A Marriage Fit for a Sinner

She withdrew it. His instructions on the mount and setting had been followed to the letter.

‘I intended to give it to you after dinner last night. Not on bended knee, of course. I’m sure you’ll agree that once was enough?’

Her eyes darkened, as if he’d hurt her somehow. But of course, that was nonsense. She’d returned his first ring and walked away from him after a brief argument he barely recalled, stating that she didn’t wish to be married to a man like him.

At the time, Zaccheo had been reeling at his lawyers’ news that he was about to be charged with criminal negligence. He hadn’t been able to absorb the full impact of Eva’s betrayal until weeks later, when he’d already been in prison. His trial had been swift, the result of a young, overeager judge desperate to make a name for himself.

But he’d had over a year to replay the last time he’d seen Eva. In court, sitting next to her father, her face devoid of emotion until Zaccheo’s sentence had been read out.

In that moment, he’d fooled himself into thinking she’d experienced a moment of agony on his behalf. He’d murmured her name. She’d looked at him. It was then that he’d seen the contempt.

That single memory cleared his mind of any extraneous feelings. ‘Open the box and put on the ring,’ he said tersely.

His tone must have conveyed his capricious emotional state. She cracked open the small case and slid on the ring without complaint.

He caught her hand in his and raised it, much as he had on Friday night. But this time, the acute need to rip off the evidence of another man’s ownership was replaced by a well of satisfaction. ‘You’re mine, Eva. Until I decide another fate for you, you’ll remain mine. Be sure not to forget that.’

Turning on his heel, he walked away.

* * *

Eva woke on Monday morning with a heavy heart and a stone in her gut that announced that her life was about to change for ever. It had started to change the moment she’d heard Zaccheo’s recorded conversation with her father, but she’d been too shocked afterwards to decipher what her father’s guilt meant for her.

Tired and wrung out, she’d stumbled to bed and fallen into a dreamless sleep, then woken and stumbled her way back to work.

Reality had arrived when she’d exited Siren after her shift to find Zaccheo’s driver waiting to bring her back to the penthouse. She’d felt it when Zaccheo had told her to be ready to attend his offices in the morning. She’d felt it when she’d walked into her suite and found every item of clothing she’d tried on Saturday neatly stacked in the floor-to-ceiling shelves in her dressing room.

She felt it now when she lifted her hand to adjust her collar and caught the flash of the diamond ring on her finger. The flawless gem she’d chosen so carelessly had been mounted on a bezel setting, with further diamonds in decreasing sizes set in a platinum ring that fitted her perfectly.

You’re mine, Eva. Until I decide another fate for you, you’ll remain mine.

She was marrying Zaccheo in less than a week. He’d brought forward the initial two-week deadline by a whole week. She would marry him or her father would be reported to the authorities. He’d delivered that little bombshell last night after dinner. No amount of tossing and turning had altered that reality.

When she’d agreed to marry Harry, she’d known it would be purely a business deal, with zero risk to her emotions.

The idea of attaching herself to Zaccheo, knowing the depth of his contempt for her and his hunger for revenge, was bad enough. That undeniably dangerous chemistry that hovered on the point of exploding in her face when she so much as looked at him...that terrified her on an unspeakable level. And not because she was afraid he’d use that against her.

What she’d spent the early hours agonising over was her own helplessness against that inescapable pull.

The only way round it was to keep reminding herself why Zaccheo was doing this. Ultimate retribution and humiliation was his goal. He didn’t want anything more from her.

An hour later, she sat across from her father and sister and watched in growing horror as Zaccheo’s lawyers listed her father’s sins.

Oscar Pennington sat hunched over, his pallor grey and his forehead covered in light sweat. Despite having heard Zaccheo’s recording last night, she couldn’t believe her father would sink so low.

‘How could you do this?’ she finally blurted when it got too much to bear. ‘And how the hell did you think you’d get away with it?’