Page 26 of Bloody Vows
When I return to the ballroom, I find Simone exactly where I left her, sipping a glass of champagne at the sweetheart table and looking idly around the room, clearly in no mood to dance or make merry. I walk over to her, touching her shoulder. “Ready to leave?”
I see no point in dragging this out further. The conversation with my father has left me in a worse mood, and Simone’s isn’t improving. We might as well move on to the next portion of the night.
She goes rigid at the contact but doesn't pull away. "As ready as I'll ever be."
The drive to the estate is silent, both of us lost in our own thoughts. Simone stares out the window at the dark water in the distance, while I try to reconcile my father's harsh advice with my own feelings about the night.
She's my wife now. In a few hours, she'll be my wife in every sense of the word. The thought should excite me—and part of it does. But there's something else there too, something that feels uncomfortably like guilt, now.
I didn’t like feeling as if I were being forced into something. That’s what I’ve been doing to Simone all this time… and getting off on it. Wanting to possess her, to own her, to make her mine.
Because she’s my wife. Because that’s how things are.My jaw tightens, and I shove the feeling down. I try not to think of Simone's face during the ceremony. The resignation in her eyes, the way she held herself like she was bracing for a blow.
I married her to gain control of her father's empire. She married me to stay alive. Those are the facts, cold and unromantic as they are.
And I don’t want tonight to be cold. I want her hate or I want her arousal, but either way, I want heat between us. But Simone is stiff and frigid as we pull through the gates of the estate, her shoulders straightening as if she’s armoring herself for what comes next.
The estate is dark except for the lights our security team has left on, and the silence feels heavy as we walk up the steps to the front door. Simone hasn't said a word since we left the hotel, but I can feel the tension radiating from her in waves. I let out a sigh and turn to her, my gaze sweeping over her as we stand there on the steps.
She looks beautiful in the moonlight, glowing in white lace. Arousal stirs in me, despite everything, the allure of being able to touch her now as I please, heating my blood, even if hers remains ice-cold.
I give her a smile, opening the door. “Welcome home, Mrs. O’Malley.”
Her mouth thins. “You have got to be kidding me.”
“What?” I push the door open wider. “Should I carry you over the threshold?”
Her tone is ice. “You’rewelcomingmehome? Tomymansion? My childhood home? It’s notyours,” she hisses. “Evenif you bought it by forcing me into this marriage.Youare not bringingmehome.”
The venom in her voice and her posture take me back. She’s furious with me, practically vibrating with it, but there’s no heat in it, only an icy rage that makes me feel momentarily chilled.
I let out a sigh, and step over the threshold into the Russo mansion—now the O’Malley mansion.
I have a feeling that it’s going to be a long night… and not at all in the way I hoped.
8
SIMONE
The drive to what was once my family's estate passes in suffocating silence. Every mile that brings us closer to what should be my sanctuary feels like another nail in the coffin of my old life. The estate has been in my family for three generations, purchased by my great-grandfather when he first made his fortune in Miami. It was mine. My home, my life, my sanctuary.
And now it all belongs to him.
The thought sits in my stomach like a stone as we pull through the familiar gates. The security guards—men I don't recognize, Tristan's men rather than the ones who've protected my family for years—wave us through with respectful nods. Even they know who the real master of this house is now. Everything, I realize, is being replaced to suit him. He’s remaking it all in his image, faster than I expected he would. It feels like whiplash.
"Welcome home, Mrs. O'Malley," Tristan says as he opens the front door, and the name hits me like a physical blow.
Mrs. O'Malley. Not Simone Russo, the woman I've been for twenty-two years. Not even Simone O'Malley, which would at least acknowledge that I had an identity before I became hispossession. Just Mrs. O'Malley, as if I exist only in relation to him now.
The house feels different as we step inside. The same marble floors, the same crystal chandelier casting prismatic light across the entryway, but there's something alien about it now. It's no longer mine. It's his, and I'm just a guest in the place where I grew up. It feels cold and hollow, the same way it did the morning I found out my father died, before I found out all the other truths about him. When I was still grieving the man I knew, and not the man he turned out to be.
"I've had some of your things moved to the master suite," Tristan says, hanging up his jacket with casual familiarity. "Nora supervised to make sure everything was handled properly. I believe the furniture was changed out as well. I left some suggestions as to what I’d like."
The master suite. My father's room, with its massive four-poster bed and adjoining sitting area. The room where my parents slept when my mother was alive. It’ll all look different now. That sensation of whiplash comes back again.
"I'll sleep in my own room," I say, moving toward the staircase. My heels click against the marble, a quick patter as I try to get there as quickly as possible.
"No." The single word stops me in my tracks. "You won't."
