Page 15 of The Butcher's Wife

Mom appears behind me.

“I’ll take those,” she says as she slips the flowers from my hand.

Dried petals spray onto the ground.

I deserve this.

I don’t look at Dom’s face anymore. I fix my gaze on his hands, which rise to meet mine. My right hand is still clutching a handful of dried, crumbling petals, and he simply wraps his hand—rough and covered in tattoos—around my loose fist. The wordmiseriais tattooed across his fingers.

Misery.

Is that dried blood on his knuckles?

Dom recites his vows in a gravelly voice, ending ontill death do us part.

The priest has to cue me several times as I stumble through my vows. Mom mutters under her breath behind me. Oddly, I don’t feel embarrassed like I normally would. Even if he hates me, this is Dom. I’ve seen him pretend to scream for mercy while he let a teenage Carlo pin him to the ground. He’s performed the viral dances my cousins have taught him in the living room while my parents laughed. He’s not a man shame sticks to.

But when the priest passes me Dom’s ring, my heart crumbles. I recognize this ring, an old gold scratched-up thing with the initialsD + Finscribed on the inside.

This is Dad’s.

Dom didn’t get these rings. Mom harvested her and Dad’s wedding bands just to save face.

I let the petals drop to the carpet. Humiliation burns my cheeks, and tears blur my vision as I take Dom’s left hand, massive and unyielding as a bear’s paw. Two of his fingers twitch as I work the ring onto his third finger, forcing it to fit.I swallow back tears atthatimplication. My mind’s racing, stumbling to latch onto anything that might comfort me.

I’m forcing him to marry me just like Aldo would’ve forced me.

Oh God. He really does hate me.

I clamp my mouth shut to keep an apology from spilling out. There’s no one else I know with Dom’s power and resources who can protect me and my family like he can. I can’t back out of this—I’ll have to make it up to him in another way.

Bowing my face to hide the tears in my eyes, I raise my hand so he can slide my ring on. It’s my Mom’s thin, gold wedding band, dented on the left side from washing dishes. A tear slips down my cheek and drops to the frayed blue carpet.

With some difficulty, I swallow. I’ll make this work. I have to. It’s life or death, and I have to at least try, because…

I glance at my family on the pew, just the four of them now.

I can’t take another loss.

“You may now kiss the bride,” the priest says.

My heart rate explodes.What did he say?

I shoot my head up. Dom’s already watching me, disgust curling his lips. My mouth goes dry. I’d be lying if I said I’ve never imagined what it’d be like to kiss Dom again, or to run my fingers through his beard and long hair.

Dom tracks the movement of my tongue, which darts out to lick my lower lip. It’s too late to back out of this. I have to make this work.

Even with my stripper heels, he’s so tall that the top of my head only comes up to his mouth. He’ll have to lean down to kiss me, but he’s not moving closer. Instead, I see it—when he decides he’s going to leave me here, without a kiss.

His mouth firms, and he shakes his head imperceptibly, shifting like he’s going to walk away—the warlord leaving his bride in the cold, dark forest to freeze and starve.

I crush my hands into fists. He has to do it. I need him. He can’t leave me here.

Before he moves, I reach for his forearm and seize it in my grip. My hand doesn’t even come close to circling the muscle there, but I jerk him toward me all the same.

“Kiss me,” I say in a soft, urgent voice.

At least one truth I’ve always known doesn’t betray me. I’m not at all shocked when Dom the Butcher, Salvatore Luporini’s most loyal dog, bows his head without thought. Acquiescence is written into his bones. His breath, warm and minty, washes over me. Did he brush his teeth for this? Maybe there’s a small chip in his armor of hate.