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 CRUEL HEIR

A DARK MAFIA ENEMIES TO LOVERS

STANDALONE

M. JAMES

PNK PUBLISHING
 CONTENTS
1. Lucia
2. Andre
3. Lucia
4. Lucia
5. Andre
6. Lucia
7. Lucia
8. Andre
9. Lucia
10. Andre
11. Lucia
12. Lucia
13. Lucia
14. Andre
15. Lucia
16. Andre
17. Lucia
18. Andre
19. Lucia
20. Lucia
21. Andre
22. Andre
Epilogue
 1

LUCIA

’ve seen the grand ballroom in my family’s home many times before, but never like this. I’ve seen it full of tables for galas,
I string music filtering upstairs where I’ve always had to stay after catching a glimpse, isolated away from the adults and
their parties. I’ve seen it draped in black for wakes and funeral receptions—once again, only a glimpse before I’ve been
shuffled upstairs, never a part of things for very long. I’ve been kept carefully sheltered and tucked away here in my father’s
grand estate in the Sicilian countryside. But tonight, all of that changes.
I hover at the top of the staircase, looking down. The room is already full of guests, that familiar string music drifting up to
where I’m standing, waiting for my father to announce me, waiting to make my entrance. Two days ago, I turned eighteen—and
tonight, I’m being presented to the Sicilian mafia elite and their guests, friends, and trusted acquaintances. I am my father’s
most prized jewel, and tonight, I’m being allowed to glitter in public for the first time.
Nervously, I smooth my hands over my full skirt, feeling the carefully embroidered lace flowers scattered across it under
my fingertips. I’ve had beautiful clothes and fine things all my life, but never anything this grand. The dress was handmade over
the course of the past year by the finest seamstresses my father could commission—a light blue ball gown that matches my eyes
exactly, almost Cinderella-like in its construction. The bodice is reinforced satin, the neckline high enough to preserve my
modesty, but shaped in a bustier-style to show off my slender curves. The sleeves are puffed tulle, draped just below my
shoulders, showing off the delicate line of my throat and collarbones. Enticing, but not too seductive. Every man in that room
below will be looking at me, some of them intending to make my father an offer.
I could be married to one of tonight’s guests in a matter of months.
My father’s voice booms out from below, encouraging his ‘esteemed guests’ to gather around. I feel my pulse flutter
anxiously in my throat as I stand poised to descend into the crowd; this night that I’ve anticipated for so long is finally here. I
see my father standing at the foot of the staircase with a glass of champagne in his hand, his iron-gray hair smoothed back,
dressed impeccably in a bespoke tailored suit. Everything about tonight, from the masses of fresh flowers decorating the
ballroom to the hand-sewn embroidery on my gown, the elite string quartet, and the fine china and crystal used to serve canapes
and alcohol—all of it is meant to display my father’s power and wealth. He is the head of the Family, the most powerful man in
the Italian mafia, and I am his daughter. All of this—and the man lucky enough to claim my hand in marriage, is my birthright.
“Allow me to introduce my daughter—Lucia Elysia Fontana!” His voice carries out over the room, deep and booming, and
I feel the excitement spread through me. My feet carry me forward down the stairs one slow step at a time, my hand gliding
down the banister rail like a princess in a movie. All of this feels like a dream—the pinnacle of what I’ve been waiting for, a
day even more exciting than my wedding. My wedding day will be about the merging of two families, celebrating the rise in
stature for whomever my father chooses and a close new ally for him, but tonight is about me.
This is my moment, and I’ll never truly have another like it.
I feel all of the eyes in the room on me as I nearly float down the stairs, feeling a flush of happiness and anticipation. I’ve
imagined this moment over and over, and it’s finally here.
When I step down next to my father, he takes my hand, turning me to present me to the gathered guests. “My daughter,” he
repeats, smiling broadly, clearly pleased with my performance—with the way all of the guests’ attention was riveted on me.
My success tonight is my father’s success, proof that even without a mother to help raise me, I’ve become the perfect example
of a mafia princess.
“May I?” An unfamiliar man steps forward, tall and dark-haired, likely in his mid-thirties. I see faint lines at the corners of
his hazel eyes and the slightest hints of silver in his hair, but he’s handsome enough, and I take his hand as he offers it. “It
would be my delight to claim your first dance, Miss Fontana.”
 I have no doubt that my father orchestrated this, that this man is someone who he sees as a possible match for me. I also
know that I’m expected to accept.
“Of course.” I smile graciously, resting my hand in his palm. “Signore—?”
“You may call me Mattias.” He smiles, drawing me through the crowd towards the dance floor, where other couples are
swaying to the music. “I must admit, I’ve already spoken with your father. I was very eager to be able to claim the honor of the
first dance tonight.”
His hand rests on the small of my back, a respectful space between us as his other hand wraps around mine. The steps to
the music are slow and practiced, leaving plenty of opportunity for us to speak to each other.
“I’m flattered that you were so eager.” Everything I say is as practiced as the dance taught to me over long hours, learning
etiquette and conversation from the private tutors my father employed for me. Mattias, I expect, is choosing his words with as
much care.
I’m aware that arranging my marriage is a delicate matter. The man my father chooses must be from a family close enough
to the highest ranks of Sicilian dons that he’s worthy of me. He has to be someone with respect for my father, lest my father risk
allowing a snake into our midst. He must be respected by others, so that the marriage doesn’t diminish my father’s standing. He
must be wealthy enough that he won’t be tempted by his proximity to my family to take more than his share. He has to be
fearsome enough that he will add to my father’s strength, not take away from it.
Whether the man my father chooses is handsome, kind, or loving—those things aren’t taken into account. Which means I’m
relieved that Mattias seems to at least be respectful—and he’s certainly handsome. As we move across the dance floor, I can
imagine kissing him. There’s no surge of desire or spark of chemistry, but when I imagine his lips pressed to mine, the hand on
my back moving over me with more urgency, the idea doesn’t make me uncomfortable.
Anyway, even if my husband isn’t handsome or kind, I won’t have to endure him for long. If there’s anything I’ve learned
both from the women who taught me my role in this world and from the whispers of the maids around me, mafia husbands
rarely spend much time in their wives’ beds. The purpose of fucking your wife is to produce an heir, not for pleasure.
As for how the wives feel about that—no one ever answered that question for me.
“Any man would be eager for the possibility to have you as his bride.” Mattias’s accent is thick, warm, and rich as it fills
the air around us, as thick as my father’s. A Sicilian man to the bone, I can tell. I think that’s what my father wants, to marry me
to someone from one of the old mafia bloodlines, someone close to the heart of the Family.
There was a time when I know there was talk of marrying me into one of the families in the States—someone in Chicago or
Boston, perhaps. But from what little I can glean from the gossip and bits of conversation I overhear, there’s been upheaval
recently there. Enough to make my father reconsider, and lean more heavily towards a marriage closer to home.
“Would I be your first wife?” I ask, smiling up at Mattias as he guides me across the dance floor. It’s a bit of a brazen
question, but it’s one I’m curious to have the answer to. A widower means the possibility of stepchildren, something that I feel
terrified to handle at only eighteen. My own stepmother has stayed far away from the estate where I live, kept at a much more
modern home in Rome. She had no interest in mothering me or my brother, and my father had no interest in giving her the task.
She’s barely ten years older than I am, with children of her own now—my half-brother and sisters.
“Yes, you would be. I have not had the pleasure of marrying before.” Mattias looks at me curiously. “I hope that’s the
answer that you were anticipating?”
A faint glow washes through me at the idea that he might care about my opinion on it. It’s not something I expected. “It is,” I
tell him honestly. “At least we could both go into the marriage with equal inexperience.”
He laughs at that, a genuine sound that tells me he caught the joke I made. He’s certainly more experienced than I am in
certain areas—I can’t imagine any mafioso being a virgin when he was wed—but in the matters of acting as husband and wife,
we would at least be on equal ground.
“I have kept a woman at one of my estates,” he confesses, as the music begins to slow. “But I wasn’t there often. It wasn’t
like living together.”
“Oh.” I’m not sure what to say—I didn’t expect him to tell me something so personal. His exploits, both before and after
our marriage, are traditionally none of my concern. It makes me wonder how eager he is to secure my hand—and how much
influence he thinks my wishes really have over my father. The latter thought makes me want to laugh.
