Page 3 of His Stolen Bride

Tobias had been in hiding for reasons she didn’t care to know about and at the last minute, she had been informed that instead of the wedding taking place a week later in Athens, in a public venue with at least two hundred guests in attendance, she was getting married immediately. When Tobias’ bodyguards showed up at her place of work, they didn’t give her a choice except to go along with them.

She found herself ferried away with her wedding gown in a bag to a secret location right there in DC which turned out to be a deserted and unkempt vineyard where the only people in attendance had been Tobias’ priest and his ten bodyguards.

Tobias’ instruction that she wasn’t allowed to have a cell phone with her meant she couldn’t tell her uncle of the change of venue, not that he had been invited.

She didn’t bother questioning the change of plans regarding her wedding. She had her own things to worry about, certainly much more important and could hardly be concerned with what was going on with Tobias Ariti himself. A week earlier meant she didn’t have to wait that week to set her plans in motion.

At the appointed time, after she was told to get dressed in a stuffy little bedroom, she made her way out of the villa to find a very uncomfortable and clearly terrified priest beckoning to her. None of the bodyguards had been in sight.

She didn’t look up as walked toward the priest. She didn’t need to see what was going to happen to her. She only needed to keep in mind the outcome. The result of the marriage. The freedom she would be able to give her cousin to live a healthy stress-free life and allow Uncle Matteo to retire in peace, something he deserved.

She prayed Tobias wouldn’t lift her veil until it was over or her willpower might have been challenged if she came face to face with him.

Her heart had pounded in her chest as her groom arrived. She thought she might throw up. The tips of his handmade shoes gleamed in the sunlight. She couldn’t remember him being that tall from his pictures. Or maybe he had always been that tall and she hadn’t noticed. She never paid any extra attention to him, other than he was the man she had to marry, the only obstacle standing in their way.

The scent of his cologne as he stood opposite her brought a frown to her face. The heat that came off his body, the power, danger mingled with fearlessness and skill slid off him and hung in the air between them.

Taking a deep breath, she recited the list of steps she had to take. Her mission was still the same. Nothing in the world was going to change that. She resisted the urge to touch the pendant hanging around her neck. Her mother had given it to her, the day before she died as if she had known she would be killed.

With her veil still lowered over her eyes, Vivian had obeyed the priest, repeating after him, trying to drown out the sound of her groom’s voice when he did the same and goosebumps covered her skin at the deep roughness of his voice. Hesitantly she lifted her left hand to her groom when she had been instructed.

She had almost snatched her fingers away when her skin became inflamed where he had touched. What was happening to her?

Was she going to faint? She had always thought she was made of tougher stuff and not prone to fainting or being weakened in the knees. But as soon as he had slipped the ring onto her finger, she jerked her hand away, her frown deepening.

One of the bodyguards was meant to pass her a ring to put on Tobias’ finger, but there was no one there.

Panic started to burn from the pit of her stomach. Something was off and she couldn’t ignore it anymore.

She whipped her veil off and over her head and almost died from shock.

The man standing before her was anything but Tobias Ariti. She had already established he was too tall, but nothing prepared her for his glimmering green eyes and dark head of her hair. The structure of his face robbed her of thought for a moment. She had never met a man before who looked both devastatingly gorgeous and ruthlessly dangerous at the same time.

The man she had exchanged vows with, had actually married, was not the man she was supposed to have married.

“What?” Words deserted her and her gaze shifted from the priest to the man, and only belatedly she realized that he had been holding a gun to the priest the whole time while she had thought she was marrying Tobias, with her head kept down and her veil securely shielding her sight.

She was a smart girl, growing up in a family of mafia had a way of making her street smart as well. When her mother had told her all she had to do was be pretty, dumb, and quiet, she had also added that Vivian only needed to pretend to be those things.

Understanding she had married the completely wrong man, against her will, she knew she had to make a run for it, the same moment as she attributed the absence of Tobias’ bodyguards to the tall, unfairly handsome man as well.

She was in clear but unknown danger. The worst kind.

She turned around, her intention to escape him, not knowing exactly where to go in the deserted villa or where to get help from. But she didn’t get very far before he caught her around the waist, despite giving her a head start.

The priest was no help since he fled in the opposite direction the first chance he could.

Acting on pure instinct, knowing full well she was only buying herself a minuscule amount of time, she fought back with all her might and happily accepted when she managed to get her elbow into his handsome face, just below his eye.

“Who the hell are you?” she yelled, kicking and screaming as he curled his arm around the waist, her feet off the ground.

“You can call me Elliot,” he murmured into her ear before he turned her around and tossed her over his shoulder.

Elliot whose breath now brushed against her thigh, his lips soothing over the wedding garter she wore before his teeth gripped one end of the delicate ribbon and the whole thing came apart.

“You don’t touch me. You freaking dick head. I don’t know who you are but I think you have the wrong person. Now untie me right now, and let me leave and you might still be able to carry on living.”

She didn’t care that she delivered empty threats to his existence. Her life of being a mafia princess, where she could make such threats actually happen, was over a year ago already and she wouldn’t have it any other way. She just wanted to be normal. What her mother had so desperately wanted for her as well.

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