shade of his irises. His hair was pushed back, his strong jaw clean shaved and he had never looked so handsome, so like a king.

  It was none of that which held me arrested though.

  I couldn’t look away from the expression on his face as he watched me appeared and then walk down the aisle toward him.

  He looked like a dying man who had been sent an angel as a messenger from God to tell him of his future salvation.

  That was how he looked at me as I moved steps closer to becoming his wife, as if I was his every prayer for goodness and hope for happiness on this earth.

  As if I was everything good and pure he had ever laid eyes on.

  When I reached the front by his side, he immediately took my bouquet from me and handed it off to Riddick who stood beside him, so that he could take both my hands in his.

  “I’ve never seen anyone so beautiful as you,” he whispered to me before the priest could even begin, and when he spoke his voice was rough with excess emotion like a white capped sea. “I’ve never felt so unworthy of a gift, but I promise to cherish you every day.”

  “May I begin?” the priest asked with dry British humour that had the whole room laughing.

  Alexander tipped his chin imperviously and said, “You may.”

  And the whole ceremony, he didn’t take his eyes off me, not even when he was told to the kiss the bride and his lips closed over mine in a seal that felt more unbreakable than any legal paper or binding words could ever be.

  The afterparty was in full swing and I was finally enjoying myself. The champagne Alexander kept handing me made my blood feel as light as my heart as I tripped down the hall to the bathroom on the main floor. I was tipsy from wine, drunk on Alexander’s salacious kisses and more hopeful than I had ever dared to be before.