Page 13 of Bound to a Monster

Istare at the wedding dress hanging on the back of my closet door.

“What do you think?” Luca asks. He’s lounging on my bed and grinning at me.

Daniel’s in the door, arms crossed. “Dad almost didn’t want you to have it.”

“Dad’s a fucking prick,” Luca says, yawning. “We’ll have to get it altered and shit, but?—”

I step forward and run my hand down the fabric. It’s not my style—too conservative, too old-fashioned—but Iloveit so much.

I remember seeing this dress as a little girl. It’s one of my earliest memories and one of the very few with Mom before she got sick. I squealed as she unzipped the garment bag and held it up for me in the light. I thought the rhinestones were the most beautiful gems I’d ever seen in my life.Maybe you can have it one day, little girlie,she said, laughing as I tried to crawl under the skirt.

I was seven years old. She was dead by the time I turned nine.

And now here it is. The same dress. It’s smaller than I remembered, dirtier, more wrinkled, cheaper.

“It’s perfect,” I whisper, pulling it close.

The boys go quiet. My brothers remember Mom better than I do, and maybe that’s harder for them, but it always makes me jealous. Luca is four years older and Daniel is six, which means they both got way more time with her than I did.

We’re all scarred by her passing in our own way. The family was never the same after she was gone—especially not our father.

She was the love of his life, and her death broke him.

Now Bruno Marino is a cold, bitter prick.

The kind of asshole that nearly didn’t give his only daughter her mother’s wedding dress and refuses to tell her the name of the man she’s supposed to marry.

“I know this is hard, but you’re doing the right thing,” Daniel says from the doorway. He gives me a single, approving nod, which is the best I’ll get from him.

“Yeah, seriously, this is all sorts of fucked, but it’s how it goes in our world, right?” Luca stretches and grins at me. “Should I throw you a bachelorette party?”

“Pretty sure you don’t do that for your own sister,” I tell him.

“Good point. It’d be too much fun for you anyway.”

Daniel rolls his eyes and walks away.

I lift the dress off the door and hold it against me. “Can you tell me something about my husband? I mean, what do you know?”

“Not much, honestly. I’m not supposed to say anything. Dad doesn’t want to give you any reason to have cold feet.”

“I know, but I’m marrying him in a few days. We’re meeting in a few hours. It’s kind of too late to back out, right?”

Luca sighs loudly and glances at his phone. “Just don’t tell Dad I talked about it, all right? I don’t feel like listening to him bitch and whine about it.”

My heartrate spikes. I try to act like this is no big deal, but I’ve been needling my brothers for any scrap of information about my arranged husband since the day my father told me it was happening. This is the first time either of them even admitted to knowing who he is.

“Just tell me anything.”

“He’s a Russian guy. Apparently, people like him. He’s not a Zeitsev, but he’s one of the important, up-and-coming families.”

“Name, Luca. Tell me hisname.”

His grin says he knows and he’s having fun fucking with me now, which is typical of him. My middle brother can be a vicious bastard sometimes. “He’s got a nice house in the city and helps run their jewelry business. Apparently, he’s got a good mind for it too. I hear he’s popular with the ladies, but the fucker better keep his dick in his pants and better not embarrass my little sister.”

“Luca,” I say sharply. “What’s his freakingname?”

“Federov,” he says.

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