Page 126 of Devious Kingpin
My phone buzzed at that moment and I reached for it. My brows furrowed. It was a text from Wynter.
*I’m coming to Chicago later this morning. Lunch?*
I groaned. She’d try to play peacemaker. I didn’t want that right now.
Hoping she’d go into labor any minute, then realizing it likely wouldn’t happen since she was months away from her due date, I typed a reluctant reply. *Sure.*
She was sure to see my eagerness through this text.
Putting my phone away, I met my husband’s eyes and glared at him. “You, your brother, and your cousins are like a bunch of old gossiping women.”
I must have caught him by surprise because he was speechless for a moment.
Then he got his wits together and replied, “I didn’t tell them. I was on the phone with them and they heard your tone. Knowing you, they assumed you had gone ballistic.”
“I don’t go ballistic. You DiLustros do.” Narrowing my eyes on him, I curled my lip. “You know what the worst part is?” I didn’t let him answer, instead I continued, “The signs were there all along. I know I can handle my alcohol. Yet, I let you convince me I was so drunk that I blacked out.”
In all my years, my friends and I drank some hardcore stuff. I had never blacked out. Fucking ever! I should have known something was off when I couldn’t remember a single damn thing from the night that Dante and I had our drive-through wedding.
Our gazes clashed, accusations in mine loud and clear.
“Were you even drunk?” I blurted out. “Or did you drug me, then drag me to the drive-through chapel?”
He didn’t miss a beat. “I wasn’t as hammered as you, but yes, I was drunk.”
“Where was everyone?” I asked icily. “Somebody should have stopped you.” My question and unspoken accusation hung in the air. Silence stretched until it suffocated. “Unless they were in on it all along?”
I had my suspicions.
“Your family left well before the two of us started dancing,” he explained. “Then you and I started drinking and dancing.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.” My anger simmered beneath my skin. Even the buzzing in my ears increased a notch.
Dante’s eyes shone with something dark and unapologetic. “I'd be lying if I said I regret our marriage, Juliette.”
I shook my head in disbelief. “Do you not see how wrong that is?” I gritted. “What you’ve done.”
A hard smile cut across his beautiful face, but his eyes burned into mine. Relentless. Demanding.
“The only thing I’m sorry about is that I hurt you,” he admitted, his voice cracking. “I didn’t know about what happened to you. If I had, I wouldn’t have taken that approach.”
“But you’d have still done something,” I accused.
I stood my ground, but the electricity buzzed through the air and in my veins. It didn’t matter. I couldn’t forgive. Iwouldn’tforgive. And I certainly wouldn’t forget.
A forbidding silence licked at my skin. It was so loud that it hurt my ears with words and feelings that were left unsaid.
He reached into his pocket and pulled something out, opening his palm. My eyes widened. The hot-pink scrunchie I owned once upon a time lay in his hand, staring back at me. He kept it. All these years and he kept it.
“This is my last resort, then,” he murmured softly, tension suffocating the space between us. Somehow it didn’t shock me that he remembered. He must have known all along. Although, it surprised me that he kept my hot-pink scrunchie. A whole decade and he still had it. “I’m here to collect the debt.” I held my breath as I waited for him to drop the bomb. “Be my wife.”
I couldn’t keep a strangled gasp from escaping. “No,” I whispered. “No, no, no.”
He lied to me. He drugged me. How could I ever move past it?
“What are you afraid of, Juliette?” he rasped, fatigue lingering behind his eyes. “That you might like me? You’d rather throw away our chance at happiness than leave your stubbornness behind.”
An invisible thread snapped. “I did like you.” I heard the too-loud pitch in my tone and cringed. “I was fully prepared to deal with the consequences of our wild night.” My hands make air quotations around “wild.” “I let you in and it was all a lie.”
