Chapter 0008

MARIELLA

The wedding dress fitted me perfectly after all the alterations. My makeup was natural and on-point, with smoky eyes, pink blush, and peach lipstick. I doubted I looked any older than my age, though, which was why Mama’s face had the slight hint of discomfort.

“I should’ve chosen some other hairstyle,” she said through gritted teeth. “A chignon perhaps?”

I didn’t know about her, but I loved my waves let down. “Mama, I don’t want to look older. I want to look beautiful.”

“Marie, you look good in all hairstyles, so you never have to worry about that,” she immediately said. “Do you know how many people would kill to have hair like yours?”

“Should I feel attacked?” Ara added from the door. She wore a knee-length frock with long puffy sleeves and a round neckline. “Are you talking about the quality of her hair or the colour? If it’s the colour, then I finally understand why you love her more.” She ran her hand down her plaited brown hair.

“Your hair is just as gorgeous, Ara.” Mama turned to her as I moved away from the mirror and sat on the long chaise couch near the arched window. “But why are you here? I asked you to greet the guests.”

“Mama, I’m tired of smiling. My jaw hurts.” She groaned. “And what’s the use of smiling when no one smiles back?”

I couldn’t help but laugh. At least with Ara around, I felt a lot calmer. In just a few minutes, I’d be walking down the aisle and then my life would change forever. Every time the thought of it dawned on me, my feet trembled.

“Please, get out of the room. I need to speak to Marie alone.” With every step Mama took toward Ara, she took one back until she was outside the doorsill. Mama shut the door on her face and turned to me, her expressions unreadable. “There are some things I need to talk to you about.”

I certainly knew where this was going. “I think it’s time. We should head down.”

“We still have about five minutes to spare.” I braced myself as she stalked toward me and held my shoulders. “Marie, a wedding day is the most special day in a woman’s life. Well, that is, until the day their children are born.” She nodded. “During a wedding night—”

“Mama, you really don’t need to give me a one-on-one lecture on what a wedding night’s about,” I said, interrupting her.

“At least you should know.”

“Do you seriously think I don’t? I have a best friend who’s married.”

Mama rolled her eyes and scoffed. “Oh, that girl knows how to gossip. I would’ve sent her to have this talk with you, honestly.”

“I wish she were here,” I mumbled.

Niana would’ve been so thrilled to see me walk down the aisle, but she was stuck in Italy because of her beau’s work. Not that many people were invited today, anyway.

It was weird how secretive Eros and Adonis were about this whole marriage. The few people that were attending were underbosses and captains with the closest connections to the capo and David.

“Are Eros’s parents attending?” I asked Mama, and she moved back, shaking her head. “Why?”

“They’re not of our world, Marie. You’ve been researching about them for quite the time, so you should know.”

I stopped from shrugging my shoulders and said, “Three days isn’t quite the time.”

She didn’t answer, but the look on her face told me she understood the mockery behind my words.

Castellanos Industries was a huge deal in the world of business and money. In these three days, I’ve read all that I could. Eros’s reputation to the outer world was the cleanest and the most prosperous I’d seen, which completely contrasted with the repute he had in ours. His secrecy seemed reasonable now. I’d seen pictures of his parents on the net, but it wasn’t as same as it would’ve been to have them here.

Those articles about Eros Castellanos said he was the most eligible bachelor of New York. But that was about to change.

I just wished I had more insight into who he really was.

“Mama,” I called in a low voice, and she met my eyes again. “What if I learn Eros isn’t the type . . . isn’t a good man? What if I figure out I can’t stay with him?”

“What? Why would you say that?” She panicked.

I wished there was something other than the flicker of fear in her eyes. Worry, perhaps. She feared what people would say if my marriage to Eros didn’t work out. If I came back home. If . . . I couldn’t be what he wanted me to be.

“We’re women, Marie. We have to adjust to our husbands. It’s our duty.” She held my wrist in a firm grip and said, “There’s never an easy way out of marriages like these. He’s an underboss and so is your father. This marriage is not a binding of two people, but of two families and combining of two powers. You can’t just up and leave. You can’t say things like that.”

