Page 7 of Wedlocked

I stepped closer to her, concealing her from my father’s sadistic sight. No doubt he expected a little violent, sexual recompense with her before I ended her life. What he didn’t seem to get was that I was minutes away from becoming the don, which made me the boss, not him.

My word would be law. Final.

I would be making the decision about Sabrina Costa’s fate, not the man who’d sired me. Not that I really had a choice. She’d been doomed from the moment she’d admitted to being a Costa.

Suddenly I was back inside my body and staring into Sabrina’s silver-gray eyes. Damn, she was beautiful, and so fucking brave I couldn’t help but postpone her inevitable death, though the last thing I wanted was to appear weak in front of my family, my people.

She narrowed her eyes. “What are you waiting for? Kill me already.”

My chest compressed right along with my lungs. Didn’t she care if she lived or died? I glowered. “No. Not yet.”

She blinked, and crossed her arms over her breasts—like modesty would save her now. “When? Better to get it over with than make me wait for the inevitable bullet in the head.”

My dad laughed, the sound edged with cruelty. “Who said it’d be a bullet?” He stalked closer, but I refused to budge even one step away from her. He’d seen enough of her. “You have information stored in that pretty head of yours, information we’ll pry out of you by every one of your fingernails if needed.”

“You’d hurt an innocent woman?”

She was brave, I’d give here that. But innocent? My chest compressed. What if she was telling the truth? What if my first impression of her had been right all along? “Innocent?” I repeated.

“She’s a fucking Costa, none of them are innocent,” my dad snarled.

I didn’t need to be reminded of my older brother’s death. Nico had been everything my father had wanted in a son, and the Costa family had taken that away from him. That I was second-best was too often rubbed in my face. That I’d never let his taunts get to me, not outwardly, had both infuriated my father and made him proud.

A knock sounded before Evander stuck his head around the door, his hair mussed and his grin wide. “I’d hate to interrupt this little family gathering, but the partygoers are getting restless.”

I nodded. “Let them know I’ll be down in ten minutes.”

“Get rid of her first,” my dad ordered.

I glanced at him. “You wanted information from her, did you not?” His face tightened and I managed a cold smile. “Until then, I’ll get rid of her when I’m good and ready.” I turned back to her. “Get back into your dress, you’re coming with me.”

“Wh-what?”

“You heard me,” I grated. I might never forgive her for her deception, or for taking away my chance to keep her as my mistress, but I’d enjoy exacting my vengeance on her—the entire Costa family—for what little time I had left with her. “I want you by my side the entire party, where you’ll smile and act gracious, like being with me is your greatest achievement.”

Evander let loose with a slow whistle before the door clicked shut as he removed himself from what was an obviously volatile family situation. I frowned, not sure I liked the idea of one of my capos being so…self-serving.

“Don’t say I didn’t fucking warn you,” my dear, loving dad said in a grating tone, before he stalked toward the elevator, adjusting his suit jacket as he went. “If my men see you as the soft cock you really are, your reign as the don will be laughably short lived.”

I wanted to punch the bastard in the face, wanted to grind his cold heart into ashes under my foot. Instead I nodded stiffly and said, “I’ll keep that in mind, Papà.”

Only once the doors slid shut behind my father did Sabrina look up at me with shocked surprise and asked, “That is what this party is about?” she said softly, as though her life wasn’t currently hanging by a thread. “You’re taking over from your father tonight.”

With my heart beating too hard in my chest, I glowered. I hardly knew her and yet she was affecting me far too much, fucking up my carefully bland emotions and filling them with Technicolor. Bitch. It’d taken me years to feel nothing, until she waltzed in here with the intention to—what, exactly?

I fisted my hands, my mind discarding every answer but one. “Did you come here to gather information?” I growled, itching to wrap my hands around her slender neck and shake her.

She nodded, her breath hitching. “Yes, I did. Seems pointless to deny it now, doesn’t it?”

My breathing labored at the thought of offing this beautiful woman. “And who the fuck forced you to infiltrate your enemy’s home to get information about us?”

“No one,” she denied. “I overheard a conversation between my brother and my father about rumors they’d heard in regards to your family. Apparently something big was happening tonight. I wanted to be in on it and prove that I wasn’t just a pretty face, someone to be married off to a mobster asshole for my father’s own gain.”

My eyes narrowed. “Your father wants to marry you off to one of the other criminal organizations?”

“Yes. My guess was to the Accardi underboss. He was invited over to dinner a few weeks ago. My father never invites people to dinner without reason.”

Just like my father never threw parties without some kind of motive. Little wonder Sabrina was here now if she wanted to be more than a pawn for her family. I studied her with new eyes. I must have been blinded by lust from the moment I saw her to not sense her desperate need for recognition…for power.

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