Total pages in book: 133
Estimated words: 128290 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 641(@200wpm)___ 513(@250wpm)___ 428(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 128290 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 641(@200wpm)___ 513(@250wpm)___ 428(@300wpm)
Sighing, I drop down into the seat behind my desk with a glare.
If I’m honest, these two are not wrong.
I’m not sure there’s a man on this planet I’d trust with her. Even if I found one, I don’t think I’d assign him to her.
The fact of the matter is I don’t want a man who isn’t me spending time with my bride, and yes, being her driver counts. I realize this is a problem, but I don’t care.
She’s mine, and if there’s one man she’s going to spend her time with, it’s going to be me.
Chapter
Nine
Boston
The day I found my mother dead in her bed is one I’ll never forget.
I’ll forever carry with me the way her cold, pale-blue body looked when I tore the covers back.
The first thing I did was look for blood; my mind already trained to seek out a weeping wound at the small age of eight. God knows, I’d witnessed my father returning home covered in it enough times to be able to determine if it was by injury…or infliction. Ninety-nine percent of the time it was the latter.
My father is very good at his job.
Enzo might be better.
The thought irritates me, probably because it’s true. He wouldn’t be the youngest, and only man to take his businesses into multiple districts on his own, creating a brand-new empire like no other can claim to have—a man employed by not just those from one, but multiple districts at once, and in record time too—if he weren’t.
He wouldn’t have been able to show up in Revenaw territory, kidnap and take me back to his, if he weren’t. And he sure as hell wouldn’t have been able to hide the fact that he already had a wife from the tech team my father put on him after I confessed what I’d done—became the fiancée of Enzo Fikile without his permission.
My father would have put him in the ground for the insult alone. He would have been considered the threat we’d already seen him as, only this time with a giant, treacherous target pointed across every inch of his skull at a 360-degree angle.
He married someone and then tossed her aside for someone else.
Me.
The truth is as clear as the crystals lining the living room.
I made him an offer he couldn’t refuse, promise be damned.
Not that a promise made by a moralless man means a damn thing, but it may have meant something to her as it does me, as stupid as that sounds.
Technically speaking, our contract is nothing but a promise, considering what Enzo said is true. He is the law, so if he wanted to end the legally binding relationship, both the agreement in ink and the marriage license stamped with the state seal, he could.
He would lose the respect of the other elder and head families—real men don’t go back on their word, it’s the only thing that means a damn in this world, but did he not do that already?
He married that girl, then divorced her when a more lucrative offer came along.
What’s to stop him from doing the same to me?
A better question, though, is who will die when he does, because my father, superseded by Bastian or not, would never let that stand.
He will come at Enzo with all he has.
Who will win, I have no idea, but when that day comes, it’s not my husband’s hand I’ll fight for.
That’s for damn sure, not when I’ve woken from a dead sleep every hour with the image of Katana slipping over my eyes, just as I did with my mother the first year following her death.
A humorless laugh leaves me and I pick up the giant fucking blunt still glaring at me from where it was left on the edge of the vanity and move to the balcony.
I light my candle, then roll the tip of the blueberry-flavored wrap through the flame before bringing it to my lips.
It’s pathetic, honestly. I was devastated when my mother died, maybe even traumatized, so that made sense.
I’m not devastated that my fake, contractual husband—who only wanted me for the power I can give him—already had a wife. How foolish would I be if I were?
No, this is just…anger. Yeah, that’s all it is.
If that’s true, then why did my desperate heart find comfort in the vows he stole from me?
Because for the first time, you had a label to your name that meant something.
I groan, shaking my head, because yeah. I’m that tragic.
Finding out I was married to Enzo did mean something to me. Not as a woman and man taking that next step, but as someone who craved…more.
Suddenly, I wasn’t just the other twin, the extra heiress that didn’t make the cut into the cardinal compass that makes up the Greyson girls, even if there are only three and there is supposed to be four.