I know that my father is a man others fear, in the vague sort of way that I also know the history of the country I was raised in
and the ethos of Italian mafia culture. But I’ve never had cause to feel that fear or even witness it. I’ve spent my life being
spoiled and pampered, lavished with every extravagance and the best of everything—lessons, tutors, clothes, jewelry, hobbies.
My father is not a particularly warm man, but I’ve never felt less than treasured and cared for—even if it is somewhat in the
way that I expect one treats a particularly precious and valuable possession.
But then again, I expect the same from my husband. It’s the way things are, and I’ve never thought to question it. If my life
comes with gilded bars around it, those bars at least keep me safe from those who would wish to harm me. It’s a trade—my
freedom for my security, my independence for my comfort—and it’s one I’ve always been happy to make.
Reluctantly, I feel Mattias release my hand as another tall, well-dressed man approaches us at the edge of the dance floor.
“I regret that I must pass you off to someone else,” he says with a faint smile, stepping back and inclining his head. “But I will
be speaking to your father tomorrow morning, so perhaps we will see each other again soon.”
I nod, returning the smile. “If I’m free tonight, I’d love to dance with you again,” I tell him, and he chuckles.
“I don’t expect I’ll be able to snatch you away for even a moment. But I will look out for an opportunity, just in case.”
An hour later, my feet are beginning to hurt. I’ve been dancing with one man or another since Mattias brought me out to the
floor, and I pause as the latest man to claim a dance spins me, taking a slow breath.
“Are you alright?” the man—Fazio, I think his name is—asks concernedly, and I nod.
“I just need to sit down for a moment, I think. A little water wouldn’t hurt, either.”
He steers me eagerly towards one of the chairs at the edge of the dance floor—gold Chiavari—and I sink into it with a
sigh. “I’ll be back with some water in a moment,” Fazio promises, darting away without noticing the catering staff passing him
by with a tray in hand.
On further inspection, as the black-and-white uniformed man gets closer, I see that it’s not water on his tray, but champagne.
I sweep a glass off anyway, taking a delicate sip of it. I’ve never had champagne before, and I’m delighted by the way the
bubbles burst over my tongue, the dry sweetness spreading through my mouth. I’m also starving, and I snag a few hors
d’oeuvres off of another passing tray, nibbling at them as I wait for Fazio to come back. They’re delicious—some kind of flaky
pastry with soft cheese and spiced ground meat in one, and another that’s a flatbread with herbed cream cheese and a grilled
shrimp atop it. It’s hardly a meal, but it will keep me from passing out until the end of the night when I can ask to have leftovers
sent up to my room.
“Here you are!” Fazio reappears at my elbow, handing me the glass of water. “The champagne is delicious, isn’t it?”
I look at him sideways as I sip the water, nodding. He’s the youngest of the men who have danced and talked with me so far
tonight—probably only a few years older than I am—and I find that I don’t prefer that as much as I would have thought. He
seems immature, unlike Mattias and some of the other men that I’ve danced with, and I find myself hoping that my father will
not take Fazio up on his offer.
As the night wears on, I realize Mattias was right—there’s no chance that he’ll get another moment with me. I’m handed off
to an increasingly dizzying parade of men, enough that their features start to blur together after a while, some of the names
drifting out of my head. Aside from Mattias, there’s one older widower named Leonardo, who seemed pleasant and handsome
enough—if a bit stiff in his manners—and a man called Alexis, who was probably in his late twenties, and had a similarly
respectful air to the other two. No one would dare manhandle me in my father’s house, or touch me in any way that bordered on
inappropriate, but I can feel the difference between the ones who treat me carefully, and those who look at me as if they can’t
wait to own me for themselves. I try to remember the names of the ones who made me particularly uncomfortable, in the
unlikely event that my father does ask my opinion on any of them.
When I finally have a moment to escape, I snatch it. My feet are aching, the room is beginning to feel close and hot, and the
mingled scents of so many different colognes and perfumes and warm bodies are beginning to give me a headache. When one
dance ends and someone isn’t immediately there to claim me for another, instead of looking for Mattias, I give a longing
glimpse towards the doors that lead out to the garden. I can’t deny that I’ve enjoyed the attention, but I’m eager for a moment to
myself. I cut a quick path through the guests, trying to dodge anyone who might want my attention before they can speak to me,
and slip outside into the cool night air.
It’s late fall, and chilly at night. I shiver almost as soon as I step out onto the cobblestone path, but I keep walking anyway,
wanting the privacy to collect myself. I feel more than a little overwhelmed by it all. Even though it’s felt good to have so many
men eager to meet me, I can’t shake the feeling that I’m being watched by someone in particular.
You’re being watched by everyone. I try to shrug off the creeping feeling that curls around my spine, brushing it off as
ridiculous. There isn’t a pair of eyes in the room that isn’t mostly focused on me—that’s the purpose of the night. If it feels like
someone is looking at me, it’s because everyone is.
I walk all the way to the fountain in the middle of the gardens—a marble statue of a woman draped in fluttering veils,
standing in the midst of the water with carved fishes leaping all around her. Water spouts from her hands and the fishes’ mouths,
splashing merrily, and I turn my face up towards the moon, taking a deep breath of the fresh, clean air. I can feel a bit of the
cool spray of the water as it splashes into the pool of the fountain, and it feels good on my flushed skin. Good enough that I
linger, hesitant to go back inside. My feet ache, and I think even I might have reached the limit of my ability to make small talk
with men I barely know.
“Miss Fontana. Out in the gardens all alone without a chaperone? Scandalous.”
The voice behind me makes a tsking sound, and I freeze. For a moment, I have the fantasy that it might be Mattias, here to
sneak that moment that he promised to look out for, teasing me with more flirtatious banter. But I know before I even turn
around that it’s not his voice. The accent isn’t as thick, or as rich. It’s the voice of someone who grew up elsewhere, whose
Italian is muted by having been raised around American accents, American voices. I’ve talked with more than a few men
tonight who sound just like that.
But when I turn, the man in front of me is no one I know, and no one I’ve danced with or spoken to.
 He’s tall and lean, with dark blond hair and deep blue eyes, almost black in the dim light of the garden. He’s handsome in a
sharp, chiseled kind of way, and he’s standing casually in front of me, hands stuffed into his tailored suit pockets.
Something about him sets off an alarm within me, a sort of instinctive fear that I think all women have when faced with a
potentially dangerous man. He hasn’t done anything threatening yet, nothing that would make me believe he intends me harm,
but every sense I have is screaming at me to get away from him, to go back inside.
“If you want a dance,” I manage stiffly, trying to mask my fear, “then just give me a moment. You can find me as soon as I go
back to the party.”
The man laughs, a low, dark sound that makes the hair on the back of my neck rise. “I’m not interested in a dance, Miss
Fontana,” he murmurs. I feel the fear in my stomach harden into a tight knot, a chill washing over me that has nothing to do with
the night air.
I draw myself up straighter, calling on every bit of poise and arrogance I possess as the daughter of Don Fontana, a man
both respected and feared, the head of the Family. “It’s very rude that you seem to know who I am, and haven’t introduced
yourself,” I tell him as haughtily as I can. “My father is willing to forgive some faults in a man who would truly cherish his
daughter, but I can’t imagine that rudeness is one of them.”
Truthfully, I don’t think my father actually cares if anyone cherishes me. But it matters more what might make this man stand
down.
He just chuckles again, his mouth quirking in a wry smirk. “I’ll introduce myself in time, Lucia. But for now—”
Fear takes over in that moment, when I hear the way he says my name, when I understand that this man wants something that
has nothing at all to do with the party inside. He has no interest in the careful steps of the social niceties that can lead a man
from one dance with me to saying I do in front of God and my father—one of whom is considerably more immediately
terrifying than the other, as I understand it.
Whoever this man is, he’s here to take something from me.
I snatch up my skirt in my hands, preparing to dart around him. The moment I try, his hand snakes around my waist, pulling
me in closer against his side as he backs me towards the fountain, his mouth close to my ear.
“Oh no, Lucia,” he murmurs, his breath warm against my skin, his hand firmly against the small of my back in a way that no
other man tonight has dared to hold me. “You’re not going anywhere, principessa. Except for where I choose to take you.”
 2

