CHAPTER 6
KIARA
“Bed her, bed her!” The chanting began before I’d managed to mentally prepare myself. Perhaps I was stupid for thinking I could prepare for it.
My husband’s brothers, Remo and Savio, shouted the loudest, but most of the other men were almost as loud. The youngest brother, Adamo, remained in his seat, lips pressed together in a firm line. He hadn’t talked to me or danced with me or anyone else.
“Bed her, bed her!” the cries grew louder.
I sought Nino’s gaze. He nodded at me, got up, and held out a hand. I took it because I could not refuse him with everyone watching us. Forcing down my fear, I stood and followed him past the rows of guests who had lined up to see us out. The men clapped Nino’s shoulders; the women caught my gaze with pity and sympathy in their eyes. Giulia was pressed up against her husband, worry filling her expression. I quickly looked away.
“On to unchartered grounds!”
“We want to see the sheets!”
There were more comments like that, and they turned my stomach into solid rock.
Nino’s face didn’t betray his reaction to the shouts. His fingers pressed against my wrist tightly, and I was glad because they grounded me, kept me from faltering, from drifting off to the past.
Remo and Savio were close by as we went down the long corridor—a corridor that held many childhood memories, few of them good and tonight worse memories would be added to the list.
We arrived in front of the dark wooden door to the master bedroom, dozens of men behind us.
“No fucking your virgin bride up against the wall, remember?” Remo said with a laugh.
I jerked, my pulse doubling. Nino’s fingers tightened against my wrist.
“Remo,” he growled in a voice that sent fear into every fiber of my being.
“Have fun!” Savio shouted with a grin.
The Falcones were going to feel cheated. A sacrificial virgin was to be given to the monsters in Las Vegas for a promise of peace. I was never given the chance to be a virgin. That choice had been taken from me. Painfully ripped from me.
Fear, acute and raw, clawed at my chest as my husband led me into our room for the night and closed the door to the grinning faces of his brothers. Nino released me, and I quickly created distance between us, moving toward the bed.
Six years had passed, but the memories still woke me at night. I was scared of being close to a man, to any man, especially this man – my husband.
Standing a few steps in front of the bed, my eyes swept over the white sheets—sheets my family expected to the see stained with my blood in the morning.
Blood that wouldn’t be there.
I crept closer to the bed. There had been blood the first time, the second time, and even the third time. Lots of blood, pain, terror, and begging. There had been no presentation of the sheets back then. Our maid, who had never come to my aid, cleaned them.
I wouldn’t beg tonight. It hadn’t stopped my abuser many years ago.
It wouldn’t stop my husband.
I knew the stories. I had seen him in the cage.
My only consolation was that I doubted he could break me more than I already had been all those years ago.
I couldn’t take my eyes off those perfect white sheets—as white as my dress. A sign of purity, but I wasn’t pure.
“They are your traditions, not ours,” Nino said calmly but loud enough to tear me from my thoughts.
I schooled my face into placidness. “Then why follow them?” I asked as I turned. My voice had betrayed me. Too hushed, laced with a terror that I hoped he mistook for virginal fear.
He wasn’t as close as I’d expected. He wasn’t even looking at me. Standing beside the desk, he read the note my aunt had written congratulating us on the nuptials. He put it back down then looked up at me. There was nothing on his face that gave me a sense of hope. No kindness, no pity. It was a blank canvas. Beautifully cold with empty gray eyes, an immaculate short beard, and combed back hair.
As he shook his head, he destroyed what little hope I’d had. “The Famiglia wants blood, they get it.”
He was right. It was what my family expected, what I was supposed to deliver, but they wouldn’t get blood. And my husband would realize his prize was faulty. The Camorra would cancel the truce. My husband would rebuke the marriage, and I’d be left to live as a pariah.
It would be my ruin. My family would shun me. Nobody would ever want to marry me after that, and an unmarried woman in our world was doomed.
He began unbuttoning his shirt, calmly, precisely. Finally he shrugged it off, revealing scars and tattoos—so many, so disturbing—and steely muscles. I turned away, my pulse galloping in my veins. Terror, similar to that which I’d felt many years ago, clawed at my insides. I needed to rein it in, figure a way out of this mess. I needed to save myself, not from him claiming my body but from me losing my honor.