Page 20 of The Forbidden Husband

“I… I—”

“You’re terrified of me. I feel it in the way you tense your body around me. You closed your eyes when I kissed you. You don’t want this.”

“Do you?” I shot back.

He laughed. “Believe it or not, I’m not appalled at the thought of being intimate with a beautiful woman. It’s just sex.”

Something in my chest softened at his words. “We’re supposed to be consummating the marriage, so I thought…”

I allowed my words to trail off into a thick silence between us.

“You thought I’d force you to have sex with me?” His jaw ticked as if the words both disgusted and frustrated him. “You thought I was that much of a monster?”

“Yes.”

The lack of hesitation in my tone seemed to take him aback. He gazed down at me for a long moment without saying a word. How could he not know what I thought about him? Hewasa monster. Death and carnage followed him everywhere, and nobody could trust him because of it. He had done things that would make an ordinary person vomit.

The silence only thickened the longer we stood together, and I found myself speaking again.

“I didn’t have achoicebut to marry you. I didn’t want to marry a monster, but it was the hand I was dealt. I’m sure you didn’t have much choice in marrying me either.”

Everything about his expression became unreadable as he took another step back toward the bed. He dropped the towel, and my eyes immediately darted away from him.

Not before I saw proof that this interactionhadn’tbeen platonic for him.

He slid beneath the covers on one side of the bed and tucked an arm under the back of his head as he lay back on a pillow.

“Iama monster. But you are my wife. Your family treats their women with a lack of regard and respect, but we do things differently. You will never be safer with anyone else.”

Chapter Seven

Aria Bianchi

My thoughts returned to my wedding night in flashes as I tried and failed to sleep.

I had planned on betraying a monster before he had the chance to hurt me first, but…

You will never be safer with anyone else.

The words echoed like an incessant whisper, I thought they might drive me crazy. He only wanted to keep me safe; in return, I would betray him and his family for a man who trulywasthe monster.

The satin of the sheets soothed my skin as I slid into bed beside him, stiff and wondering if his words had been a ploy—some elaborate ruse to make me comfortable before striking when I least suspected it. But his breathing steadied, and a soft snore escaped from his lips as sleep captured him first.

I didn’t remember falling asleep beside him.

Ididremember waking alone in the oversized king bed, stretched out over the place he had once been.

Ididremember his driver asking about our eventful night and Enzo smiling wickedly as if we had done what was expected of us.

He had brought me to an oversized townhome in Morris Park, not the mansion I had expected from someone as wealthy as him, and as I took in the room surrounding me, it still surprised me. My father and his had mansions to flaunt their wealth, and it had always felt too large and grandiose for comfort.

Thishouse, though… it didn’t flaunt anything.

Why was Enzo so unexpected?

A part of me wanted him to be as cruel as everyone had warned me. It would make my job so much easier.

After a day of barricading myself in my room, intent on avoiding my husband who hadn’t even been home, I finally opened the door to my room and toed my way through the house, looking around at the décor that I hadn’t noticed the day before. The semi-open concept of the single-family home allowed me to see from my room into the living room, and the closest side of the kitchen was within sight.

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