ANDRE

’ve spent two god-forsaken years in this place with nothing to show for it. But now, my time to shift the game back in my
I favor has come.
It’s been two years since Don Fontana ordered my father’s execution for conspiring to make Gianna Mancini my bride,
and absorb the Mancini family name into ours. Two years since the upstart Alessio Moretti decided to swoop back into
Chicago, take her under his protection, and then marry her himself. Two years since my father tried to kidnap her and force her
into a marriage with me, only to be caught in the act.
The price he paid was a bullet in the back of his head, delivered while he knelt between two men at Don Fontana’s feet. I
know, because I was there. I watched him spit in Fontana’s face before he knelt. I heard his last words, delivered not for
Fontana’s benefit, but mine.
Just because I am forced to bow to you does not mean the Leone family will.
As I heard the muffled gunshot and saw the blood spatter over concrete, I watched my father’s body slump forward towards
Fontana’s boots as if in mockery of what he’d just declared; I thought I would be next. I had hoped that I would die with as
much courage as my father had, if Fontana chose to put me on my knees.
I had half a mind to try to take one or two of his men out, before I went down.
But Fontana had other plans. He was hesitant to kill me, clearly, though he didn’t deign to share his reasons. What he did
tell me, as two of his guards led me away from my father’s body and into a waiting car, was that I was too dangerous to the
stability of the Family to be allowed to do as I please. My name, my blood, and my rage at my father’s fall were all points that
could destabilize the structure of the Family that Fontana leads. So, instead, the car that he had me bundled into took me to a
waiting jet on a tarmac outside of Chicago.
That jet brought me to Sicily, to one of Fontana’s estates. And I’ve been there ever since, as his ‘guest,’ under house arrest
while he decides what to do with me.
Or, as I suspect, has forgotten about me.
At least, I hope that’s the case.
The adrenaline that floods me when I wrap my arm around his daughter’s waist and pull her close to me is better than any
high I’ve ever had. Better than drugs, better than sex, better than the feeling of being behind the wheel of a fast car. It’s a feeling
of triumph that trumps anything I’ve ever experienced in my life, particularly when her blue eyes go wide as I lean down to
whisper in her ear.
“Oh no, Lucia.” I feel her stiffen when I breathe her name. “You’re not going anywhere, principessa. Except for where I
choose to take you.”
Her chin tilts up defiantly, and I see that there’s fire in the little princess. All the better, I think with an almost ravenous
desire as I tighten my grip on her. It will feel even better when I douse it. When I break her to my will.
This moment is one that I’ve been planning, sprouted from the seed that my father’s dying words planted. The Leone family
will not fall to Don Fontana’s whims, not while I draw breath. I am my father’s only heir, the last hope of our family name. And
the girl in my arms is the first step of my revenge.
For two years, I’ve gone along with Fontana’s wishes. I’ve languished in my gilded prison without complaint, eating his
food and drinking his wine, reading every book in the massive library of the estate where I was kept, and enjoying whatever
entertainment was on offer—including most of the maids. And the entire time, while Fontana left me there to rot in a velvet-
lined coffin of a house, I planned my revenge.
I planned how I would make my father’s last words a reality. How, in the end, Fontana would bow to me.
 It was an easy plan to formulate, once I heard through the staff’s gossip and the careless pillow talk of the maids I fucked,
that Fontana had a daughter. A daughter who would turn eighteen before too terribly long, and for whom he would throw a
lavish party, one that would attract so many guests that I might be able to slip through them undetected.
I grew up in a home just a few steps below this, in terms of scale, grandeur, and staffing. I knew how much security Fontana
likely had, how easily I might or might not be able to avoid them. I spent two years memorizing the patterns of the security
guarding me, so I could slip away in the first place. And after two years of my good behavior, they’d started to grow lax in how
well they watched me. I’d shown no signs of trying to escape before. Why would I now?
“I’m not going anywhere with you.” She hisses the words, her full, rosy lips pursing with anger. “Let me go! Someone is
going to see you, and—”
“No, they won’t.” I haul her around the side of the fountain, deeper into the shadows, away from the lamps illuminating the
sides of the path. I know I shouldn’t linger, that I could begin the next part of my plan at any moment, but this moment feels too
delicious. I want to prolong it a little bit more, savor it. Her fear is the sweetest thing I’ve ever tasted, and I haven’t even
kissed her yet. “I’ve been very careful, principessa. No one saw me come in, and no one will see me leave.”
“Then leave now.” There’s still a trace of that haughtiness in her voice, that sense of pride that she has from being Don
Fontana’s daughter. I want to destroy it, the urge rising up in me like a physical thing, and I grasp her chin in my other hand. I
turn her face towards mine as she squirms in my arms, my thumb pressing into her soft, plush lower lip.
“You don’t tell me what to do, Lucia,” I murmur her name like an endearment, letting it roll off of my tongue sweet and
thick. “I will be the one telling you what to do.”
“In your fucking dreams.” She spits the words, wrestling in my grip, and my hand slides downwards, gripping her lightly by
the throat. She goes still in an instant, fear glinting in her blue eyes as I apply the slightest pressure to her windpipe.
God, I’ve never been so fucking hard.
“You have a filthy mouth for such an elegant, well-bred lady.” I look down at her blue gaze in the near-darkness, looming
over her. “Fortunately for you, I intend to do all of this correctly. By the book, as it were. Otherwise, I’d put you down on your
knees right here, and show you what better uses I have for your mouth.”
“You—” She chokes on the word as I tighten my grip, sucking in a sudden breath as if she’s afraid I might cut hers off
forever. For a moment, I consider doing just that. It would still be vengeance, if I left Don Fontana’s daughter dead on the
cobblestones in his own garden, while he drank and rubbed elbows with his power-bloated compatriots inside.
A life for a life. It would settle the debt between us.
But it wouldn’t be enough.
It’s not enough for me to even the score. I need to tip it in my favor. I need to make him suffer, the way I’ve suffered for two
years, held prisoner far away from my family and my birthright. Kept from my rightful place as the Leone heir, while my
simpering mother ran things in my absence, arranging a marriage for my sister, dragging our name further into the dirt.
Prevented from setting things right.
Lucia’s death isn’t enough. I want her father to know that she’s being kept prisoner as I was. That every night, I’m fucking
his daughter, filling her until she bears my child. That I will take everything from him, including the right to give her to
whoever he chooses.
I will take her. Alive is better for what I want than dead.
At least for now.
“I’ve been watching you all night, principessa.” I stroke my thumb along her jawline, loosening my grip on her throat just a
little. “Your father really has done an admirable job. You’re the very picture of elegance. Of beauty. A bride fit for the highest
rank of mafioso. A priceless treasure.”
Her eyes flash furious sparks at me. “And this is how you treat a priceless treasure, then? Manhandling it with filthy
fingers and rude words?”
“I like your spirit.” I brush my thumb over her jaw again. “You’ll make this all the more fun for me by fighting.”
She makes a sound almost like a hiss, bucking in my grasp again, but all it takes is tightening my hand on her throat once
more to settle her. I can see the fear in her eyes, no matter how well she tries to hide it.
She’s already terrified of what I could do to her. And she has no idea what’s in store for her after I take her away from
here.
“My father will—kill—you—” she chokes out from behind my hand, her blue eyes going wide. “Let me go, and you can
still get away—”
“Ah, the bargaining stage.” I fist one hand in her artfully curled dark hair, feeling the jeweled pins scattered through it dig
into my palm. I tug her head back, releasing my grip on her throat as I stroke my fingers lightly over her cheekbone. “It won’t
do you any good, principessa.”
She stares up at me, and I think I finally see the understanding beginning to dawn on her face. This entire time, she’s been
thinking that at any moment, someone would come for her. That any moment, security would descend on me and save her. After
all, that’s how stories are meant to turn out for pampered, spoiled little princesses.
 Someone always swoops in and saves the day.
I stroke my fingers down to her plush mouth, pressing my fingertips against the soft flesh. I want to kiss her. I want to
ravage her lips and find out how sweet her mouth is, a sweetness that would only be enhanced by the knowledge of what I plan
to do to her later. But as I said, I want to do all of this properly.
So very properly, in fact, that there can be no question of my ownership when I finally take what’s mine.
“You’re coming with me, Lucia Fontana,” I breathe as I lean in, ghosting my lips over her cheek. “And then, whether you
like it or not—”
I drag my lips to the very corner of her mouth, looking into her eyes, and I feel her shudder. A shiver that runs all the way
through her—and one that, I think, isn’t entirely revulsion.
“Then,” I whisper. “You will be mine.”
 3

LUCIA

’ve never known fear before. Not like this.

I I’ve been afraid, in small ways that pale dramatically when compared to this moment. A dog that growled at me as a
child, a turned ankle on a flight of stairs, a particularly rebellious horse back in the days when I was focused on riding
lessons as my primary hobby. All things that made me afraid for my own safety, in ways that I naively thought would be the
worst fear I would ever experience.
None of it can compare to this.
The man holding me wrenches my hair back, twisting his hand against my scalp. His fingers slide over my cheekbone
gently, a cruel mockery of the painful grip holding me in place. And I know, to the depths of my sinking soul, that I’ve stumbled
into something terrible. I feel fear like nothing I’ve ever experienced wash over me, cold and clawing, something that could
only adequately be called terror. A wave of nausea washes over me, and I want to struggle, but I’m not sure that I can any
longer. I’m past the point of fighting, too afraid to try to get away.
I was a fool to ever come out into the gardens at all.
I should have stayed inside. Where it’s brightly lit, warm, and safe—
But how could I have known? How could I have had any idea that this kind of danger awaited me just behind my own
home?
I don’t even know who this man is.
When he kisses my cheek, I stiffen. There’s something disgustingly gentle about the gesture when compared with his tight
grip on my hair, a lover’s caress while he holds me like a criminal. As his mouth drags over my skin, as the feeling washes
over me, I feel something else, too. Something as wholly unfamiliar as the strength of the fear.
Excitement.
No one has ever touched me like this. There’s never been a man who dared to touch me at all. I’ve been kept carefully
guarded, locked away from anyone who might try. And tonight—
My father was watching. His guards were watching. No one who wanted to have a hope of leaving the party in one piece,
let alone with the possibility of my hand in marriage, would have dared to handle me with anything other than the utmost
respect.
This man is touching me as if I’m already his. As if he owns me to handle as he pleases. And as rough as his touch is, as
much danger as I know I’m in, there’s a certain strange thrill that leaves me feeling flushed and hot as he presses his mouth to
the corner of mine. A shiver runs through me, and I feel him smile against the edge of my lips.
You will be mine.
I know I have to get free of him before he hurts me. The promise of violence is already there—his hand on my throat, in my
hair, letting me know the danger that I’m in. If I can just get back into the house—
In my periphery, I can see the glow of the garden lamps. Further back—a hundred yards, maybe more—is the warm light of
the mansion, the soft string music, the promise of the future that’s been laid out for me as long as I can remember. A future that
I’ve always taken for granted until right now, when it’s on the verge of being taken away.
The only thing I can think of to do is scream.
I try to wrench out of his grasp, tears springing to my eyes from the burning pain in my scalp. His hand was already
crushing the pins against it, but now I feel as if my hair will tear away in his grasp. I can’t bring myself to care. I act entirely on
instinct, thrashing against him to scream—
—and then his hand presses heavily against my mouth, muffling the cry as he curses under his breath.
 “You can try to fight all you like right now, little principessa,” he murmurs as he lets go of my hair. His body blocks any
chance of my escape, even with his grasp around my waist and in my hair gone. His fingers press into my cheeks, hollowing
them as I hear him fumble for something, and I try to suck in a breath through my nose. The struggle to breathe is terrifying, and
the only thing that keeps me from completely melting into panic is the thought that if he truly wanted me dead, he would have
killed me by now.
“There’s no escaping me,” he hisses, and I feel the hand over my mouth suddenly yank my head to one side. I gasp as I feel
a sudden, sharp prick in the side of my neck. “There now,” he murmurs, his hand sliding to cup my face, thumb stroking along
my cheekbone in a strangely tender gesture. “You can stop fighting. There’s no use now.”
I open my mouth to try to scream again, but a sudden fogginess washes over me, as if it’s hard to think clearly. I can’t quite
process what he’s saying, and I look up at him, a numb terror washing over me as I feel my limbs start to grow heavy. I want to
try to twist away, to take advantage of this moment where he’s no longer holding me as tightly as he was, but I can’t seem to
move. I feel my body start to slump against his, and the last thing I see as everything begins to swim around me is the slow,
satisfied smile that creeps across his handsome face.
I know, then, that no one is going to save me.

