Page 29

MARCO

“ Fucker’s not even here,” Jesse growled, shoving back over the lifeless body of one of the men.

Fifteen of Thrasher’s men were dead. It had been a blood bath. A massacre.

But the fucker knew it would be.

Only one of my men had been injured in the gunfire and even then, it had been a lucky shot. They were untrained, unskilled, and more importantly, outgunned.

Jesse’s observation only confirmed what I had already begun to suspect.

“It was a set-up,” I seethed.

Thrasher may well be a savage or a drug-fueled fool, but he wasn’t an optimist. He knew he and his men wouldn’t get out of this attack alive. He knew he would never get close to the reception. To Adalyn.

Yet he had sent his men here anyway.

It didn’t make any sense.

Then it hit me.

“It’s a distraction.” My voice was hollow even to my own ears.

Most of my men were with me by the gate, leaving only a few left back at the hall. I knew Thrasher didn’t have enough men to attack or get close enough to the guests inside— to Adalyn —but he was a man without anything to lose and they were the hardest to predict.

Alberto Mannino’s warning reverberated in my skull: ‘He will stop at nothing to get what he wants.’

“Get to the hall. NOW!”

ADALYN

“Adalyn, my love. I’m so glad you could finally join us.”

My heartbeat pounded in my ears, and my stomach lurched sickeningly. I stumbled back a step, struggling to keep my footing as I tried to move away from the looming presence of the monster before me.

He looked just the same as I remembered.

For a moment it was as if it had been only days rather than years since I’d last seen him. Then I noted the change in his eyes. They were predatory, deranged as they ran over my body, silhouetted against the darkness.

Sofia sauntered toward the man without hesitation.

“Sofia, no—" My strangled voice rang out, trying to warn her.

“I did as you asked, Darling. I brought her here for you,” Sofia cooed to him.

My stomach fell to the floor.

It was a set-up.

She had lured me outside to face a monster. To my death.

I gagged when a wicked smile contorted her lips as she approached the man, stroking his chest lovingly and gazing up at him adoringly.

He leaned down and sealed his mouth to hers. She all but threw herself at him, latching onto him passionately and moaning into him. Ricardo showed no such enthusiasm, his eyes remaining trained on me the entire time, with an intensity that made me feel like I was being hunted.

I looked away and closed my eyes, not wanting to see any more of the disturbing display before me.

“Now. Kill the bitch.” Sofia’s words had my eyes immediately springing back open.

She was standing before Ricardo, his arm possessively wrapped around her shoulders as she looked at me with unrestrained hatred unfurling in her eyes.

I gulped as another wave of fear sliced through me.

Part of my brain screamed at me to run, but I knew it would be futile. Ricardo was not only stronger than me and faster—he was also armed. I would be dead before I could even get to the gun at my thigh.

I watched wide-eyed as Ricardo reached his hand across Sofia’s face and yanked her head suddenly to the side, the movement so violent that a sickening snap obliterated the silence.

Her body fell limp immediately, and he tossed her to the floor as if she were no more than a bag of bones, her glassy eyes frozen in the night.

A strangled cry tore from my throat and I fell to my knees. Bile rose in my throat and this time I couldn’t keep it down. The world swirled before me as my stomach emptied itself.

I hardly registered a presence kneeling beside me on the floor until a large, calloused hand pulled my face painfully to the side.

“You should have known this was going to happen, my love.” Ricardo said softly. His dark, soulless eyes piercing into me. “You’ve always been mine.”

The smile on his face suddenly dripped into a hateful grimace as his eyes fell to my dress.

“It seems you forgot that,” he spat, shoving my face away from him as he rose to his feet.

He turned on his heel, pacing the distance between me and Sofia’s lifeless body agitatedly.

My hand subtly searched for the hard edge of my gun through the fabric and a tear trailed down my cheek as I realized how impossibly trapped it was under the material. A sob bubbled in my throat as the last of my hope extinguished.

“Imagine my surprise when after all these years of waiting for my ridiculous father to die, I find you kidnapped by the La Torre’s. How dare he take what is MINE!” He roared, swinging around to face me so ferociously I flinched and braced for impact.

“No, no, no, no!” Ricardo cooed, kneeling beside me once again and taking my face between his hands. I tried to wrench myself away from his touch, but he latched onto my skin with a bruising force. “Don’t be afraid, my love. I am here to save you.”

I couldn’t fight him as his lips crushed fiercely against mine. Silent tears rolled down my face and I wanted so much to fight him off, to push him away, but I couldn’t.

I was frozen. Terrified and caged by absolute and inescapable fear.

