With This Ring (To Have And To Hold Duet 1)

I swallow hard.

He cocks his head to the side, one hand still locked around my wrist. He spins me around.

I scream as he jerks me to him, his body a solid wall at my back.

He releases my wrist and bands his arm beneath my breasts. With the other, he pushes the veil off my neck, his hand rough against my skin, fingers digging, bruising. I think he’s going to snap my neck. One quick twist is all it would take. He’s a fucking giant.

But he doesn’t.

Instead, the moment I turn my face up to his, he squeezes and instantly, my knees give out. My arms drop uselessly to my sides. He shifts his grip and as I slip, he lifts me up, hauling me over his shoulder, turning the room upside down before it goes black.

1

Scarlett

I feel like I’m going to vomit. The smell is musty and damp, like an old basement. Cold is seeping into my body, making my muscles ache.

“Get up!”

Pain in my right side. I curl away from it, but it comes again. I groan.

“Fucking get the fuck up!” It’s Diego. My brother. You’d think I’d know the feel of his boot by now.

“That’s not going to help,” another voice says.

Angel. My other brother. The slightly less insane one.

“There’s no way out,” he adds, voice oddly resigned.

“There’s a window,” Diego says before digging the toe of his boot into my ribs. “Up you fucking worthless piece of—”

“Leave her alone, you idiot.”

I blink my eyes open, roll my head and stop instantly, the pain sharp at the back. I bring my hand up to touch the spot, feeling the bump as I try to remember.

Lilies and baby’s breath on the floor. Shattered shards of the mirror crunching underfoot as I ran. Or thought about running before he grabbed me.

I look at my hand. The ring is gone. He pocketed it. I’m glad. My wedding day. My forced wedding. It never happened.

I push myself slowly up to a seated position. The musty smell, it’s not only the room. It’s the veil somehow still on my head.

The room spins and I close my eyes until the dizziness passes. When I open them again, a dark shadow looms over me. Leers down at me.

Diego.

“About fucking time.”

I look past him to see Angel sitting across the room, his back against the far wall. Noah’s head is on his lap.

“Hurry up, untie me,” Diego says. He’s been beaten. His lip is cut and there’s blood and numerous bruises on his face. He crouches down with his back to me.

I see that Noah’s hands are bound and Angel’s must be too. They’re behind him. I’m the only one they left unbound.

The white satin of my dress is smudged with dirt and blood, the hem black and the skirt ripped. I reach up to pull the lace off my head, the sound of hairpins dropping to the ground too delicate in this dungeon room. That’s what this is. A cell in a dungeon. With three stone walls, the fourth a wall of bars. The window my brother mentioned is about the size of a shoebox and too high to reach. That’s where the light is coming from. A too-bright square in the otherwise darkness. Daylight. I’ve been passed out since last night?

I wonder where we are. In the cellar of the compound where I was first imprisoned in the tower? I prefer the tower.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Diego barks, spittle landing on my face as he cranes his neck. I’m sure if his hands weren’t tied, he’d have slapped me a dozen times by now.

I meet his dark, hateful eyes.

Without a word, I reach to untie him. Ever obedient. Christ. What the fuck is wrong with me?

I look over at Angel. He’s younger than Diego by a year. He looks sad, and like I heard in his voice, resigned. He’s also got bruises along his jaw and dried blood by his nose, but his face isn’t as bad as Diego’s.

“Is Noah okay?” I ask. Noah, our youngest brother, is still passed out.

“Yeah,” Angel says, looking down at him.

“Not for long if you don’t get these fucking ropes off me,” Diego interjects.

I look at the knot, shift my gaze back to Angel.

“What’s going on?” I ask.

“We were betrayed.”

“Marcus?” My would-be husband?

He shakes his head.

“Lover-boy is gone,” Diego tells me. “Ran away like the fucking coward he is.”

“He’s not my lover-boy. I hate him.”

“Well, that makes two of us. Move.” He gestures to the knot.

I’m about to focus my attention on it, when I hear the sound of a door clanging open nearby. Light falls into the space outside the cell. Heavy footsteps follow and I hear a man’s voice. Another one that I recognize. One that makes my skin crawl.

“Fuck,” Diego mutters, awkwardly getting to his feet as the men come into view.