There’s no way to tell how much time has passed before I come back to consciousness. I wake up to the feeling of
something jolting beneath me, and I suck in a breath, trying to push myself up. It’s dark all around, and I feel leather underneath
my hands. I’m not restrained in any way, which feels like a relief, but—
My eyes feel sticky, and my mouth is dry as cotton. My entire body still feels sluggish, as if whatever the blond man did
hasn’t entirely worn off, and I realize, somewhere dimly in the back of my mind, that I must have been drugged. Numbly, I raise
my hand to the spot on my neck where I felt the prick. There’s nothing there now but a faint soreness, and I close my eyes,
trying to breathe before I panic.
In and out. In and out.
I’m jolted again, and I sit up, swallowing convulsively against the dryness in my mouth. It takes a moment for me to push
myself up against the back of the seat. I feel pins and needles rush through my arms and legs into my hands and feet, fingers and
toes, as my blood starts to circulate properly again. That sense of panic fills me once more, and I squeeze my eyes tightly shut,
trying not to burst into tears.
What do I do? I think I’m supposed to try to figure out where I am—where I might be going—but it feels impossible. I’m
not a tough, scrappy kind of girl—not the kind who pieces together her situation and starts planning her escape. I’ve barely
ever even been outside of the walls of my father’s mansion. The only thing I can think of right now is the obvious—that I must
be in a car. I try to focus on that, on the leather seat beneath my hands and the carpet under my bare toes, the movement of the
vehicle, and the very faint glow of moonlight that I can see through the heavily tinted windows.
I’m in a car. I’ve lost my shoes. I’m still wearing my dress. I smooth my hands over the embroidered satin and lace,
seeking some comfort. My scalp aches, and my throat feels slightly bruised, but no other part of my body hurts, not in any way
that suggests he hurt me further after I was knocked out.
I remember what he said about doing things properly, and a cold shiver runs through me. I don’t understand what he meant
by that, but it felt very much as if it were the only thing preventing him from hurting me more than he did—or by taking what he
must have wanted. I can’t pretend that I understand male desire, or that I know the signs of it, but I thought I saw something in
his eyes beyond just anger.
I think—though I don’t really know what it looks like—that I saw lust.
Sliding carefully towards the window, I try to peer out of it. I can’t see anything in any detail—it’s fully dark, and the
moonlight isn’t enough to pick out any details. Pressing my face very close to the glass, I look for other estates—some sign that
we aren’t as far out as I think we might be, but there’s nothing that I can say with any certainty that I see.
My heart sinks as I flop back against the seat, trying to keep calm. Wherever I’m being taken, he’s gone to great lengths to
get me there. He could have killed me in the garden if he wanted to, I tell myself, twisting my hands together in my lap as I
pick at the embroidery on my skirt. There’s a reason I’m still alive. There must be.
Bit by bit, I feel the lingering effects of the drug start to fade. My body starts to feel like my own again; my mind feels
clearer, sharper. The pins and needles disappear, and if anything, the interior of the car starts to feel too warm. One of the
flowers on my skirt is shredded now, bits of lace scattered across my skirt from my anxiety. A part of me wants to know what
will happen when the car comes to a stop, just so that I can get it over with. But another, more frightened part of me also wants
the drive to go on forever. I try to imagine that the car is taking me somewhere else, somewhere far away from the blond man,
but I know that’s a foolish hope.
Wherever I’m going, he will be there. I don’t believe, even for a moment, that he did all of this for someone else.
At last, I feel the car slowing. The darkness outside of the tinted windows starts to brighten a little, and I press my face
against the glass again, looking for clues as to where I might be. I see trees along the side of the winding road that the car has
turned onto, dark shapes silhouetted against the moonlight, tall lamps interspersed between them. My stomach knots as I realize
that we must be heading towards a different estate. This feels like a driveway, and a few minutes later, I know I was right.
The car pulls into a courtyard, the statue in the center, shrubbery around it, and the looming shape of the mansion at one end,
all only vaguely visible, like flickering shapes in a dream. My pulse quickens, my heart beating hard in my chest, and I feel that
cold wash of fear again.
Whatever is waiting for me, it’s undoubtedly in that mansion. I’ll find out why I’ve been taken, sooner or later.
I don’t know which I would prefer, honestly.
Before I can pull away from the glass, the door opens suddenly, and I nearly topple out. A strong hand grabs my arm, and I
look up at a tall, black-uniformed man, my cheeks flushing with embarrassment. He doesn’t say a word as he helps me out of
the car, and I swallow hard, feeling that wave of fear again. His face is impassive, without a hint of anything that might give me
a clue as to what’s going on. If he knows anything, or if he has any opinions about having brought a barefoot girl in a ballgown
to his employer’s mansion, I can’t read them on his face.
“Am I supposed to go in there?” My voice is a raspy squeak, and I look towards the terracotta mansion, fear rooting me to
the spot.
“I’ve just been told to bring you here.” His voice is flat, and I turn back to face him, desperation welling up in me.
“You could take me back,” I plead. “I don’t know if you realize where you took me from—my father is Don Fontana. He’ll
pay you anything you want if you return me to him now. Please—I promise he’ll reward you—”
For a moment, I almost think I see him consider it. But almost as quickly, he shakes his head.
“Not worth the cost, miss.” The driver turns away, sliding back into the car. The finality of his words, the idea that anything
my father could give him wouldn’t outweigh what this other man might do, sends a chill of pure terror through me. Who is this
person?
The loose stones and gravel of the courtyard bite into my bare feet, and I wonder, for a moment, if I should simply run. If I
should take my chances with whatever is out beyond those trees, wherever we are, instead of walking into the trap that’s been
laid for me.
Before I can decide, the heavy front door of the mansion opens, and a tall man in a dark suit steps out, silhouetted in the
light of the doorway.
“Don’t stand there all night,” he says sharply, his voice cutting through the considerable space between us, as thickly
accented as my father’s. He could almost be my father, if I squint, though his hair is more white than grey, and he doesn’t have
my father’s bearing. I’ve grown up all my life with staff, and I know the difference between the employers and the employed. If
I had to guess, this man runs the household for whoever it is that owns it. “Everyone is waiting on you.”
What? I stare at him in confusion, still not moving, and I see his forehead crease with annoyance even from where I’m
standing. “Miss.” His voice is sharp and cold, without the slightest compassion. I don’t get the impression that he feels any
sympathy for me—and why would he? I doubt the man who kidnapped me is any kinder to his staff than he was to me, and I
doubt they’ll care about the fate of a pampered and spoiled daughter of the mafia.
“You don’t want me to have to get security to bring you in.” There’s the slightest hint of softness to his voice then, a
warning meant to let me know that as bad as things feel right now, they could still get worse. It’s what propels me further,
makes me walk towards the steps leading up to the front door as the courtyard stones bite into my feet. The night’s chill has
gotten deeper, and the skin across my chest and arms prickles, my fingers and toes beginning to numb again from standing out
here.
At least inside, it’s probably warm.
It’s all I can do not to cry as I walk up the steps. I can feel my lips quivering and my eyes burning, and I clench my hands
into fists in the fabric of my skirt. The white-haired man’s face is as impassive as the driver’s, and he simply gestures towards
the open door. “Go on in,” he says calmly, and I look at him, everything inside of me rebelling against the idea of walking into
that house.
“Please,” I whisper, valiantly hoping that one person might be willing to help. “Please don’t do this. I don’t want to be
here. I’ve been kidnapped. Please help me. My father—”
The man looks at me sternly, almost as if he’s chastising me. “I know who your father is, Miss Fontana. It changes nothing.
Please go inside.”
“No!” I gasp out, taking a step back. This is a nightmare. It has to be. None of it makes sense. “You don’t understand. I’m
being forced—”
“I understand perfectly, miss. Please don’t make a scene. I’m sure you know how inappropriate that would be.” The white-
haired man gestures towards the door again, his mouth pinched with disapproval. “Go inside, Miss Fontana.”
I realize, with a wave of crushing hopelessness, that he’s not going to help me. That he doesn’t care—or if he does,
whatever orders he’s been given far outweigh it. There’s no chance that anyone here is going to betray their employer and help
me escape.
 I bite my lip hard, forcing myself to take the next few steps into the mansion’s interior.
I step into a grand foyer—the floor marble veined with silver, the ceilings high and vaulted. It’s reminiscent of the foyer in
my own home—not quite as elegant, but close. It’s well-lit, and I see that it opens into a large marble-floored entryway on the
main floor of the house, a large staircase to either side, leading up to the second floor. There are other rooms ahead, and on
either side of me, the doors all closed with no sign of what might be behind them. The house is quiet and still, and the white-
haired man walks up to stand next to me, gesturing towards the stairs.
“Follow me,” he says calmly, and walks towards the staircase on the left. There’s no question of whether I will or not, only
that I’ll follow the command—a command given by a man who is certainly lower in station than I am. It feels hard to believe
that earlier tonight, I felt like the closest thing to a princess I could imagine being—and now I’m standing here shivering and on
the verge of tears in a strange home, compelled to follow this man upstairs to an unknown fate.
I think of how I compared my dress to Cinderella’s earlier, and almost laugh, pressing my knuckles against my lips to stifle
it. A reverse Cinderella, maybe, I think as I follow the white-haired man up the stairs.
We go up to the second floor, and I follow him down a long hallway lined with framed art. He stops in front of a large door
near the end, and opens it, gesturing for me to step inside. “When you’re finished,” he says calmly, “come back down to the
main floor.”
“What then?” I force the words out from between my shaking lips, and he looks back at me, not a trace of that hint of
softness that I heard in his craggy face.
“That’s not for me to say.” He gestures towards the door again. “Go on, miss.”
I know I have no other choice. I remember the blond man in the garden telling me that there was no point in fighting, and it
makes me want to crumple into hysterical laughter—or sobs. I’m not sure which. I have no way out of this.
So I walk forward into the room. I hear the door shut behind me, and I look around, trying to make sense of where I am.
It’s a bedroom—a very nicely decorated one. It’s fully furnished—a wardrobe, vanity, desk, and bed—all done in hues of
soft pink and gold, but it’s not the decor that catches my eye. It’s the uniformed maid standing at the edge of the bed—and the
white dress spread across it.
“Oh no.” The words come out in a whisper, and I feel myself starting to shake my head. I press a hand to my mouth, backing
up to the door, and I fumble for the knob. I can’t pretend that what I’m seeing is anything other than what it is—a white gown
every bit as elegant and well-made as the one I’m wearing, the skirt stiff with embroidery and seed pearls, a drape of tulle laid
out next to it. You will be mine. The reality of what’s happening here hits me full force, and my eyes well up with tears.
The door is locked. “No!” I cry out the word, yanking at the knob, turning and flinging myself at the door as I start to bang
on it with one fist. All the terror that I tried to keep at bay in the car comes rushing up, choking me as surely as the blond man’s
hand did in the garden, bringing hot tears to my eyes. “No, no, no—”
“Miss.” There’s a warm, gentle hand on my shoulder, and I spin around to see a dark-haired woman in a maid’s uniform
standing there, her hazel eyes wide. She’s wearing a fitted, knee-length black dress, her hair carefully pinned back, her bearing
tense as she looks at me. “You’re going to hurt yourself. Please, just come with me.”
My hand already aches where I’d pounded it against the door. I blink at her, trying to think past what feels like an almost
animal fear. I need to be calm, rational, if I’m going to find some way out of this—but it feels as if there is no way out. I’m not
even entirely sure what it is, except that the gown on the bed is undoubtedly a wedding dress, and what’s waiting for me
downstairs is undoubtedly a forced marriage.
Someone has decided to usurp my father’s choice and make it for him. Someone has decided to take me as his bride,
instead of making an offer. And that person has left no room for error, no room for questions, no room for me to find a way out.
“What am I supposed to do?” It comes out as a whisper, as I stare, terrified, at the maid.
She takes a step back, her hands folded in front of her. “I’m Celeste,” she offers, her face and voice both very soft and
calm. “I’ve been told I’m the one meant to tend to you, here in this house. Your personal maid.”
Something about that calms me a little, oddly enough—it’s something I understand, at least. I’ve always had a maid
assigned to me at home, sometimes more than one, along with all of the tutors and teachers who have wound their way through
my life.
“Do you know what’s going to happen to me?” I whisper, wishing the words didn’t sound as choked as they do. I can’t hide
that I’m on the verge of tears. “Who—”
“I’m not allowed to say, miss,” Celeste says softly. “You’ll find out most of the answers when you go downstairs, I expect.
But I was told as soon as you were brought up here to draw you a bath. Which, if you promise you won’t hurt yourself banging
on that door, I’ll go ahead and do it now.” She hesitates for a moment, as if she’s not sure she should continue. “It won’t help,”
she says finally, her mouth turning downwards a little at the corners. “It’ll only cause problems. It would be better if you—”
“If I what?” Anger rises up in me, a sharp counterpoint to the fear. “Stopped fighting? Are you really going to tell me that,
too?”
Celeste doesn’t flinch back. She must be used to being snapped at, I think, and instantly feel regret. “I’m sorry,” I murmur,
and she nods.
 “No, I’m not going to tell you that,” she says quietly. “But it will make things worse. It’s just best that you know that, I
think.”
We both look at each other for a long moment, and then Celeste turns away. “I’m going to draw your bath. I’ll help you out
of the dress while the tub fills. Just sit there.” She motions to the vanity, her voice kind. She undoubtedly knows that she
shouldn’t be telling me what to do, but I think, from the way she says it, that she also knows I need someone to help me put one
foot in front of the other right now.
I do as she suggests, sinking down onto the velvet tufted chair in front of the vanity. The face that stares back at me in the
mirror is a shock—I look pale, my makeup smudged, my once carefully styled hair a mess. The curls are tangled, the jeweled
pins that didn’t fall out askew. My eyes are red-rimmed, and I reach up, touching one dangling earring. They belonged to my
mother, long ago, a string of round diamonds and teardrop sapphires on a delicate gold chain dangling from either ear. My
father requested that I wear only minimal jewelry tonight, to let my beauty and the exquisitely crafted dress speak for
themselves. The only other jewelry I’m wearing is a bracelet that matches the earrings, and a band of marquise-cut sapphires
on my right hand. All of it belonged to my mother, a woman I barely remember.
I have no idea what her marriage to my father was like. I don’t know if she was willing or not, if he cared for her or not—
but I can imagine that it wasn’t like this. I know she wasn’t kidnapped and carted away to some other strange estate, and then
prepared in the dead of night for a wedding to a man she didn’t know.
“Miss.” Celeste is standing in the doorway of the bathroom, her expression still calm and placid. It calms me somewhat,
although it doesn’t take away the icy fear in the pit of my stomach. “I’ll help you out of your dress, if that’s alright.”
Nothing is alright, I want to scream. But I just nod, plucking the pins out of my hair and laying them in a careful line on the
dresser. My fingers shake as I undo the clasps of my jewelry, laying the earrings, bracelet, and ring next to the pins, the
methodical nature of it giving me something to focus on. I wonder if they’ll still be here when I come out, or if someone will
take them away. If, for some reason, I’m going to be allowed no reminders of my life before tonight.
I can see the steam starting to wreathe out of the bathroom door, the promise of a hot bath on the other side. I stand up,
crossing the room to where Celeste is waiting, drawing in a long breath.
By the end of the night, I suspect, I will be married.
And after that, I have no idea what comes next.
 4