“You see, my love, I have always wanted you. You caught my eye the moment our fathers joined forces all those years ago. You are such a beauty, Adalyn.” He murmured, tracing his hand down the side of my cheek and I fought the urge to spit in his face. “I demanded my father broker our marriage the moment you turned eighteen, but both him and your insolent father refused. So…I took what was mine on your eighteenth birthday, regardless of what they wanted. It still wasn’t enough to force them into a deal though.” He spat.

I choked on a sob as understanding made me realize the depravity of the situation. Of the man before me.

I am going to die today.

Whether it was a primal instinct or perhaps an unconscious recognition of the inevitability before me, the second those six words materialized in my mind, a deep-seated sense of tranquility eclipsed the unrelenting chaos inside me.

If I was going to die today, I was going to die being me .

Not a pawn in a battle amongst men.

Not a spectator to my own past trauma.

I was going to die with the truth on my tongue and the love of one incredible man in my heart.

I wasn’t going to be afraid anymore.

“I don’t need to be saved. I chose this,” I said softly the moment he pulled away.

He paused, fixing me with a maniacal look. “No! It’s not true!” he shouted, viciously shaking his head from side to side and releasing my face.

I didn’t flinch this time.

“I was never yours, Ricardo. You drugged me, strangled me, and raped me on that beach when I was eighteen.”

“Liar!” He thundered, pulling back his elbow and striking me across the face.

My head whipped to the right. Stars danced across my vision and my ears rang deafeningly. My body collapsing to the side. I took in a ragged breath, trying to steady myself as the world tilted around me.

When my vision grew steadier, Ricardo was pacing backwards and forwards again like a wild animal.

I let out a painful breath, “I wasn’t yours to take that night.”

“SHUT UP!” Ricardo bellowed. I felt the impact of his boot as it slammed into my back, winding me instantly and pushing me violently into the stones.

I struggled to find my voice—my breath.

But I would. I would not be a pawn in this game of chess any longer.

“I have only ever belonged to one man.” My breathless voice was a mere whisper on the breeze. I pushed myself slowly onto my knees. “A man that is kind. Who loves fearlessly. Who is loyal and brilliant and a better man than you will ever be?—"

“SILENCE!” Ricardo screamed, darting toward me and striking me again across the face.

Blood flowed into my mouth and the world tilted and ghosted before me. My eyes fluttered closed as I temporarily blacked out. When they re-opened, my face was against the stones and my body was painfully twisted to the side.

I knew the end was near when Ricardo’s form loomed over me, engulfing me in his shadow. The barrel of a gun pointed straight at me.

But I wasn’t afraid anymore.

I smiled as tears trickled down my face and I thought of the only person in the world I never wanted to have to leave.

“I’ll see you on the other side, my love.”

I love you, Marco.

When the bang rang out, I didn’t even flinch.

MARCO

Everything around me blurred into obscurity as I ran through the gardens toward the distant shouts of a man on the brink of sanity. A skin splitting crack rang out amongst the night air, and I too found myself slipping into madness as I sprinted to the source of the noise.

The instant I turned the final corner, I saw two things simultaneously. The first: Ada laying crumpled in a pool of blood. The second: Ricardo Lopez with a baretta pointed directly at my wife.

The anguish and hatred that filled me coalesced into a roar as I slammed against the man who threatened to extinguish the life of the only person I had ever truly loved.

The gun exploded somewhere near my head as I tackled Ricardo to the floor. Trapping him beneath me as I beat into his face with my bare fists. His blood splattered across me as I smashed my knuckles against his skull over and over again, the contours of his face disappearing beneath them until nothing but a bloody mass of grotesque skin and bone remained.

I knew he was dead, but I couldn’t stop. I was as deranged as the man whose brain was now scattered across the stones before me.

“Marco!” Jesse’s voice registered somewhere in the back of my mind, but I scarcely even heard it.

I was too late to save her.

Tears clouded my vision, and I howled in anguish, completely lost to the madness.

“MARCO!”

I felt myself be dragged backwards, away from the bloody stump of a man I’d created.

Jesse’s face swam in front of my eyes, but I couldn’t make out what he was saying, the world and his words muffled as if submerged in muddy water.

My head jerked sharply to the side and the pain of the blow drove the delirious silence away in an instant.

“ADA NEEDS YOU!”

Ada.

Ada needs you.

It was enough to snap me out of my insanity.

When I stilled against the hands restraining me, Jesse nodded to the men and I fell to the floor, crawling to the crumpled body of my wife.

Blood stained her white dress and grew bigger with every second. Her beautiful, delicate face almost unrecognizable amongst the damage Ricardo had caused.

A sob tore through my chest as a pain worse than death consumed me.