Page 13 of Deceptive Vows

Mikhail Dmitriyev.

That’s his name. The name of my husband-to-be, who thinks I’m someone else.

Since meeting him, I’ve gone from worrying about him killing me, to worrying about when he’s going to fuck me, to marrying him.

Marriage.

What the fuck am I going to do?

I keep trying to figure out if this is really happening, and I’m going crazy with worry. I also feel sick to my core because I know he would have killed José.

Why wouldn’t he?

He killed everybody else. All those people who were unfortunate enough to be on Raul’s estate, and then he killed Raul.

I’ll never forget the way he killed him.

It was effortless without any thought for compassion.

All the while, when Raul babbled what would have been indecipherable nonsense to everyone, I understood his garbling. I’m sure José understood, too.

That was possibly the first time we’d both seen Raul Alvarez show his love for his daughter. What we were seeing was a combination of the grieving father and one who was trying to take me down to hell with him.

After the way that scheme played out, I’m sure he would have been told Adriana was alive. So, when he saw me, inherdress, he would have known exactly what happened and what was going on.

By the same token, he wouldn’t have wanted me to use the chance to survive.

When our eyes first locked, I expected him to scream the truth of who I was.

He did just that.

The bastard tried to, but he couldn’t say anything with his tongue gone.

So much happened after that felt like redemption.

Raul’s throat was slashed the way he cut my mother’s throat after he raped her. She died as she tried to crawl away from him and back to Papa and me.

Tonight, Raul also got a bullet between the eyes, the same way my father went.

Redemption, yes. For those who are already dead, though.

Not for me.

I won’t get anything like that. There seems to be a different plan for me. One I have no idea how to pick apart.

Right now, as I stand in this room, in this bloodied wedding dress covered in the blood of the men I’ve hated the most, I’m like the fly who flew straight into the spider’s web.

I’m trapped, and now that I’m trapped, I’m not sure what is worse yet. My life the way it was yesterday, when I cried myself to sleep from worry over being a sex slave, or the version of myself now in the fucked-up present tense.

How the hell am I supposed to marry this monster?

What will my life be like?

Or, fuck…

How long until he doesn’t need me?

I’m young, but the things I’ve borne witness to and heard have aged my mind well beyond its years. When shit is happening, the help are always the first to hear the hushed whispers of murder plots and witness those scheming plots unfold.