Page 107 of Hate Mates

I clear my throat and grab my car keys from the side table, needing to get the fuck out of here.

“We’re going to have to stop seeing each other. At least for a while until all eyes are off the newly-wed couple.”

She flings her legs off the bed and stands, her big, round tits bouncing, her nipples pointed and hard. “That’s your way of saying no, isn’t it?”

Yes, it is. But I don’t tell her that. Instead, I keep quiet.

She chuckles darkly. “You fucking coward.”

“Don’t turn this into something it’s not,” I warn. “We were just having fun; you know that. But now that fun’s over.”

“Fuck you!” she snaps. “Fuck you, V. Fucking pussy. Daddy says jump, and you ask how high.”

“Goodbye, Emilia.”

I turn and walk out, slamming the door behind me, then hear a glass shatter against the wood. But I shake it off as I movedown the stairs, taking two at a time, because in less than an hour, I’ll be standing at the altar, waiting for the woman I’m forced to marry.

Ottavia Savelli.

TWO

Ottavia

“Ido.”

The words fall from my lips like a death sentence. Not because I fear them, but because I know Vincenzo hates them. I see it in the set of his jaw, the barely restrained loathing in his blue eyes as he slips the ring on my finger.

He hates me.

He hates that he’s bound to me, just as I’m bound to him. From the very first discussion of an arranged marriage between our two families, Vincenzo has made it crystal clear that he’d sooner walk into a nest of vipers than marry me. But family duty reigned supreme.

So here we are, trapped in a gilded cage of expectation and obligation.

I stand beside him, wearing the dress chosen for me, in the role I was born to play. I was raised for this—trained to smile, to carry my family’s name with grace, to be the perfect, obedient wife.

But the weight of his disdain is unbearable, because…

I love him.

I’ve loved Vincenzo Del Rossa since we were children—since I was young enough to believe in fairy tales, before I understood the sharp, cutting edges of the world we were raised in.

I know who he is. I know the reputation he carries, the sins he bathes in. I know about the women who worship him at Club Myth—the empire he helped built to satisfy his insatiable hunger. My brothers frequent the sex club, and I hear the stories they tell when they think I’m not listening.

Stories of women. Sex. Stories steeped in lust and indulgence.

And yet, here I stand, his wife—a woman who vowed before God to be faithful to a man I know will not show me the same courtesy.

Why? Because my duty to my family comes above all else, and now, my duty is him. Vincenzo Del Rossa.

The day unfolds flawlessly—smiles exchanged, hands clasped, bodies swaying in perfect harmony beneath the golden glow of the chandeliers. We go through the motions like seasoned performers. To the world, we are a picture of love, but beneath the surface, we are nothing more than prisoners—pawns in a game of power.

The drive to our new home is suffocating, the silence between us thick with unspoken words. I steal glances at him, at the sharp angles of his face, the set of his jaw. He doesn’t look at me, doesn’t acknowledge my presence beyond the necessary motions of this arrangement.

It shouldn’t hurt, but it does.

I know what I am to him—a duty, an obligation, a burden he never wanted. And yet, I feel the heat of attraction curling in my stomach every time his hand brushes too close, every time his voice drops into that low, commanding timbre. I am bound to a man who despises me, and my body is betraying me in ways I can’t control.

I’ve never quite understood why my heart feels the way it does whenever he’s close. Vincenzo’s never given me any reason to love him.

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