Page 114 of Sweet Sin

“Then what’s this about? Why do you need me to marry you?”

He pushes the nose of the gun into me. “Why don’t you ask your daddy?”

I swallow my fear of the pistol now touching me. “Do you see him here? I’m asking you!”

“Let’s get this straight, Savannah. I agree to listen to you. You tell me what you want. If I agree, you will walk to my car quietly, at my side, and we will be husband and wife by morning.”

I gulp, forcing the nausea down my throat. My stomach is churning, acid trying to float upward, but I steel it down.

“I want you to leave Falcon Bellamy alone.”

He lets out an acidic scoff. “The guy who killed Abel? I don’t think so, Savvy.”

I take a deep breath then, let it out slowly. I used to hate when Ashley called me Savvy. Now I would gladly listen to her on repeat for the rest of my life rather than hear it once more from Miles’s lips.

I draw in one more breath, let it out again. “Those are my terms. Whatever you think you have against Falcon, make it go away. Pay off the cops if you have to.”

“The guy’s an ex-con, Savannah.”

“He’s innocent.”

He laughs sarcastically. “Right. We’re all innocent, Savvy. There’s not one among us who’s guilty.”

I suppress my shivers, gulp down nausea once again. “I believe he’s innocent. Whether you do or not is inconsequential to me. He paid his dues, did his time. You know very well that he was acting in self-defense when he pistol-whipped Abel, and I know you can make this go away. Do that, and I’ll go with you. Now.”

“You think I have that kind of power?”

“If you don’t, your father does.”

“So does your father, Savvy.”

“You know as well as I do that this has to come from your side. Abel was your man. Make it go away, and make sure Giancarlo here lives, and I’m yours.”

“And you know what that means?”

I nod my head, again suppressing the quaking that’s going inside my body.

It means I’m his commodity. Owned by him. By Miles McAllister and the McAllister family.

He will rape me, and impregnate me, force me to bear his children, and if they’re girls? They’ll be auctioned off to the highest bidder as I was.

I hope I only have boys. Boys who escape like Vinny did. Not boys who die, like Michael did.

I nod again. “You must think me naïve, but I’m not. I know exactly what being your wife will mean. My only consolation is that you won’t bruise up my face or anything else that can be seen.”

“No,” he vows. “I will not. But I resent the implication that I’ll harm you in other ways.”

I sniff back a tear. “You’re already harming me, Miles. You’re forcing me into a marriage that neither of us wants. Marriage that somehow means some kind of alliance between our two families. You’re getting way more than me. There’s something you need, otherwise you wouldn’t be pushing this, not at this late date.” I pause a moment. “So do we have a deal?”

A moment passes.

Then another.

Until—

“Deal,” he says.

That’s all he says. He doesn’t offer me any explanation as to why. He doesn’t have to. I know something else is at play here. Something far more sinister than me fudging some parole records. Far more than both of us being forced into marriage.

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