If heartbreak had a sound, Mama’s word sounded exactly like that. There would be no returning or turning away from this.

I gave a terse nod to her and pulled my hands away. There was a momentary shock on her face, probably at the look of disappointment in my eyes. I hated the way her words made me feel, but I knew where she stood. She wouldn’t want to see me struggle with rumours and the whispers this world would bring to the face of a broken marriage.

But what she wasn’t thinking about was the struggle of being with a man I didn’t know, a man who could be the exact opposite of what he looked like.

“It’s my duty to bear through anything and everything my husband does,” I said bitterly. Even if he beat me up or replaced me with a hundred mistresses or sold me off for more power. These had happened before.

Standing before the door, I took a deep breath, my back turned to Mama. She should’ve stopped me and said something that would’ve given me hope I would be alright. That, even though this was my last day, I would find a home with them no matter what.

I opened the door and walked out of it, leaving her alone in the room. She would never say what I needed to hear.

Papa was waiting at the end of the stairs in his best tuxedo. His eyes shuffled between the venue outside the archway and his watch, but then they landed on me as I strode down the stairs, holding my dress. He didn’t smile because of the soldiers that were guarding the area, but I could see a flicker of possessiveness, love and pain in his eyes.

“Are you ready?” he asked, extending his arm, and I nodded, my throat too tight to utter a word.

I looped one of my hands around his arm while, with the other, I held the bouquet of white roses and closed my eyes after taking our position in front of the archway that led out to the aisle. The sound of people chattering and laughing mixed with the sound of music made me even more nervous.

I opened my eyes at the clicking sound of the door and straightened. I was ready to face whatever was on the other side. Every step seemed too difficult to take, but I did it anyway, matching them with the beats of the music and ambling down the aisle.

The first person I noticed was Domenico Guerra, standing behind Eros. His dirty blond hair was jelled back, and he wasn’t in tight jeans and loose shirts like his usual style, but in a suit that made him look like an entirely different person. There was something about Domenico that always got attention first.

My gaze shifted to Eros, turned toward the aisle. There was no smile or emotion on his face and I could almost feel the chillness in my bones. To him, this marriage was the game of gain. A game of power. But I was yet to determine what this marriage would be for me.

I held my head high as Papa handed me over to Eros, and the vows began. His hands were stiff, and I shivered on the inside. The quaking was more because of the people staring at me. With Eros on the pedestal, I felt overwhelmed, which made me wonder what would’ve happened if it were Adonis in his place instead.

The moment the mayor announced it was time for the kiss, my limbs froze. I’d thought I could handle it. But who had I been kidding?

Eros didn’t seem bothered because, the next moment, he bridged the distance between us. His hand went up to hold the back of my neck and pull me in. I bet he could feel the stiffness of my muscles and the jittering in my nerves.

The moment he dipped his head, I closed my eyes, my chest constricting at the slow warmth passing from his body to mine like a slow current. And then his lips were on mine in a feather-light motion. They were soft like satin, but he didn’t move and just pressed them to mine.

When he pulled back, I opened my eyes, only to look into his sapphire eyes, glimmering with . . . need, I thought? But a small mocking voice in my head snapped at me. How could a man like him feel anything close to desire for me?

***

EROS

“You know I’m supposed to dance with your sister first, right?” I asked, arching a brow at Arabella Romano, the brunette sister, with the 24x7 look of judgement. If looks could scream, she had the loudest mocking expression I’d come across in the twenty-eight years of my life.

“Well, you’re dancing with me now. And no one seems to mind.” She grinned.

Her height was many inches below my shoulders, which was why she had to force herself as upright as she could to be able to hold my shoulders and match my pace at the dance.

Something about that grin stuck up my arse. She was here for something, which was quite clear from the slyness in her eyes.

“What do you want?” It was as straightforward as this could get.

“Who says I want something?” She turned her lips downward and shrugged her shoulders.

“I’m twelve years older than you and much better at reading human emotions than you are,” I said. “And frankly, your expressions are not as subtle as your sister’s.”

“Do you find it difficult to understand her subtleness?”

I scoffed. “It’s not subtle enough to fool the masters of masking, kiddo.”

