Page 14 of The Butcher's Wife
Dom is soaked, dressed in his usual dark jeans, black boots, and a brown leather jacket with fur trim. Most of his hair has been pulled loose from his ponytail and hangs around his face in an unruly mane. He storms toward me like he has the intention to tear me from the altar and sling me over his shoulder as his spoils of war.
I lick my lips.Thiswill be my new husband?
He stomps to a halt in front of me, not meeting my gaze.
Dad strolls around the bend with his hands in his pockets and joins the pew where Mom and my brothers are sitting.
My future husband gives the priest a dark look.
The holy man clears his throat. “Well. Okay. Friends, family. We are gathered here today under God’s watchful eye to witness the joining of two souls…”
As the priest drones on, Dom rolls his head to one side, then the other, the muscles in his neck and jaw flexing as he looks everywhere but at me. The fur trim of his jacket hides that private joining between his neck and shoulder where I bit him. I run my tongue over my teeth.
For a month, I’d held on to a certainty that Dom, like any other man, would accept a marriage with Serafina, but I’d also clutched at a secret hope that I’d made a mistake at Turi’s house and had revealed my identity to Dom in a way that only a person intimately familiar with me could know. How he’d looked at me—I thought maybe he’d known who I really was. That the kiss I’d stolen from him when I was eighteen, next to the rosebush at the foot of my bedroom window, had carved out a tiny littleWhat ifin his heart for him the same way it had in mine.
But I see the truth now. Dom, who’s been a bachelor for almost as long as I’ve known him, who just has to snap his fingers for a woman to throw herself at him, fought this union tooth and nail. Dad only won out with threats or bribes.
I swallow a lump in my throat and glance at my parents. Mom has her head bowed. Rafa looks like an overgrown high schooler with his phone tucked against the side of his thigh, tapping against the screen. Carlo snores until Mom elbows him sharply, and he jerks up. Dad meets my eye. One of his eyebrows twitches up.
Well?
I look back at Dom, forming a fist over the dried petals in my palm.
So, he doesn’t want to get married? Tough. We all have to do things we don’t want to.
His eyes are lined with dark circles, and a tendon in his neck jumps as he glares at some far-off spot in the church.He shifts, throwing another menacing look at the priest, who stutters in his reading.
I stand as tall as I can, shifting my weight between my heels, and burn my gaze into the side of Dom’s face. Hewilllook at me.
Right as I’m considering reaching forward to tug at his hand or clear my throat, the priest saves him.
“Do you have the rings?” the priest asks Dom.
“No,” Dom rumbles.
The older man blinks a few times. He scratches behind his ear and turns to me. “Serafina?”
For the briefest moment, I fight the urge to look for my sister. But he’s talking to me.
Instead of answering, I stare back.
The priest casts a pleading look at my parents.
“Here,” Mom calls. She steps forward and drops a set of rings into the priest’s outstretched hands. A little spark of surprise skitters through me. Did Dom get those? Maybe I’ve misread him, maybe some small part of him wants to make this work.
If he gives me a chance, I can make myself a good wife for him.
“Right.” The priest clears his throat and turns to us. “Please face each other and hold hands.”
I turn to Dom, and he turns to me, but he’s staring at a point right above my head. I frown. He’s killed people on his boss’s orders, he laughs as he faces down other dangerous men, but he can’t look one woman in the eye?
“Dom,” I whisper harshly.
Then, on an exhale, he finally looks at me.
The look in his gentle, dark eyes is one of purehate.
All of the air sucks out of my lungs, and the bouquet quivers in my hand.