LUCIA

eleste quickly helps me out of my dress, draping it over a nearby chair. I don’t ask her what will be done with it—I don’t
C think I want to know the answer. It was meant for the best night of my life, and it’s turned out to be the worst.
The worst so far, I think grimly. I wrap one arm over my breasts as Celeste backs out of the room, letting me slip out
of my underwear and into the steaming tub in private. “Everything you need is on the shelf next to the tub,” she says as she
ducks out. “I’ll be waiting for you when you’re finished.”
She doesn’t tell me if there’s a time limit on how long I’m allowed to stay in the bath. I sink into the hot water, realizing as I
do that Celeste added an almond-scented bath oil, and I let out a gasp of pleasure as the water closes over me. The heat is just
this side of bearable, almost too hot, but after the evening I’ve had, it feels good. I was already beginning to be sore from so
much dancing before the awful events of the garden, and I hiss as the hot water touches the small blisters on my feet. Even so, it
feels blissful on my arches and toes after having them crammed into high heels for so long, and then walking barefoot across
the courtyard.
I close my eyes, sinking deeper into the water. I try to imagine that if I pretend this is all a nightmare, if I just lie there in
silence long enough, it will all go away. But it doesn’t help. I’ve never learned to lose myself in fantasies; I never needed to.
My life has always been rarefied enough as it was. It’s only now that I have to face a brutal reality for the first time, and I don’t
know how to escape, even for a moment into my mind.
Despite everything, I start to feel more relaxed as I lie there in the hot water. After several minutes tick by, I reach for one
of the soft washcloths stacked by the tub, lathering it with the honey-scented gel in a small crystal container on the shelf. I scrub
away at my skin, washing away the feeling of being trapped in that car as best as I can, the feeling of that man’s hands on me.
His hands are going to be on me again before the end of the night.
Tears well abruptly in my eyes, faster than I can stop them. I drag my knees up to my chest, pressing my forehead against
them, feeling the hot tears drip down onto my skin. Once I start to let myself cry, I can’t stop, my entire body shuddering with
wracking sobs. I’m crying so hard that I don’t hear the door open, or Celeste’s soft footsteps until she’s standing almost next to
me when she speaks.
“You can’t cry, miss,” she murmurs. “He’ll be upset if you look like you’ve been crying. He wants you to look perfect for
your—” She stops with a small gasp, her hand covering her mouth. “Oh no, miss. Your hair—”
“What about my hair?” I touch it, realizing too late that it’s soaked through, and any of the styling that was done for my party
is entirely gone. “Oh—”
“We’re going to have to redo it all.” Celeste’s voice quivers, just a little. “Here,” she says quickly, opening one of the
cabinets above the glass bowl-shaped sink. “Take your makeup off, miss. We’ll have to fix it all, so he won’t see you’ve been
crying. You need to be perfect for—”
“For my wedding?” The words come out thickly through the tears, heavy with sarcasm. “This all happened so fast. I can’t
—I can’t—”
Celeste is silent for a long moment, as if she’s weighing what she should or shouldn’t say. “He won’t give you a choice,”
she says finally, her voice very soft. “But you shouldn’t keep him waiting too long.” Her voice still quivers at the end, as if
she’s afraid, too, and I look at her pale face. It strikes me, then, just how terrible this man must be, to elicit so much fear in
everyone around him.
“We’ll take care of it, miss,” Celeste says, taking a breath, and she gives me a small, faint smile. I feel the tiniest flicker of
comfort, a feeling of camaraderie. The sense that I might not be entirely alone here.
I do as she suggested, wiping off what remains of my makeup from the party. Celeste slips out of the bathroom once more
while I finish bathing, leaving a thick robe hanging beside the door for me. I slip into it once I’ve dried off, feeling the slightest
bit better—only to have all of that feeling dissolve when I see what else has been laid out on the bed next to the wedding dress.
“He can’t expect me to wear that.” I look at the lingerie that’s been laid out—a pair of sheer white lace panties with a
ribbon bow at the back, and a matching sheer bustier made out of illusion lace, boning, and ribbon. “This is—” Ridiculous. A
mockery. I’m so stunned that I can’t get the words out, looking at what’s in front of me in horror. It’s clear that this man,
whoever he is, plans to put me through all the paces of a wedding in a matter of hours. What’s even more horrifying is that he
clearly planned for this—had someone buy these items and set them aside for this night.
Celeste gives me a helpless look, and I swallow hard. I have to find some way to get through this. I can feel myself
trembling, and I don’t know how I’m going to find the courage to manage it. I’m not brave. I’ve never needed to be. And now
I’m facing something so horrible that I never even imagined it was possible.
“Just slip into it, and I’ll help you with the lacing,” Celeste says calmly. “I’ll turn my back if you like.”
“Please.” I reach for the lingerie with shaking hands, feeling more vulnerable than I ever have in my life. Something about
the flimsy, sexy lace underthings makes it all feel more real and immediate—glaring evidence that before the night is over, this
man plans to make me his in ways that he has absolutely no right to.
It takes everything in me not to burst into tears again as I slip into the lingerie. I stand there shivering, more from fear than
cold, as I hold the bustier against my breasts, glancing over to where Celeste has tactfully turned her back.
“I’m good now,” I whisper, and she walks to where I’m standing, nimbly lacing up the back of the lingerie.
“Come sit down.” She motions to a chair next to the dresser, and hands me a small mirror. There’s a handful of makeup
products on the dresser next to me. “I’ll do your hair. He doesn’t want much makeup on you, just a little bit of mascara and lip
stain, maybe. ‘Natural’ was what he said, but I don’t think men really know the meaning of that.” She gives me another of those
small, almost conspiratorial smiles, and this time, I feel sure that it’s meant to lift my spirits.
If I survive the night, I wonder if I might have a friend here.
Don’t get your hopes up, I tell myself. He might take you somewhere else after tonight. You might never see Celeste
again, for precisely that reason. I can’t imagine that a man who would go to these lengths to kidnap and marry me would want
me to have friends.
I notice with some irony that the mascara is waterproof, and I wonder all over again who got all of these things—who he
tasked with getting lingerie and a wedding dress and makeup and hair products. It makes my stomach turn to think of someone
in this room, carefully arranging the items meant to prepare me for my humiliation. I wonder if it was Celeste, and if that’s why
she’s being so kind to me now—out of guilt.
I can feel her hands shake as she starts to dry my hair, taking it section by section. “I’m sorry if this is rough,” she murmurs,
running a brush through it as it dries. “We need to hurry.” She reaches over, switching on a curling iron, and I hear her breathe
slowly, as if she’s trying to calm herself down. “He’s already not going to be happy to be kept waiting this long.”
“I thought he wanted me to be perfect,” I murmur sarcastically, unable to stop myself here in private with only Celeste to
hear, and I hear her suck in a quick, sharp breath.
“Careful, miss,” she whispers, her hands going still for a moment. “You need to be careful.”
“Do you want to elaborate on that?” My voice quivers now, too, imagining what this man must be like. Everyone has
walked on eggshells, refusing to help me, moving me quickly through all of these steps as if he might jump out at them at any
moment. “Why—”
“Just trust me, please.” She takes the curling iron, starting to wind sections around it with a brisk efficiency. “I know it’s a
lot to ask tonight, miss. But you don’t know him. Don’t make him angry if you can help it.”
The fear in her voice is plain. Whoever this man is, he controls everyone around him through fear, and not respect. He’s
different from my father in that way for certain, it seems.
When Celeste is finished, she picks up the jeweled pins that I wore earlier tonight and carefully pins back sections of hair,
keeping it artfully out of my face while still leaving most of it loose. I look at myself in the mirror—a dusting of blush to hide
how pale I am, a little mascara, a rosy lip stain—and I don’t recognize my reflection. I’ve never seen myself so frightened, so
unsure. I’ve spent my whole life knowing exactly who I was and what my future was supposed to hold.
Celeste goes to the bed, lifting the dress. It’s made out of heavy reinforced silk, the skirt covered in embroidery and seed
pearls, the bodice dipping into a v-shape with illusion lace filling in the gap. It’s strapless, and as Celeste helps me into it, I
see that between the bustier and the stiffness of the dress, I actually have cleavage in it. The back of it laces as well, and I
know why—no one knew my exact measurements. This way, the dress was guaranteed to fit me with some room for error.
The worst part about it all, as I look in the mirror while Celeste fastens the dress and slips the fingertip-length veil into my
freshly curled hair, is that I look beautiful. I look like a bride. The dress is full and princess-like without swallowing my
slender frame, the delicate embroidery enhancing my own slender features and making me look even more fragile and innocent.
I look like a porcelain bridal doll, and I know that must be what he wanted. A beautiful, delicate thing that he can toy with or
break as he pleases.
“There.” Celeste ties the lacing in a bow at the small of my back, her fingers resting there briefly as if to comfort me
slightly. I do, in a way, feel slightly better—the stiff heaviness of the dress feels almost like armor, something to protect me
from this man’s intentions, even if briefly. I can’t let myself think about later, when it will undeniably be shucked away. “I think
the jewelry you wore here will be perfect,” she adds, going back to the vanity to retrieve it. “Something old and blue.”
That does nothing to reassure me. If anything, it makes this all feel like even more of a mockery as Celeste hands me the
earrings and ring and helps me hook the bracelet around my wrist. I put these same jewels on earlier tonight for my debut, so
much hope and excitement welling inside of me, feeling as if I had my mother with me as I took the first steps into my new adult
life.
Now, all I feel is fear and a haunting sensation that all of that is coming to an end. Any future I might have hoped for, any
happiness that I might have had.
I slip my feet into the white, jewel-toed heels sitting by the bed, and glance at the door. There’s nothing left to do but go
downstairs—alone. No bridal party, no one to give me away to my groom. He’s chosen to take me instead, and the awful
reality of that is what’s waiting for me.
