Page 8 of Broken Mafia Bride

By the time it’s all gone, the man holds out a bottle of cool water to me. My throat spasms with anticipation just seeing that simple bottle of water. I am all too glad to switch the mug for the bottle.

“Not so fast, you’ll?—”

Water goes down the wrong way. I begin to choke and hack, and the man is there a second later, patting my back and taking the bottle away.

“I tried to warn you,” he reprimands.

I glare at him as I raise my head. “A little too late.”

“You’ll be fine, princess. Nobody ever died from choking on water.”

“S-says who?” I try to snort, but only a soft, tired sound comes out. My body is trembling with exhaustion. I can’t even begin to imagine the hell I went through. I remember being fished out of the water, and something heavy holding me down in the first place.

The question was, what the hell was I doing in the water in the first place?

“Was I trying to k-kill myself?” I manage to ask softly.

He snorts, running a hand through his blond hair, biceps rippling. My gaze is drawn to the tattoos I see peeking out from the arm of his short-sleeved shirt.

“You weren’t,” he states matter-of-factly. “No one tries to kill themselves in what I googled to be a five-figure designer dress and jewelry.”

My jaw drops. “I was in a dress, with expensive jewelry?”

“A white wedding-style dress, Ariel,” he clarifies, catching me off guard.

That explains the weight that I remembered dragging me down, but it still didn’t help with the memories.

“Ariel?” I ask.

The name tastes strange on my tongue, like it belongs to someone else. But it’s better than nothing.

I don’t know if it’s my imagination, but his cheeks look ruddy all of a sudden. “I have nieces, okay? They’re into Disney princesses. Ariel fits since I saved you from drowning, like in the cartoon. You knowThe Little Mermaid, right?”

Some part of me recognizes that I know about it, but I can’t seem to recall the details. Everything seems to be trapped in ahaze, and when I try too hard to break through the mental fog, a pulsing headache starts at the base of my skull.

“I think my name starts with a G,” I murmur.

“How do you know that? Are you remembering something?” He leans in, searching my eyes.

I pull back, not yet entirely comfortable with him in my personal space. “No. But I had some sort of dream. I don’t know what exactly it was, but it was weird.”

“Well, G is a beautiful initial for whatever your name supposedly is,” he tells me. “But I think I’ll stick with Ariel for now.”

He sees me eyeing the water and hands it to me again. This time around, I sip it more slowly, relieved when the cool liquid washes down my throat and soothes some of the scratchy dryness.

“I don’t know your name,” I point out. “And you seem to know more about me than I do.” A part of me still doesn’t trust him, and my gaze keeps on flickering around the room, trying to figure out an escape plan, just in case.

A hint of a smile plays on his lips. “I’m Marco.”

“And what do you do?”

“I’m a fisherman, contracted with organizations in the U.S. for supply.”

“So we’re in America?”

“Yes. Did you think you should be somewhere else?”

“No, but this place feels strange to me. Wherever I’m from, it can’t be around here.”