Page 122 of Inside the Wicked

“We’ll figure something out, but if it really becomes a choice, I’ll choose you. I won’t resent you for it. I’ll resent my dad for letting me go because he couldn’t put my happiness and wants above his own for once.”

Rhett takes my hand, kissing my knuckles. Then he turns, hooking an arm around my back, and I smile as he leans in, climbing over me.

“Changed your mind?” I say, hooking my knees around his hips.

“No, little bird. Only because I’m desperate to get this night over with so we can come back triumphant, and then I’ll celebrate every piece of you for endless hours. Then we’ll sleep, with our monsters killed and the world ours to claim.”

My brow pulls together with emotion. I want it so badly it hurts. Our peace. My fingers trace down his chest, and my face relaxes in surprise. I run my index finger along the horizontal line like I have done countless times, except this time I follow it up then down before it tapers off a little. A single beat.

“You,” he says. “You’re the reason it beats, Ana.”

I’m so choked with love and gratitude that my mouth flounders with what to say.

“When?”

“We had a few hours to kill while waiting for your great escape, and there happened to be a late-night parlor across the street.”

“Rhett . . . I?—”

He kisses me, stopping a likely incoherent, blubbering mess of all my emotions.

“It’s you and me, baby.”

I nod, and as he pulls back he takes my hands, so I sit. I’m ready, with more determination than ever to see this through, and I glance at the box holding the white dress with spite and hidden victory. Jacob will get me in white, but I plan to leave in red.

Rhett pulls up on a street that confuses me with its dark abandonment. I glance back, then around, trying to find something that might look like a venue Jacob Forthson would buy. But even if there was one here, I doubt his patrons would show up given the roughness of the rest of the block.

“There’s no way I’m getting out of the car if we’re here,” I say.

When I look at Rhett, I don’t expect his slow grin of amusement as he cuts the engine and gets out before I can protest.

“This is a small stop. We’re early,” he says when he opens my door.

I slip my hand into his awaiting palm apprehensively. “A drug deal? A hit? I don’t think Jacob will appreciate me ruining his pristine image of me.”

“None of those. And I truly don’t care. Ruin the dress if you want. I’d actually like to see his abhorrence.”

I realize I’m a complete mindless fool for this man as I’m allowing him to lead me without question or even fear up a set of steps toward a clearly long-abandoned chapel. There’s graffiti on the outside, some messages making me particularly uneasy, such as “Hail Satan”in blood red.

We slip inside the pried-open door, and it’s cold, dark, and ominous as fuck.

Until we get past the small entryway and moonlight floods in through the stained-glass windows, some of them shattered. The space is hauntingly beautiful, though it’s not what slows my steps.

“About time!” Rix says from a bench near the front. “I’m beginning to feel a possession taking hold in this creepy-ass venue. You couldn’t have picked somewhere better?”

Adam is beside him, and he casts me a smile over his shoulder, but I’m shocked, trying to figure out what’s going on. They’re dressed in tuxes for Jacob’s event too. There are a few others I recognize from the Den, far more casual.

I’m confused even more when a cloud of smoke catches my attention.

Silas leans with an arm hooked over the back of his bench at the back. Some of his men linger around him.

“What is going on?” I ask.

Then a weight slams into me, and maybe it’s the fact I’m dressed entirely in white and that this is a chapel, even though neither of us is religious ...

No, he wouldn’t?—

“When I marry you, it most certainly will not be in some drug-den chapel,” Rhett says, maybe feeling me turn utterly stiff with a reluctance to go down the aisle any further.

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