Celeste walks over to the nightstand by the bed, where there’s a phone—one likely used for calling down to whatever staff
the occupant of the room might need. She taps a button and says something quietly into it, quiet enough that I can’t hear it over
the pounding of my heartbeat in my ears. I clench my hands into fists, feeling my short nails bite into my palms, and wait for her
to hang up the phone.
“James is coming upstairs to open the door,” she says quietly. “He’ll escort you down.”
James, as it turns out, is the white-haired man who I guessed was the household manager. He opens the door a moment after
I hear the key turn in the lock, and looks at me expectantly. “Come along,” he says in that bored, almost imperious tone that he
used with me before, and I frown at him. For a moment, I have the urge to tell him that he needs to speak to me with more
respect, but then it strikes me that I don’t know if that’s true. I have no idea what kind of respect I’ll command in this
household, when the man who intends to marry me has started off our union by kidnapping me and bringing me here in the dead
of night.
The house is quiet when I reach the end of the staircase just behind James, the skirt of my dress clenched in my hands.
There are no guests that I can see, no trappings of a wedding beyond what I’ve been dressed in. I’m led to one of the closed
doors on the main floor, and James knocks on it, waiting until he hears a voice from inside tell him to come in.
I recognize the voice of the blond man from the garden, and a chill runs down my spine. My hands start to shake again,
fingers curling into the fabric of my dress, and for a moment, I don’t think I’ll be able to walk through the door. I don’t think I
can do this.
I also know I don’t have a choice.
When the door opens, I see what looks like a study inside—not unlike the room my father has at our home for him to
unwind in or hold private meetings at night. There’s a large stone fireplace that’s lit, a heavy wooden desk near a large
curtained window, and a tall bookshelf to one side of the room. The floor is dark wood, mostly covered with an intricately
woven tasseled rug. As I hesitantly step forward, I see two men standing by the fireplace. One is the blond man, changed into a
finer-looking suit than the one he was wearing in the garden, his hair styled smoothly back away from his now smoothly clean-
shaven face. When he looks at me, his dark blue gaze lit by the fire, I see the glint of possessiveness there, the light of
satisfaction in his eyes. It terrifies me, making me stop dead only a few inches into the room.
The other man, I see, is wearing a priest’s cassock, his expression grave. He says nothing as the blond man steps towards
me, and I suck in a breath, taking a step sharply backward as if there were anywhere I could run to.
“Where are you going, Lucia?” A predatory smile curves the blond man’s full lips. “Surely you’ve figured out by now that
there isn’t any escaping this. And why would you want to, after all? You’ve seen just a taste of what I’m willing to give you.”
He gestures at the wedding dress, the veil pinned to my hair. “I did this all for you, principessa, to make certain you had the
perfect night.”
A spark of anger ignites in my chest, mingling with the fear and giving me just enough courage to answer back. “You did
this for you,” I hiss. “To try to give this mockery of a wedding some kind of hint of respectability.” I press my lips tightly
together to try to hide their trembling, staring at him. “This has nothing to do with my comfort or happiness. If it did, you would
never have taken me away at all.”
“Well, either way.” He shrugs, that smirk spreading across his lips. “It sounded nice, didn’t it?”
I swallow hard, taking another step back, away from him, and towards the door. “What’s your name?” I demand, still doing
my best to hold his gaze. “You can’t—you can’t just take me away from my home and marry me if I don’t even know your
name!” Strictly speaking, I know that’s not true, but it’s all I have. It’s all I can think of to try to fight back against this.
He chuckles, a low, dark sound deep in his throat. “Andre Leone,” he says smoothly, as easily as if he were just waiting for
the moment he chose to tell me. “And you, Lucia Fontana, are going to be my wife. If you haven’t figured that out already, of
course.” He adds that last with another laugh, as if he’s made a particularly good joke. As if any of this could possibly be
funny.
Andre Leone. Fear ripples through me, because I know that name. Not very well, not well enough to know everything about
him, but I learned how to listen well enough growing up in my father’s house to get bits and pieces of information about what’s
happening in the world outside those four walls. For instance, I know that two years ago, he brought a man by that name to one
of his estates, keeping him there until he could decide what to do with him. I know that the Leone family did something to anger
my father, though I don’t know what. It’s not much to go off of, but it’s enough to piece together that tonight is somehow his
attempt at recompense for what happened to his family. That he’s using me as a means to get back at my father for something.
I remember his hand on my throat in the garden, the look in his eyes when I thought he might kill me, and the terror is so all-
consuming that I can’t think rationally about what to do any longer.
“No!” I shake my head, backing up rapidly towards the door, the only thought in my head to run. “I won’t marry you! I’m
not going to let you—no, no—” I turn towards the door, grabbing for the knob, praying that it won’t be locked again. It’s not,
but I only get the door partway open before I feel Andre’s hand grip my elbow, dragging me backward, away from it and into
his arms as I shriek and squirm. His arms go around me, trapping mine at my sides, one of his hands pressing between my
shoulder blades as the other winds into my hair, holding me in place so he can whisper into my ear. I realize, to my horror, as
he holds me close, that he’s hard. I can feel him pressing against my thigh through the layers of clothing, and I know that my
fear is exciting him. The chase and capture are turning him on—all of this is fulfilling a fantasy, and I’m playing right into it.
“You can’t leave,” he breathes into my ear, his fingers sliding through my carefully arranged curls. “You’re going to be my
wife, Lucia, and you’re going to have my child. There’s no escape. You’re the first step in my revenge, and nothing is going to
take that away from me.”
He loosens his grip, turning me towards the priest, and I look at the man in terror. “Please,” I gasp out, wide-eyed and
begging. “You have to stop this. You can’t let this happen. Please, please help me—”
I see, for a moment, a flash of sympathy in the priest’s face. I can’t imagine that he has no qualms with this, that there’s no
part of him that knows this is wrong. But he shakes his head, ever so slightly, and I feel the crushing weight of hopelessness
sink down on me as I realize that there is no escape.
No one is going to help me. No one is going to save me.
“We’ll keep this brief.” The priest looks between the two of us as Andre leads me to stand in front of him, his grip on my
hand tight as a vise. “Do you, Andre Marco Leone, take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife?”
Andre nods sharply. “I do.”
The priest looks at me, his expression unreadable. “And do you, Lucia Elysia Fontana, take this man to be your lawfully
wedded husband?”
What happens if I say no? I look between Andre and the priest, wanting to laugh at it all, to point out the lack of any
meaningful vows, to protest. Andre’s grip on my fingers tightens, and I know that, somehow, he’ll force my agreement. I don’t
know how—but I feel sure that I don’t want to find out.
“This won’t hold up,” I nearly spit at him, fear and anger warring for supremacy as I struggle to keep some small hold on
my emotions. If I fall apart now, I don’t know how I’ll make it through the night. “This can’t be legal. A forced marriage,
without witnesses—”
“It will once it’s been consummated.” Andre smiles coldly at me. “Once you’re no longer a virgin, you’re worthless to your
family, dear Lucia. With the contract signed, the blessing of the good Father here, and your virgin blood on our sheets, there
will be no arguing with the sanctity of our marriage. Wife.”
He says the last word with a lascivious sneer that makes me shudder. I flush red at the mention of consummation in front of
the priest, but he barely seems to notice, waiting patiently as Andre and I face off. Andre’s hand on mine tightens even more,
the small bones in my hand rubbing together, and I let out a whimper of pain.
“I can make this far worse for you, principessa,” Andre murmurs. “And not even the good man of God here will stop me if
I’m forced to use other means to extract this vow from you. Would you like me to punish you, perhaps, in front of him? I’m sure
a good spanking would teach you your proper place as my bride.”
I’m not well-versed in reading others—I’ve never had to be. But there’s no doubt that he means it. My hand aches as if he
might snap the bones from the pressure of his grip, and I feel certain that he’ll hurt me more, if he has to. That he would
humiliate me in front of the priest, if need be.
I won’t escape like this. Not by refusing to say the words.
“I do,” I choke out, and the painful pressure on my hand lessens.
The priest looks relieved at my acquiescence. “Then I pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss your bride.” He
steps to one side, sliding a document out of the leather folio he was holding and setting it on the desk. “And then I will need
you both to sign this.”
Andre looks at me, a satisfied smile curling his lips. “What?” he murmurs, drawing me closer as he rests a hand on my
waist. “Don’t you want to kiss me, my darling bride?”
I look at him with as much defiance as I can muster, and he laughs, the sound low and predatory. “Alright then.” He shrugs,
raising an eyebrow. “After all, what I want from you tonight doesn’t require me to kiss you at all. If you prefer it that way.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I whisper desperately. “My father will challenge this. And the Church will listen. He’s the head of the
mafia. He has his hands in every pocket, even theirs. You won’t get away with this.” I look at the priest, desperate for some
sign that I’m right. That no matter what Andre does to me, there’s some way that this can be challenged.
But the priest’s face is utterly blank. He motions to the paper on the desk, and I get the impression that he wants to be done
with this and on his way as soon as possible. Andre steps up to the desk, signing his name with a flourish, and I look numbly at
the piece of paper. I think of the number of steps between where I’m standing and the front door, of the security guards Andre
must have who would come after me, of the utter futility of trying to run. I don’t even really know where I am, or exactly how
far I am from home.
So I step forward, next to my new husband, and I sign the paper too. My hand shakes, sending the signature scrawling
across the line, but it doesn’t matter. It’s not as if I’ve ever been asked to sign anything before. There’s no signature anyone
could compare it to, to see if it holds up.
