Arranged love

He tastes like everything I hate and love all at once. His tongue enters my mouth, and I try to pull away, but he nips at my lip, and I whimper. I kiss him back. Aggressively. I take all my hate and pour it into this kiss. Hoping he chokes on it.

I bite his lip hard, and his hands slides into my hair, fisting it. My scalp feels like a thousand pinpricks. He bites down on my lip this time, and I taste blood.

He pulls back, and I suck in a breath, trying to clear my thoughts. My mind. This is his plan. This is how he will cage me in a luxurious mansion and make me never want to leave. And I’m not sure I’ll be able to fight it.

His dark eyes roam my face. He lifts his hand, and I flinch. His face grows hard as stone. “Have I ever hit you?” he questions with a growl.

“No,” I answer softly.

“I’m not going to beat you, Haven.” He releases a sigh and leans his head forward, resting his forehead on mine.

I hold my breath.

“But I need you to understand that when I tell you that you will be my wife.” He pulls back and hard eyes stare down at me. “I will be your husband. And we will share this bed.”

Then he steps back and exits the room, closing the door behind him.

LUCA

I sit in my Bugatti La Voiture Noire in the middle of the night. The lights are off and so is the radio. Thankfully, the row of bushes I’m hiding behind is low enough to the ground to cover us while still giving me a clear view of the wedding chapel across the street. Twenty years ago, it was a funeral home, but then Alberto Rossi turned it into a wedding chapel. Guess he felt the living would bring him more money than the dead. And he just needed a cover.

My brother sits in the passenger seat, driving me nuts by blowing bubbles with his gum. “If you pop one more bubble, I’m gonna stab you in the neck with my knife.” I finally speak to him.

He snorts. “Someone isn’t getting enough pussy. What’s wrong? The soon-to-be Mrs. Bianchi not spreading her legs for you?”

I ignore him. My sex life is none of his business. No matter how right he may be.

I left Haven standing in our room earlier today and haven’t seen her since. I had work to do. Honestly, I’m pretty pissed at her. I thought she’d be happy. She’s always wanted marriage, a home, and children, and I’m going to give her that. I think she was more upset that she had been sold than the fact she had to marry me. I wasn’t going to tell her that I bought her. I had planned to keep that a secret, but my brother fucking ruined it. Just like he does everything.

“Just a tip, I wouldn’t eat whatever she cooks you. Poison isn’t that hard to come by.”

Headlights shine ahead of us, and a limo pulls up in the roundabout. A guy dressed in a pair of holey jeans and a wrinkled T-shirt climbs out of the back. He helps a very drunk looking redhead out behind him. They enter the chapel hand in hand.

“I’m not sure what you expected,” he continues. “You left her. She’ll always hate you for that.”

“I had no choice.”

He snorts. “She may believe your bullshit, but we both know you had a choice.” He looks over at me. “You chose the wrong girl.”

My hands fist the steering wheel. “What’s done is done.” I made a decision, and I’ve lived with it for almost two years now. She’ll either get over it, or she won’t. At this point, it doesn’t really matter. The world will know she’s my wife.

He nods at that. “Dad is-”

“I don’t care to talk about Dad and what he is,” I interrupt him. He doesn’t want me with Haven. He had other plans for me, but I won’t allow him to dictate my life. He has three other sons he can do that to.

I cross my arms over my chest, and the couple comes rushing out the glass door. She carries a black bouquet in her right hand. He picks her up, throwing her over his shoulder, and he slaps her ass before he places her back in the limo, and it takes off.

My brother sighs. “We’ve been here for over two hours. Maybe you got it wrong.”

“I didn’t,” I growl.

“What exactly did Titan tell you?”

I lean my head back against the headrest. I’ve told him this a hundred times now. “The Queen said she heard the client on his phone. He said there would be a drop tonight. No time. But she was positive Rossi was mentioned.”

“Sure, she was.” He snorts. Silence falls over the car once again, but it only lasts a few seconds before he speaks. “What do you think Rossi is up to? Why hasn’t he come after us?”

I’ve asked myself this very question every day for the past four years. Nite and I took six of his men on the mountain that day. Why not make his move? The mob isn’t known for their patience. If they want you dead, they will pull up to your house, your kids’ school, or even your church and shoot you right between your eyes and then drive away.

“What if this is a setup?” He goes on. “They could have paid the hooker a hefty amount in return for her to make up this fake drop. We run in. They kill us. Boom. All a lie.”

I run a hand down my face. “Guess we’ll just have to wait and see.” I see headlights coming toward us, and a white utility van follows shortly behind it. “We won’t have to wait long.” I reach over and hit him in the shoulder.

He sits up straighter, picks up the gun in his lap, and loads the magazine into his . 380. All jokes aside for now.

I do the same and look over at him. “Stay with me.”

He nods.

“I mean it,” I growl. Last time we did a job, he skipped out on me and ended up getting shot in the arm. You would have thought the fucker was dying. I even had to carry him.

“I know-”

“No, you don’t,” I interrupt him. “Stay the fuck with me, or I’ll shoot you myself.”

“Yeah, yeah.” He shoves open the passenger door and jumps out.

I exit as well, and he follows me across the dark street over to the chapel. Running, I come to the side and push my back up against the brick building. I hold the gun in front of me and aim, ready to shoot at any given second.

“Is this all of it?” a man asks. I recognize the voice. It’s Rossi’s right-hand man, Donatello. He replaced Bernard, the guy I left for dead on the side of the mountain four years ago.

Rossi and my father once were friends, and they worked together until they went their separate ways. Nobody knows what happened except for them. Honestly, I’m surprised they’re both still alive. For the most part, we stay on our side of Vegas, and he stays on his. Then he came after my family, and all bets were off.

But once again, tonight, we’re going to him. We’re going to take from him again. Because I don’t care what I have to do once I enter those back doors, but every one of his men that I see tonight will be dying. I’m going to tip the scales in the Bianchi favor. And my marriage to my college sweetheart is going to push my family to the front of that war. It doesn’t matter if she’s always loved me, or if she now hates me. It’s business. My life has always been that way, and I’m not about to change now. Not when my family needs me, plus it gets me what I want. Her.

“No. There’s one more bag in the truck,” an unfamiliar voice answers him.

“Go and get it,” Donatello demands. “It’s late, and I wanna get the fuck home.”

“Yes, sir.”

I walk down the side of the brick building until I come to the back. I peek my head around the corner to see a man dressed in dark jeans and a black T-shirt walk over to the white van. The double doors in the back are open. He leans over and grabs a trash bag.

I shove my gun in the waistband of my jeans, remove my knife from my black boot, and rush over to him. I come up from behind, slap my hand over his mouth, and yank his head back. Then I slash his neck from ear to ear, making sure to dig the knife in deep enough to get the job done.

Blood sprays across the bag and on the back of the van. His body goes limp, and I remove my hand from his mouth. He falls to his knees, then forward, his head hitting the back bumper before he slumps to the ground and bleeds out.

I step back and run the side of the blade across my black jeans before placing it back in my boot. Grabbing the bag, I throw it at my younger brother. “Take this back to the car.”

He arches a brow. “What about …?”