Page 46 of His Bride

“Daddy, you’re hurting me.” I try to break free, but his fingers only bite deeper into my bones, his eyes gleaming with a manic light.

“Maybe if you had done your duty as a wife, fucked your husband better, we wouldn’t be sitting ducks, and your brother would be safe!” With a violent jerk, he lets go of me, and I stumble backward, crashing into a chair. I almost fall but manage to grip the armrest just in time.

He plops down in his chair. “What use do I have for a daughter if you can’t even please a piece of shit like Caelian Del Rossa?”

And for the first time, I think I see him.

Truly see him.

A seething, frothing-at-the-mouth rabid dog, all semblance of composure lost.

He’s not the regal. He’s not a powerful patriarch, the man I looked up to and always thought could do no wrong.

Rather, he’s a pathetic drunk. A pitiable man wallowing in his own failures and blaming everyone but himself.

Tears well up in my eyes, blurring my vision, but they're not tears of sadness. They’re teardrops of fury and helpless contempt. The man before me is not my father; he's a stranger with my father's face. He’s a hollow shell filled with acidic bile of resentments and failures.

With anger rising by the second, I cross the room and place my palms on his desk, leaning forward, wanting to look him closely in the eye.

“You know what you are?” I say with a venomous calm. “You are an old, weak man. A man so desperate to cling to power he never even had by running roughshod and making questionable deals. Selling his only daughter to the devil himself, a man whose family we both know murdered my mother.”

“Shut your goddamn mouth.”

“And now,” I press forward, “the daughter you have no use for, the one who can’t please her husband, she needs to do what you can’t. Do what you don’t have the goddamn spine to do. Protect this family.”

“Don’t you dare speak to me?—”

“I will speak to you in any manner I deem fit,” I cut him off, a cold flame ignited within me. “You lost the right to demand respect from me the moment you traded my freedom to make my own choices for your vanity. I see that now.” I straighten.“It’s too late for me. You already ruined my life, but I will not let you do the same to Cristiano.”

He doesn’t say a word. He just sits there, silently seething, his knuckles white as he grips the arms of his chair so tightly, his veins bulge out. And his eyes, they’re practically deadly.

But I match him, stare for stare, challenge for challenge. His silence is pregnant with unspoken words and barely veiled threats, but I no longer care.

All I care about is doing the right thing, something my father doesn’t know how to do. Sacrificing my happiness for someone I love.

“Call Aurelio,” I say, not taking my eyes off my dad. “Tell him your daughter is ready to keepyourend of the deal.”

His lips thin to a grim line, his eyes narrowing so minutely, and then he nods once.

“But he has to meet my demands,” I continue.

“Which are?”

“Tell him Cristiano is off-limits to him. He will not even sneeze in my brother’s direction. And he’s to keep his distance from us until Caelian and I are divorced. I won’t be the new hot gossip as the local adulterer. I won’t do that to Caelian or his family. They stepped in to save your ass. Now your ass is hanging in the wind. So I’ll save it as long as you do that. And one more thing.”

He just looks at me.

I narrow my eyes. “If you ever lay a hand on me again, I will use every ounce of power at my disposal as the new Mrs. Aurelio Le Fonti…to destroy you.”

Chapter 12

CAELIAN

“Dude, I’m fine, and no, I don’t want to talk about it,” I mutter to Nicoli as we smoke in the garden.

He nods, raising a brow. “Oh, yeah. You look and sound fine.” Then he straightens and stubs out his cigarette. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m off to get on a plane for a romantic second, pre-baby honeymoon with my wife. Do you think that’ll catch on?”

I drag smoke in and then, blowing it out, take a swallow of my bourbon, a nice vanilla and almost maple barrel-aged thing. Expensive as shit, but as far from scotch as I can get.

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