Page 139 of Poison Vows

Emmett stares down at Vaughn, and growls, “Put your fucking hands on her and see what sickening myth I create out of you tonight.”

A shudder goes through my body from the sinister feel of Emmett’s words.

Vaughn’s face blanches.

“Don’t do this,” he grits out, still frowning in pain. “She chose me.”

I see Emmett tilt his head slightly, with me now standing slightly behind him.

“That’s a foolish thing to say with your whole chest, cousin,” Emmett says with a deadly smile on his gorgeous face. “Who am I?”

The question sounds out of place, pompous, and ridiculous, but it has the opposite effect around the garden.

Even Vaughn’s face pales as he looks up at Emmett.

“Come on, cousin, tell them,” Emmett taunts mockingly, provoking Vaughn and his father further. “Who am I?”

Vaughn looks at Emmett with a murderous expression on his face, but when Emmett looks back at him, he visibly shudders and croaks, “You are the grand heir of this Family.”

The moment Vaughn says those words, a heavy, undeniable sense of absolute defeat starts emanating from him.

It doesn’t take rocket science to figure out what just happened.

The obvious ridicule, embarrassment, and humiliation Emmett just dished out to his cousin is so irrefutable that everyone feels it.

“So you do know!” Emmett says sarcastically, then he drops down to eye level with Vaughn and says something that scaresthe shit out of me. “Now, if you have the ability to mutiny against me claiming what’s mine,show me.”

Vaughn’s glare is withering and resentful, but Emmett only smirks.

“Now, let the official wedding start,” he announces.

“What?”

Emmett looks down at me, a tight smile on his handsome face. “You’re marrying me, baby.”

If someone doused me with gasoline and set me ablaze right this instant, I wouldn’t be as shocked as I am at Emmett’s declaration of steel.

“W-what?” I croak.

“I’m marrying you,” he states clearly for all to hear. “Because you, Ivy Marie Easton, are poison, and I’ll be damned if I ever let anyone else have you. It’ll only be me for you.”

And just like that, his word becomes law.

CHAPTER 21

Emmett

I’ve hadmoments when the thing in my chest has stopped working for longer than is acceptable, so much so thattechnically, I was dead.

And each time it happened, Angel was not far from the cause.

When I was fifteen, after a brutally extreme football game we played in frigid snow, the blotched thing seized up in my chest for an entire minute and forty-eight seconds.

In that moment, I tasted death acutely.

I could make her elusive, flimsy silhouette out more accurately than the other hundred times before.

I could see her swinging her scythe to harvest my life as I lay on a snowy field, my vision tunneling, my body going numb, my lungs torturously squeezing to try and keep me breathing.

---