“Very good.” Andre looks at the priest. “Is there anything else you need to make it official, Father?”
The priest hesitates, sliding the paper back into the folio, and for one wild moment, I think that maybe he’s changed his
mind. That maybe he’s going to help me after all.
But then he shakes his head. “No, Mr. Leone. I think that will be all.”
I can’t fully describe the way my heart sinks as I hear that. I stare helplessly after the priest as he walks out, escorted away
by James, who is standing just outside. I feel my face heat at the thought that James heard my screams and begging earlier, and
grow hotter at the thought of what else the staff might hear later. Fear curdles in the pit of my stomach. Will Andre hurt me?
What will he do? Knowing now that he took me out of a desire for some kind of revenge, I can’t imagine what he might have in
store for me tonight.
The act of losing my virginity is nerve-wracking enough. No one has ever told me how it really goes, aside from the most
basic of principles. I’ve been kept utterly sheltered when it comes to such things, and so my wedding night would have been
anxiety-inducing even with the sort of proper husband that my father would have chosen for me. But this—
I can’t breathe as Andre turns to look at me. “I’ve half a mind to put you on your knees in front of the fireplace and take you
there,” he murmurs, reaching up to brush his thumb over my cheekbone. “But like I said in the garden, I plan to do this all
properly. For tonight, at least. So let’s go upstairs, darling wife.” The last is said with that same sneering curl of his lip as his
hand presses against my cheek, his other hand on my waist as he draws me closer. “Our marriage bed should be ready for us.”
He guides me towards the door, and I nearly stumble as we go. My feet feel heavy and clumsy, my entire body is numb with
fear. I’m married. This man is my husband. None of it feels real. I keep waiting to wake up, to realize that this was all some
horrible nightmare brought on by the overexcitement of my debut party—that maybe I drank too much champagne and had
strange dreams. But as I walk up the stairs, step by step, as Andre leads me up to the third floor, I know that none of that is true.
This isn’t a nightmare—it’s real. And I can’t escape what’s about to happen.
There’s a set of heavy wooden double doors directly in front of the third-floor landing, and Andre pushes them open,
gesturing for me to walk inside. “Our room,” he says with that same satisfied smile, as if he knows what he’s making me feel
with every word. “I do hope you like it, Lucia. This is going to be your home now, after all.”
My stomach twists as I step inside. It’s a beautiful room—one of the most elegantly appointed master’s suites I’ve ever
seen. It has all the usual furnishings, all made out of heavy dark wood, and there are more of the thick tapestried rugs covering
the gleaming wooden floor. The room is dimly lit and smells faintly of vanilla and sandalwood, and I feel another lurch of
apprehension as I see that the duvet on the bed has been neatly folded back to expose the white sheet beneath. There’s
something faintly horrifying about the idea that someone prepared the bed for this, and I suck in a breath to try to quell the
nausea.
“Let’s get these out,” Andre murmurs, plucking at the jeweled pins in my hair. “I think you’ll look quite beautiful with your
hair entirely loose as I fuck you.” He says it so casually that it jolts me, as he gathers them in one hand, setting them on the
nightstand next to the bed. And then, as I stand there trying not to panic, he turns back to look at me. “So innocent,” he breathes,
his gaze darkening as it sweeps over me. “And entirely mine.”
I want to tell him that I’m not his. That signing a piece of paper and taking my virginity against my will can’t make me his.
But I know it’s not true. It will make me his—in all of the ways that matter to him.
“Turn around,” he demands, and I obey woodenly, wondering with every movement if there’s any purpose to resisting any
of it. If I should even try to fight back, or if it’s better to just allow him what he wants.
I feel his hands slide around my waist, gripping me possessively for a moment before his fingers shift to the lacing at the
base of my spine. I feel him tug at the ribbons, loosening them as he spreads the two sides of the dress apart, and I have to fight
against the urge to grab for the top of the bodice when he loosens it enough for it to start to slide down. I know it will only
make him angry, so I force myself to keep my hands at my sides when the dress slithers down my waist and hips, pooling into a
puddle of heavily embroidered silk at my feet.
Hot tears spring to my eyes. No man has ever seen me this vulnerable before, standing here in almost nothing—worse than
nothing, really, because what I’m wearing is meant to be arousing. I feel his eyes on me, his hand brushing against the back of
my neck as he pushes my hair to one side, running a finger down my spine to the top of the laced bustier. His other hand slides
to the curve of my ass in the lacy panties, squeezing lightly, and I hear him groan.
“God, you are fucking gorgeous,” he murmurs, his fingers teasing beneath the edge of the panties. “And all mine. No one
else has ever seen this.” His hands go still for a moment, and then he turns me, making me nearly trip as I try to step out of the
high heels. “And no one else ever will. Fuck.”
His eyes are dark with a vengeful lust that terrifies me. His gaze sweeps over my breasts, down the sheer lace of the
bustier, to the thin lace that barely shields the space between my legs. He reaches up, sliding his hands over my shoulders and
down my arms, his eyes greedily returning to my cleavage. I’m afraid to really look at him, afraid to look down and see what I
felt earlier—that he’s hard and ready for me. That he’s aroused by my fear and the knowledge of what he’s about to take from
me.
“Take it off,” he demands, taking a step back. “The top part first.” He gestures to the bustier. “I’m sure you can manage it.
Take it off for me.”
A surge of anger that’s becoming more and more familiar accompanies the hot feeling of shame and the twisting sensation
of fear pooling in my stomach. It’s not enough for him to kidnap me, to forcibly marry me, to strip me bare and take what
shouldn’t belong to him. He has to make me complicit in my own humiliation.
“Do it, Lucia.” His voice is velvety smooth, but I can hear the steel beneath it. “I wouldn’t like to have to punish you on our
wedding night.”
It’s not a threat. Not one that I’m not certain he’ll carry out, anyway. The only thing that I’m not sure about is that he
wouldn’t like it.
I reach behind my back, fumbling for the ribbons of the bustier. They come loose easily—it’s lingerie, not a functional
corset—and I bite my lip as I loosen them, trying not to cry. Earlier tonight, I didn’t even want Celeste to see me naked. Now
Andre will see all of me, bare and vulnerable for him, and there’s nothing I can do about it.
“Slowly,” he murmurs. His voice is thick with lustful anticipation, and it’s harder to hold back the tears. My fingers cling to
the edge of the bustier, not wanting to let it go, but I know that I don’t really have a choice.
Slowly, I let it slide down my breasts. My nipples tighten instantly despite the warmth of the room, and I see the smirk that
curls his lips, as if the reaction is for him. I want to tell him that it’s not, to defiantly refuse to allow him to think that I could
possibly enjoy any part of this, but I can’t make my lips shape the words. I can’t do anything except numbly let the piece of
lingerie fall to the floor to join my dress, and then hook my fingers in the edge of the lacy panties.
“A little at a time. Yes—” He almost growls the last word, and I can’t help but notice his arousal now. The ridge of his cock
is thick and straining against the front of his suit trousers, and I bite my lip to stifle a gasp at how large he looks. How on earth
is that going to fit inside of me? My pulse flutters with fear at the thought, and I stall for a moment, the lace clinging to my
hipbones as I start to slowly slip the panties off.
“Perfect,” he breathes as the lace dips below the top of the dark curls between my thighs. “I’ll have you shave for me soon
enough—I prefer a bare pussy.” He says it as casually as if we were discussing the weather, his gaze fixed hungrily between
my thighs. “But for tonight, I wanted you entirely as you are. Innocent and natural.” He nods at where I’ve stopped again, my
hands shaking. “Take them off, principessa.”
This time, I can’t stop the tears welling in my eyes as I let my panties drop to the floor. I’m entirely naked, bare to his gaze,
and trembling from head to toe, and Andre is looking at me like I’m prey. Like he wants to devour me.
He steps closer, and the shaking intensifies. He reaches up, his fingers catching my chin in his grasp, keeping me from
turning away as he closes in on me. I see the moment he tilts his head, when his lips are so very close to mine, warm and full. I
know he’s going to kiss me. My very first kiss.
“This is your first, isn’t it, principessa?” he murmurs. “The first of everything, tonight.” His fingers tighten on my chin
when I don’t immediately respond. “Have you been kissed before?”
I shake my head wordlessly, trying not to let the tears spill over. I remember what Celeste said, that crying would make him
angry, but I’m not sure that’s true. A part of me thinks he might like it more if I cried.
“Good,” he breathes, and then his mouth presses against mine.
I close my eyes tightly, resisting the sensation. I don’t want him to kiss me, but his mouth is firm and insistent, the feeling of
lips against mine for the first time sparking something in me that’s unfamiliar and frightening. My skin prickles, my pulse
quickening, and I’m suddenly even more acutely aware of the fact that he’s still fully clothed, while I’m entirely naked. The
pressure of his fingers against my jaw, his mouth on mine, it all heightens my senses, and I feel his other hand reach up to cup
my breast, his thumb flicking over my hardened nipple.
I don’t know what I expected out of tonight. For him to fuck me roughly, maybe—hard and fast, to make it a punishment. To
take out whatever anger he felt on my body. I expected pain. I’m not sure that there won’t still be some. But as his fingers brush
over the curve of my breast, thumb pressing against the peak, I feel something different.
The first stirrings of pleasure.
No. No, no! I squeeze my eyes tightly shut, tensing every muscle in my body against it. I don’t want to enjoy this. With
anyone else, I would have been grateful for a little pleasure, but not with him. Not when he’s taken everything that’s happened
tonight by force.
His hand drops to the flat of my stomach, my waist, my hip. Every caress of his long, aristocratic fingers over my smooth
skin sends more strange sensations rippling through me, more uncertainty. And then he dips his fingers between my legs, his
mouth skimming from my lips to my jaw. I go rigid, fighting whatever sensations are coming next with everything in me, and I
feel him go very still.
Andre pauses, pulling away from me, his fingers withdrawing. He looks at me with an expression that I can’t entirely read,
and for one wild moment, I have a flicker of hope.
Maybe he’s changed his mind.
 5

