Page 101 of Ink Deep Devotion

What the fuck is Mila wearing? This isn’t something from her closet—nope. This is purely that bitch’s doing. A skin-tightblack dress hugs the curves that I know intimately. Even though it stops just above her knees, it’s too revealing. The back of the dress has a long golden zipper, unzipped down to the dimples just above her ass. Pull me down, undress me! The zipper begs someone.

What is Mila wearing underneath the dress? She loves lace…And she’s probably not wearing a bra, given the bare back.

I want to be the lens of the camera, capturing her, zooming in on every little detail to taste it.

I open my tracking app, reinstalled on Mila’s phone. She’s at her dorm. I confirm it with her guard. That means the picture isn’t recent, and whoever sent it wants me to know they’ve been watching her without my knowledge.

The sender’s number is unknown, and then a text message follows.

Unknown: It looks like you might lose your bride…

I glare at Titan and Damian. Is this their idea of a joke, making my worst fear visual?

No, they’d never go that far.

This is real. Someone is targeting my little fox to get back at me.

I forward the message to Titan and Damian, who immediately look at my dad. Is it his doing? Titan and Damian are wondering the same thing.

I don’t know how much longer I can stand my father or our uncles meddling in our lives.

I fought with the Brotherhood during our meeting in Switzerland. I begged for the date to be moved up, to marry Mila so I could push Greg out of the picture. But everyone agreed we aren’t ready for the world to change yet. Dante still doesn’t have the guts to lock his vicious mother away, stripping her of her power over the family. And Cillian’s uncle still has an army to big to go up against.

It’s taking too damn long for them to get their ducks in a row.

I said fuck the row, let’s just shoot. Only Anders agreed.

I’ll be patient for a bit longer.

???

“Will you stop looking at the picture?” Titan snaps.

Just to piss him off, I let my eyes linger on the text message for a few more seconds. It’s a picture of Mila smiling widely. God, she looks gorgeous. She never smiles at me like that.

That’s a lie; she used to before everything changed. Now her eyes look at me with a pleading hope that I’ll bend a knee and sing my love to her.

Some songs are better left unplayed.

That’s the problem with the past; you can’t change it. Life is a one-way ride down a long, winding, bumpy road. There are no U-turns.

My younger self thought what I did to Mila was for the best. My older self realizes my mistakes. I know it’s wrong to snap at her and burn her with my hate. In reality, the hate is not for her but for myself because I failed her in many ways.

Whoever she was smiling at in the photo was lucky, but also a dead man.

I had received yet another text from the unknown number with another taunting message.

Unknown: What would make you suffer more? Seeing her with me on our wedding night or never seeing her again after I marry her? Oh, the decisions…

“Tom’s working on tracking it,” Damian says as he snatches my phone from my hands.

“He’s not fast enough. I’m going to put another guard on her. I don’t give a fuck what her dad wants. He agreed to our contract, and she is mine to deal with and mine to protect.”

Titan nods, as does Damian. We are so much alike that most of the time, we don’t even need to speak to know what the other is thinking.

“Fine, put another guard on her. Just calm down; you are worse than a woman waiting in line for a sale.” Damian grunts. He places my phone in his pocket and pulls out his favorite pocket knife, his calming mechanism.

Have you waited in line with a woman recently? I think you have, brother, and I think you're short with me because you’re juggling knives, and eventually, your hand is going to slip. You can't keep Plain Jane hidden from the world for much longer.

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