The Wedding Debt (Underworld Kings)

She can try, but she won’t get far.

As the side door opens, I turn to watch her get shoved in beside me. The door is slammed shut, and we’re locked inside the car together. When she finally looks up, our gazes meet, and my dick instantly hardens in my pants from the sight of her bound wrists and teared-up cheeks.

She’s right. I am fucked up.

There’s a reason my brother was always the favorite of the family. I could never live up to that. But maybe that was only for the better. After all, I’m still here while he’s miles deep in the water.

“Are you enjoying this?” she asks.

I raise a brow. “Are you?”

“They’re making me marry you, Luca,” she replies, ignoring my question. “My life isn’t a joke. This isn’t funny anymore.”

I plant my elbow on the small windowsill in the car and cock my head. “It wasn’t funny when you killed my brother either.”

Her face contorts. “I didn’t kill him.”

“He drowned in the water because of your terrible driving skills.”

“There was a storm,” she says. “And you don’t know if he drow—”

“Exactly. There was a storm,” I retort. “And you still chose to drive off in your fucking car.”

She throws me a damning glare, but when her lips part, no words come out.

It’s quiet for a while, and I look outside at my parents, who are still arguing about fuck knows what with Hugo. I don’t even care what’s going on.

“Please, Luca. Don’t let your parents do this,” she says.

My nostrils flare as I shift in my seat to look at her, but the pleading gaze in her eyes catches me off guard.

She’s never begged before, and I quite honestly love the sound of her voice when she does. I could listen to this for days. Years.

But she deserves everything she gets for killing my brother. For destroying my parents’ vision of the future. And if that means she now becomes my wife, so fucking be it.

At least now I’ll get a chance to prove I’m the better fucking brother.

“Luca, please, I’m begging you,” she says.

Is it so bad to be my fucking wife?

“Convince them. Make them take me in as a servant or something.”

A servant?

Jill serving us—me—makes my cock twitch. Fuck, that’d be a sight to behold, watching Jill prance around my room in a skimpy outfit just to pick up after me. I’d pay to see that happening.

But it’s not. I don’t make the fucking rules, and now that my brother is dead, my parents are more on edge than they’ve ever been before. After all, he was the favorite son … and now all they have left is me.

The fucking reject son who fucks up every chance he gets.

Just because of …

Her.

I jerk my arm away and sneer, “Don’t.”

“Luca?” Her brows rise but fall immediately after as though she finally realizes who I truly am. “You owe me this.”

“I don’t owe you anything,” I spit back.

“I took Liam with me in the car to escape you,” she says, her eyes darkening with every word she speaks. “He died because of you.”

I fish my knife from my pocket and point it at her, which immediately makes her freeze.

“He died because you kissed him,” I say through gritted teeth.

She stares me down, unafraid of the knife inching closer and closer to her chest. A single tear forms in her eyes, but she blinks it away.

“So … that’s it? That’s the hill you’re willing to die on?” she says, her voice fluctuating in tone. “You were the one who told me our parents were going to make us marry.”

I look away as a vicious smile appears on my lips. “Guess fate has a funny way to twist things around.”

A shocked gasp hitches in her throat, but I don’t care.

After a few seconds, she says. “You’re a monster.”

The words come out in a stone-cold manner, but it doesn’t faze me anymore.

I’ve already accepted who I am. What I’m willing to do to make her mine.

But she … She holds her head up with a kind of pride that makes me want to slice her open and tear out her heart.

Because if it can’t be mine, it won’t belong to anyone.

Jill

* * *

When the car stops, we’re at the airport, and my skin begins to crawl at the sight of those planes flying high above our heads as we get out of the car.

My wrists are still bound, and Lex told Luca to keep a careful eye on me so I don’t run away.

“Why are we here?” I ask, wondering why we didn’t go to their house.

“Because you’re getting married,” Lex answers, “on the Canary Islands, far away from your meddling parents.”

I stop walking. “What now?”

I don’t understand. I thought marriage took preparation. Time. This isn’t nearly enough to prepare for … him.