Broken Bride

I don’t know what he wants from me.

“We met with Digby today,” he says. I snap my neck around toward him.

“Cousin Digby?”

“Yes.”

“What did he want?”

“He wanted you, Tilly.”

“Oh.”

I sit there for a moment, feeling my ass ache. “You're not going to give me back to him, are you?”

“No.”

“Good.”

I am English. Deeply so. At my core. I want to thank him profusely for keeping me from my twisted family, and I want to scream at him for caning me. I want to hit him, and I want to kiss him, and all those thoughts and feelings and words are caged up inside me.

"You can go, Tilly,” he says, easing me gently off his lap. “I just wanted you to know I’m not giving you up.”

A warm flush rushes through me. I feel, against all odds, and every bit of logic in my body and brain: loved.

I go to a quiet place in the house to think. I need to process all of this. The pain in my ass, Angelo’s protection. Everything I have done. Every sin I’ve committed. It all led me here, and now I am on the verge of an entirely new life.

There’s a library on the top floor. I found it a few days into my stay here. It isn’t used much. Bobby and Mark aren’t big readers, so this feels like my place in a way. I like this room. Enveloped by books, I feel as though I am in my safe place. I can draw a deep breath and finally rela…

“So he fucked you.”

The voice comes out of a dark corner of the library, startling me with a jolt of unpleasant adrenaline. I thought I was alone.

When I turn, I see Bobby sitting in an armchair in the far corner. He was sitting in near pitch black, apparently waiting for me. Just as I’m making him out, he reaches up and switches the reading lamp on, illuminating the hollows of his cheeks as he takes a drag on his vape pen.

“Uhm…” I look around. They never leave me alone with Bobby. From the very first day I got here, Angelo and Mark have both made very sure to keep him away from me. I think he might be crazy. The dangerous kind of crazy.

“They're not coming,” Bobby smirks darkly. “It’s just you and me.”

I don’t want it to be me and him. Angelo owns me. Mark takes care of me. But I legitimately think Bobby might kill me. There’s so much venom and hatred in his eyes. He’s animated by his loathing for the world at large, and me in particular.

“I never had any choice in this. I didn’t want to marry him…” I start stammering excuses, my hands lifting up in front of me as if to defend myself from him even though he hasn’t moved from the chair.

“Of course you didn’t.” Bobby smirks and exhales a stream of vape smoke. “Angelo doesn’t give people choices.”

“Okay, so you know… you know I’m not trying to… you know… take your place.”

Bobby lets out a mad laugh. “Take my place?” He laughs so hard he has a coughing fit and ends up bent double in the chair, his elegant form much less elegant for heaving shoulders and spittle.

It takes a minute for him to compose himself again.

“That was a good one,” he says, waving his vape pen at me. “You’re funny.”

“I just… I don’t want you to be angry at me.” There’s a tremor in my voice which makes me sound even more pathetic than I feel.

He gives a slight shrug. “Why would you care if I was angry at you?”

“I don’t… I mean. You seem like the sort of guy who… doesn’t stay angry for long. If you know what I mean.”

He looks me up and down, his eyes traveling from my toes to the top of my head and back again.

“You’re pretty,” he says. It doesn’t feel like a compliment.

He gets up and walks toward me. Bobby isn’t as tall as Angelo, or as broad as Mark. But he’s taller than me by a good inch or two, and when he is standing directly in front of me that allows him to look down his nose at me, those pitch black eyes searching mine. There’s a crackle between us, something electric and dark.

“I see it now,” he murmurs.

“What do you see?”

The corner of his mouth turns up in a dark smile. Bobby is young, muscular, handsome. His body is hard and his soul is as black as his gaze. When Angelo and Mark are around, he plays the petulant brat. But now, with just the two of us in this dark and silent library, I can feel his power. He is not someone to be underestimated — in any way.

He reaches out and brushes a blonde curl off my shoulder.