Page 4 of The Chief (Those (Damn!) Texas Dantes #3)

PETRA HADN’T blinked in five minutes. Hadn’t moved. Hadn’t shifted so much as a breath. She sat like a sculpture carved from ice, flawless, chilling, and entirely untouchable.

Elise stood behind her eldest sister, fingers fussing with the scalloped veil that cascaded down Petra’s back like spun frost. The fabric caught the light from the Severin bridal suite’s chandelier, throwing spiderwebbed glints across the marble floor.

Katrina and Leanora flanked the makeup table, whispering over perfume choices and heel height, while Petra sat silent, regal, unflinching.

Too unflinching.

Elise didn’t realize how tense she’d become until the comb in her hand snapped, loud and sudden, like a gunshot in a mausoleum.

The sound jolted the room, sharp against the padded hush of silk and Chanel.

Petra didn’t flinch. That made it worse.

Elise stared down at the fractured ivory in her fingers, as if it had screamed something she hadn’t meant to say aloud.

“Ow,” Petra said mildly, though Elise doubted she felt a thing.

“Sorry!” Elise scrambled to catch the fragments of ivory. “It broke. I didn’t mean— I’ll get another one.”

“Leave it,” Petra murmured. “The veil’s fine.”

Fine. Everything was always fine with Petra.

When their father shouted, when Elise came home crying, when the world cracked sideways, Petra always smoothed the edges and called it fine.

It had been her armor long before Elise learned to wear a smile like a shield.

But today, that word seemed less like comfort and more like surrender, like Petra was already gone, and only the shape of her remained.

Elise turned to the table and grabbed a hairpin, more for something to do than out of necessity. Her nerves skittered across her skin like they were trying to climb out of her body.

“You look beautiful,” she tried.

“It doesn’t matter.”

That gave her pause. Elise glanced at Petra in the mirror. Her sister’s reflection stared forward, serene and detached, as if she weren’t about to marry one of the most dangerous men in Texas. As if she weren’t being handed over to Cade Dante as part of a contract.

Elise cleared her throat. “Petra... do you want this?”

Petra shrugged. “Does it matter?”

“Of course it does. You can still say no. You can back out. Dad’s not here to stop you anymore. And Leif... Our brother adores you. He won’t make you marry Cade.”

Petra’s eyes flicked upward, her expression so calm it nearly masked the exhaustion beneath.

Her makeup was flawless, but it only amplified the hollows beneath her cheekbones, the tightness around her mouth.

Her skin looked like porcelain stretched too thin.

Beautiful, yes, but brittle. The kind of beauty that cracked if you looked too long, or if you touched it the wrong way.

And Elise had the terrible impression that someone had already touched it wrong, and left cracks no one else could see.

“You’re right. He won’t make me marry Cade.” She tilted her head ever so slightly to one side. “And then what? Watch our family crumble because I had issues? Let the Dantes destroy us?”

“That’s not what I—”

Petra held up a hand. “This isn’t a fairytale, Elise. You don’t get to marry someone for love when you’re a Severin. This marriage is part of a contract between our families. I’m part of that contract. There’s no choice but to marry Cade.”

Her voice wasn’t cruel. It was worse than that. It was dead.

Elise stepped back, the sting of it catching her off guard, gnawing at something tender beneath her ribs.

It wasn’t just the words. It was the emptiness behind them.

Like Petra had scraped herself out, piece by piece, until nothing remained but duty.

The fake smile she wore like armor cracked for a second.

“You’re not angry,” Elise whispered.

“I don’t have time to be angry.”

“You used to care,” she argued. “You used to feel things. You used to braid my hair before school—always too tight, but you’d hum while you did it, and your hands smelled like gardenia lotion.

You used to sneak chocolate into my coat pockets when Dad got too strict about sugar.

You used to tell me I was smart even when everyone else just called me pretty.

I remember the day you punched that boy in the mouth for calling me empty-headed.

You looked furious, like you could’ve blown the whole world to nothing just for me. ”

Petra’s lips trembled for a half-second before she pressed them flat, a flicker of movement so quick it could’ve been imagined. But she still didn’t speak. Just stared at her reflection like it was someone else’s life she was stepping into.

Across the room, Katrina laughed too loudly at something Leanora said.

The tension in the suite had been perfumed, powdered, and dressed in couture.

