Page 84 of Runaway in the Mafia
His gaze burned when he rested his forehead on mine. “Believe it. You think I’d let another man touch you, fuck you with his limp dick, use you as a punchbag and not fucking shred him to pieces, limb by limb?” His hand crawled in my hair, his lips traced mine, words trailing off them and painting mine. “My little witch, I am insulted. You should know your fiancé better than that.”
It took me ten minutes after he stepped back and walked out to get my breathing down to a pace where I could stand up. It took me another five to realise the weight on my finger was a sparkling row of diamonds attached to a vivid yellow stone on a thin, cold band. Somewhere between asking me if I wanted to watch a video of him murdering the monster who’d haunted me and commanding that I marry him, he’d slipped it on my fingers.
My hands trembled like a dam about to burst as I squeezed the thin gold ring off. Inside it, there was one word inscribed.
Vitale’s.
I had a feeling he hadn’t meant the ring.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
AHANA
My life was a movie. A thriller with a tragic ending. That was the only explanation I could come up with. It was the ebb and flow at the beach. Constantly changing, constantly erasing. Pulling me in and pushing me out. An imbalance and a trilling underneath me. Nothing was firm. Nothing fixed. It revolted, and I went around with it with my head in a daze, like I was on a roller coaster.
Nothing made sense anymore. How I felt about it made even less sense.
This household functioned like a chicken hut gone berserk. They all went from shocked to elated. There was nothing in between. They didn’t get a choice. He didn’t give them one. The very next day, there was an engagement party. Put together by Ada overnight. It felt like everything flowed smoothly, or maybe my dazed mind didn’t catch the cracks of a hurried party.
All I had to do was throw on the dress laid out on my bed. Raw silk in saffron yellow, wrapped tightly around my breastsand flowing freely around me. When it trailed behind me, even my four-inch gold sandals couldn’t keep it from kissing the floor.
Divya apologised. It was a last-minute thing she’d put together. An all-nighter, apparently. I couldn’t imagine what she’d do if she had a month to prepare. Because the only thing alluring about this day was the dress. Sure, the weather was amazing. The food, delicious. Probably. But I couldn’t feel it or taste it as numbness cloaked around me.
The doors to the garden swung open and closed. People streamed constantly in and out of it. The house was packed. He hadn’t bothered to wait for the weekend. But all of them had flocked down here on a working Thursday. Ninety-five per cent of them I didn’t know. The five per cent I did seemed to live in another reality than mine. It was like he’d invited the whole of Italy to come. And they had dropped everything and accepted the invitation. With less than a day’s notice. The power this man held was terrifying.
A burst of laughter grated on my spine like nails on concrete. Clutching the glass of champagne I was pretending to sip, I made my way out of the living room. I never drank, and I wasn’t going to start when I was already tilting without it.
My heart rate was loud in the quiet hallway. My chest felt tight. Constricted like it was bolted inside a cage. I needed to get out of there. I half ran, half walked to my room. Just five minutes. Five minutes of alone time. To collect my thoughts and regroup. They wouldn’t miss me for five minutes.
Panic crawled up my chest. How long before he found out I hadn’t told my family? I couldn’t bear this anymore. This constant fear. Loyalty to my family and the desire to be with him warred within me. I felt trapped. The choice between the life I wanted and my loved ones at home wasn’t really a choice.
I’d almost broken. Had the phone clutched in my hand, ready to press the green button. Until I realised my life wasnever going to get the green light from my family. Divorcing my first husband was already a sin. Vitale thought getting rid of Rajesh solved the problem. He didn’t know. He couldn’t know, no matter how much Rajesh had been a monster, that he’d only been part of the problem. The right thing to do now was to go back home. To live in shame under my parents’ roof. Not to marry a man who didn’t share a culture or caste with me… or the murderer of my first husband. If this came to light, Papa’s reputation would be ruined. The damage would be worse than news of my divorce. My family’s name would be tarnished. The whole of Delhi would make a laughingstock of them. And I couldn’t do it. I was selfish in thinking about my happiness when I had to put my family first. That was the task I should uphold as a daughter.Right?
I was almost at my room when the door pushed open and two girls burst into the hallway. “She’s so fucking boring—” the blonde noticed me and turned a deep shade of red. The pretty brunette coming behind her didn’t. “I know, right? What on earth does he see in her?
“Gia, stop.”
The brunette turned and locked her gaze with mine. Spite coloured her vision as she took me in rudely from top to toe. “I don’t see it,” she observed nastily.
I don’t either.
“Shut up, Gia.” The blonde turned to me and added hurriedly, “We were just curious.”
“Can’t really blame us,” the other one said. “It’s not like you are so fucking special to trap him.”
Don’t I know it.
I wasn’t even insulted. Only relieved that someone saw it as I did. The man couldn’t have had a single cell in his brain active to have chosen me as his wife. Let alone Sicilian, I wasn’t even Italian. Wasn’t catholic. Wasn’t pure, which I already knew fromLia what a big thing that was. I was nothing to his everything. He couldn’t walk a mile without attracting a woman’s glance like a bee to honey. He was the damn don, for heaven’s sake. And I was… what... I didn’t even know myself.
This pressure. All these gazes on me like I’d taken something of theirs. Cheated them out of it. Tainted their reputation with it. I couldn’t stand it anymore. All I wanted was to be rid of it. I didn’t want to want him. If Rajesh was truly out of the picture, I needed to shift to my plan B. I didn’t know yet what it was. But I’d have it. When I stepped out of the shadow of his magnetic charm.
“I agree,” I whispered softly.
“What?” The blonde asked.
“You are welcome to him.”
Take him off the table so I could lead a normal life. A stable one. Where I wasn’t overwhelmed and doubted the morals I’d been brought up on. One where my pulse only jerked in my wrist, not down south. One where hot desire didn’t burn in my body, or my heart didn’t rattle like leaves in a storm. He intoxicated me when I’d never had alcohol. He made me careless when my life had only been structured. I abided by rules. I wasn’t the girl to break them.
