Series: Lee Savino
Total pages in book: 68
Estimated words: 66414 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 332(@200wpm)___ 266(@250wpm)___ 221(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 66414 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 332(@200wpm)___ 266(@250wpm)___ 221(@300wpm)
No wonder he doesn’t want me as a wife.
“I’ll get us more hot cocoa,” Missy says. She gives my hand one more squeeze and heads out into the hall, where I hear murmured voices. She and Daisy are conferring.
My phone beeps, and I check it. For a second, I wonder if it’s Matthias reaching out, but no, it’s a text from Axel. It loads slowly, and when it appears it takes my breath away.
It’s our wedding photo. We’re at the aisle of the little chapel, the triplets laughing in the background, in their kilts and purple bouquets.
Matthias and I look so happy. I look like a freaking movie star. The star of the show.
I was so happy–even after being kidnapped to marry a mobster by my own dad. I touch my face. Was that really me?
I was glowing. Not just from the diamonds around my neck. I’m in love.
Matthias looks happy too. But it must have been a lie.
Missy returns to find me sobbing.
“What happened? Who do I need to kill?” Her fierce tone reminds me why she’s my best friend.
Wordless, I show her the photo. Her little “Oh,” makes me cry harder. Because she gets it. She puts her arms around me and lets me soak her sweatshirt with my tears.
“I wanted it,” I tell her. I had it, and I lost it. And I want it back, even if it was all fake.
I press my face into Missy’s shoulder. My belly cramps with familiar pain, but it’s not the ovarian cysts acting up.
It’s heartbreak.
Matthias
I stare at the charred log in my fireplace. It’ll be cold tonight, well below freezing. I should light a fire, but I don’t feel like it.
The cold numbs me the way the Moon Cure did. It’s about the only relief I’ll ever get, far more than I deserve.
Maisy. Maisy. Maisy. My bear won’t stop chanting her name. As if I were thinking of anyone or anything else.
I hurt Maisy. After all these years of trying to hold back to avoid exactly that, I never saw that it would be my act of holding back that inflicted the deepest wound.
A distant crunch of a boot alerts me to a visitor. Axel opens my door and slips inside without asking permission. He takes in the sight of me staring at the empty fireplace. I don’t look up, don’t move. I don’t have the energy.
On the bright side, I don’t want to kill him anymore. He’s the only tie I have to Maisy right now. He’ll take care of her in the way I can’t.
“Have you talked to Maisy?” he asks.
Just hearing her name sends a wave of fresh pain throbbing through me. I shake my head, feeling too tired to speak.
“I wanted to give you this.” Axel sets something on my coffee table with a click. It’s the diamond necklace. Her collar. “She left it in my car.”
Of course she did. Why would she keep it? “What about the ring?”
“I didn’t see it.”
I'm still wearing mine. I realize I’m twisting the gold band around my finger and drop my hands. “Is she okay?”
“I think you know the answer to that.”
She’s broken-hearted. I sold her a fairy tale and shattered it. There’s no going back. She knows the sort of person I am now.
This is for the best.
I swallow around the lump in my throat. “I’m going to need you to watch over her.”
“That’s your job.” His eyes glitter with his bear. He’s pissed at me, and I get it. I’m pissed at myself.
“Not anymore.” My bear grumbles, and I lose myself in the lonely sound. “She asked me not to contact her.”
Axel steps in front of me, snapping his fingers to get my attention. “I don’t know what happened between you two, but you have a responsibility to her. You married her. Why in the hell haven’t you marked her yet?”
“What was I supposed to do?” I thunder, all my frustrations suddenly flooding to the surface, especially because Axel seems to be demanding the same thing Maisy was. “Mark a girl who’d never been kissed before our wedding night? How fair is that to her? I’m ten years older than her, Axel. She’d never been on a single date before. Never been kissed. Still lives at home with her grandmother. You think it’s right for me to snatch her up and mark her just because it’s what I need? What about her needs?”
Axel shakes his head. “She’s a grown woman. Did you give her a choice?”
I grip the sides of my chair. “I’m protecting her!” I’m full-on shouting now, which I never do. I’m the one in the family who never loses his temper. Who is always cool, calm, and controlled. Now I can’t even think with my bear caterwauling at me to find Maisy.
“You’re not protecting her. You're protecting yourself.” Axel shakes his head. “If you leave her alone, you’re not the man I thought you were.”