But it settled over Elise like a veil soaked in ice water, frigid, stifling, and impossible to shake.

Beneath the satin gloss of tradition and elegance, her nerves were totally frayed, sparking against skin that no one else seemed to notice was burning.

Yet, it clung to the air like humidity before a storm.

Elise reached for another pin to do something, anything, to hold herself together—

And froze.

Her palm tingled.

She looked down.

A faint shimmer danced beneath the skin, just below the base of her fingers. It looked like a bruise caught mid-bloom. She rubbed at it with her thumb. The shape didn’t fade. In fact, it seemed to sharpen. Something dark. Symmetrical. Like the outline of an animal’s face.

A wolf?

“What the hell...” she whispered.

The door opened. An attendant peeked in, a headset clipped to her ear and a clipboard in hand, her smile politely strained. Leanora turned toward the door as the woman announced, “Five minutes. You’re needed out front in five minutes.”

Elise curled her hand into a fist and tucked it behind her back, heart thudding. What was that? A rash? A hallucination? Or...

She pressed her fingers against the strange warmth, pulse racing. It burned like a brand, not a bruise. Something important. Something final. Her breath hitched. Whatever it was, it didn’t feel like a trick of nerves or stress. It felt permanent.

And then the stories she’d heard, whispers traded between daughters of old alliances, drunken half-jokes at family tables, came rushing back.

The Dante Brand.

A mark that chose. A mark that burned. A mark that didn’t lie.

No. That was just myth. Folklore. A bedtime tale twisted into mafia gossip. And this? This was just a nasty rash with flair.

And yet the thing on her palm pulsed like it knew her name.

Her thoughts spun. She was no stranger to weird dreams or stress-induced jitters, but this... This was different. Wrong. And the worst part? A small, irrational part of her didn’t want anyone else to see it. Not even her sisters. Not yet.

“Ready?” Katrina asked, gliding to Petra’s side.

Petra stood. Her gown whispered across the marble like snowfall. “Always.”

She didn’t look at Elise.

Elise hesitated, still sensing the phantom heat in her hand. Something was wrong.

But all she could do was lift her chin, paste on that well-worn, dazzling Severin smile, and step into line beside a sister who was more like a stranger than her blood relation.

Her heels clicked a countdown on the marble as they left the suite, each step echoing like a dare in a chapel of lies.

The kind of sound that signaled something inevitable, a reckoning you couldn’t stop, only brace for.

The heaviness of silk and secrets trailed behind her, and the burning sensation in her palm hadn’t faded.

It pulsed with every step, every heartbeat, like a fuse lit just beneath her skin.

She wasn’t supposed to be the bride. She wasn’t supposed to matter. And yet—

Every instinct screamed that something was coming. Something that would tear the script in half.

And she was walking straight into it.

PETRA WALKED toward him like a queen marching to execution. Chin high. Shoulders locked. Spine straight. Each step unhurried, as though she were counting them off against a clock she could no longer rewind.

Her hand rested in the crook of Leif’s arm, not gripping, not seeking comfort. Just placed there, like a final signature on a document she never agreed to sign. Her eyes didn’t stray. Her mouth remained set in a tight, professional line she wore like armor. She looked pristine. Caged in control.

And Cade hated how well she pulled it off.

Each step punched a hole straight through his patience. Not because she appeared weak. Petra was anything but. She exemplified iron beneath silk, a lawyer who could dismantle a man with words sharper than any blade. But this performance? This cold, perfect submission to tradition?

It wasn’t her strength he hated. It was the way she wielded it now, not to fight, but to comply.

Strategy masquerading as surrender. Obedience performed with exactness.

She was too smart, too capable to be anyone’s pawn.

And yet here she came, walking the aisle like a motion passed in chambers—final, dry, and stripped of all sentiment.

And that, more than anything, made him want to flip the whole damn merger on its head.

God, he hated this.

He hated this church. Every stone of it seemed steeped in old blood and secrets. He hated the eyes on him, calculating, expectant. The hush of the crowd, thick with judgment and whispered wagers. The arrangement, the theater of it, where vows meant leverage and lace camouflaged cages.

He hated the rules, the ritual, the suffocating reverence of it all.

Every breath he took appeared choreographed, lines he never agreed to memorize.

It wasn’t nerves clawing at him. It was legacy, obligation, and the silent dare not to flinch.

Like he’d been fitted for shackles and expected to say thank you.