“I’m not a kiddo,” she hissed, and my eyes narrowed.

“Any made man would be offended at your tone.”

She tensed at my words but didn’t let the tension in her body show on her face. “You’re not just any made man. You’re Eros Castellanos and my brother-in-law. It’s your duty to protect me and not hurt me.”

“It’s Danilo’s duty to protect you. My duty is to protect your sister.”

“Will you protect my sister?” she asked in a low voice.

My brows knitted together. She was the only member in the Romano family who’d asked me this. The only one who sounded genuinely worried about Mariella. Arabella was mischievous, but she meant well.

“She’s my wife, so I have to.”

She sighed in disappointment. “You make it sound like you are obliged to. As if you don’t actually want to.”

“Listen, you don’t know half of anything going on here, okay?” I snapped. “I don’t even know your sister, and if you’re expecting those hearty crap from me, then stop. Live with the fact that I’ll do whatever is expected of me as a husband, and that’s all I have to say about it.”

She gave a curt nod and looked around. “Marie doesn’t know you either, but I know her. She’ll try whatever it takes to make this marriage work. Even if you beat her or hurt her or curse her or whatever.”

My brows pressed deeper and shock rippled through me. “Does she think I’ll . . . do all of that?”

“We have a habit of expecting the worst first so that we don’t feel disappointed when the worst becomes reality.”

“What a bullshit motto!” I rolled my eyes and looked to my right, only to find Mariella on the dance floor as well.

All this time, she’d been sitting stiffly at the table, refusing to dance with anyone, and now, she was dancing with a boy who looked barely twenty. But that wasn’t all. She was laughing. The distance between the pair irked me even more.

It was a sudden sense of protectiveness and anger. God, what a major pain in the ass to be an Italian! We had a sense of possessiveness that could tear the world apart. I’d seen Adonis have that for Bella. If a man so much as hinted anything toward his wife, he would rip him into pieces.

It was more anger on my part right now, though. She’d refused to dance with me.

“She looks happy, doesn’t she?” Arabella’s voice pulled my attention. I turned back to her and chose not to react to her words. “Everyone wanted them to be a thing.”

“Everyone?” She nodded, and I asked, “I believe that doesn’t include your parents.”

“Unfortunately, no.” She clicked or tongue. “But, even so, they look great together. A perfect match.”

“Too bad that perfect match didn’t work out,” I mocked. But my stomach tightened. I forced myself to not look toward Mariella and whoever she was dancing with.

At the altar, for the first time, I’d held her so close, had smelt her sweet vanilla perfume. That scent would’ve driven me crazy if I hadn’t pulled back. If I hadn’t reminded myself what this was for me and that, I already had someone more important in my life.

“Who knows? Maybe someday . . .” Arabella didn’t continue her words as I arched a brow at her.

“Why did you stop? Do tell what will happen and what makes you think something will happen.”

She shook her head reluctantly. “Nah! It was fun as long as the defiance lasted.”

“Defiance?” My eyes rounded.

“Defiance toward this whole arrangement, my sister, and your duties as a husband. Now, there’s just jealousy.”

“Jealousy?” Disbelief smeared my voice, but hidden underneath it was a different form of defiance. “I’m a man, Arabella, and not a child like him, which obviously makes me far better than him.”

“How confident does a man need to be to make narcissism his defence mechanism?” she questioned in a mocking tone.

Only now had I realised what she was trying to do. She’d been trying to spark agitation in me. Make me question my motives for marrying her sister. Sly girl!

“I’m not doing this with you.” I stepped away from her. “Your manipulation technique is excellent. But maybe, next time, don’t make it too obvious.”

I whirled around to make my way toward Mariella, but my steps halted abruptly as I noticed her . . . dancing with Adonis. Panic and tension had replaced the hearty smile she had a few moments ago with that boy. Her movements had become hesitant.

I had a feeling that having her around Adonis could be a problem and there was no way I could keep her from Adonis, with him being around me almost every day. We were brothers, for fuck’s sake—a fact that Mariella wasn’t aware of, a fact that wouldn’t change.

Even though I trusted my brother and his devotion to his wife, not a single bone in my body was okay with Mariella’s feelings for him.