ANDRE

ven as angry and hungry for revenge as I am, I can recognize one simple fact.
E I want more than just this one night with Lucia. Just as it wasn’t enough to take her life and end it there, it’s not enough
for me to take her virginity and leave it at that. I want her to have to exist as my wife, to have to bear my child—for her to
have to take part in the downfall of her own family and the rise of mine. I want her father to know that she’s mine—not just for
one night, but for the rest of her life.
I can’t do that if I genuinely injure her tonight. And from what I felt in the brief moment when I slipped my fingers between
her legs—the tension in her body and the complete unreadiness for any part of me—I risk doing just that if I take her as swiftly
and roughly as I want to.
I’ve been ravenous for her since the moment I cornered her in the garden—since before that. The desire has been steadily
growing since the moment I conceived this plan, a nurtured fantasy that I have in front of me at last. I want to throw her onto the
bed and force myself inside of her, take her as roughly as I’ve imagined night after night with my hand around my cock,
dreaming of the moment when I would break Lucia Fontana to my will.
But if I want to enjoy my toy for more than one night, I can’t break it so quickly.
I’ll need to rethink my tactics if I want to play a longer game with her.
I can have all my fantasies in time, I tell myself as I step toward her again. She’s shaking like a leaf, her skin so pale that
the bit of blush she applied stands out starkly against her cheekbones. Her light blue eyes are wet with unshed tears, and she
looks like a porcelain doll, so fragile that with just the slightest touch she might shatter.
The thought gives me a new idea—one just as satisfying as the idea of fucking her hard, but in a different way. What if I
make her shatter for me?
I reach up, cupping the side of her face again in my palm. I can feel the effort that it takes for her not to flinch away as she
looks at me, her gaze wary. I’ve already given her plenty of reasons tonight not to trust my touch. My palm itches at the memory
of pressing it against her throat, the way she squirmed, the idea of doing the same as I hold her down beneath me. I want it,
with a visceral sort of hunger that makes my cock twitch and throb against the tight front of my suit trousers, but I force myself
to touch her gently instead. I reach up, brushing a lock of hair back away from her face, and I kiss her again.
I feel her suck in a breath, soft and quick, when my mouth touches hers. Her body is shaking so hard that it’s impossible to
tell fear from desire, and I hear the soft gasp she lets out when I rest my hands on her waist, backing her slowly towards the
bed. The thought that I could make her want this, that I could hear her cry out my name in pleasure instead of fear by the end of
the night, that I could have that much power over her—it’s a part of the fantasy that I hadn’t considered before. A possibility
that holds more merit than I’d stopped to think about.
“On the bed, principessa,” I murmur against her mouth as her thighs hit the back of the mattress. Her eyes are squeezed
tightly shut, as if she can block this all out if she just doesn’t look at me, but I don’t intend to let her miss a moment of what I
plan to do to her. “Open your eyes and look at me, Lucia.”
She shudders, but slowly, her eyes flicker open. She looks at me, her lower lip trembling. “I—I don’t—” She starts to
whisper, and I press a finger to her lips.
“Quiet, dolcezza.” I brush the finger over the bow of her mouth, feeling her tremble all over again. I don’t think it’s entirely
from fear. No one has ever touched her like this—no one has ever touched her at all, especially not a man. Whether she likes it
or not, she can’t help feeling something. “Lie back on the bed, like I asked.”
It’s not so much asked as told, but I guessed correctly that saying that instead might encourage her to obey. She nods, her
lower lip still trembling, and pushes herself onto the bed, squirming backward until she’s lying back against the pillows. For a
moment, all I can do is look at her—all waves of thick dark hair and smooth olive skin, her slender body a picture of absolute
beauty as she lies there waiting for me. Mine, mine, mine. The words are a snarl in my head, my cock throbbing with an aching
need that I can barely wait to satisfy. I can have her however I please, whenever I choose. The daughter of Don Fontana is
mine, and the thrill of it is beyond anything I’ve felt in my entire life. I reach down, pressing the heel of my hand against my
cock to stave off my overeager arousal. I see Lucia’s gaze flick downwards, the wide-eyed fear that fills her face when she
gets a glimpse of my thick, straining erection.
“All for you, principessa,” I murmur with a smirk, shrugging off my suit jacket and draping it over the arm of a nearby
chair. “But for the moment, I’m enjoying simply looking at you. Once upon a time, having a mafia princess like you in my bed,
wed to me, would have been my right.” A tug of my tie and it loosens, sagging against my shirt as I slip it off. “But your father
took that right from me. So, you see, all I’ve done is reclaim what’s mine.”
“I was never supposed to be yours.” The words come out a breathy hiss, hardly anything to spark fear, but a small part of
me admires the nerve it must have taken for her to say them at all.
“I’m almost impressed.” I reach for my cufflinks, slipping them free. “You’re naked in my bed, your body mine for me to
plunder however I like, as soon as I choose, the spoils of this first victory. And yet you’ve still somehow found the tenacity to
talk back to me.” I set the cufflinks aside, reaching for the top button of my shirt. “I think you might deserve a reward,
principessa. For making the night more interesting, if nothing else.”
“I don’t want anything from you.” Her voice cracks, but she manages to lift her chin, her hands pressed flat against the sheet
on either side of her. Her thighs are pressed tightly together, but it does nothing to detract from the view in front of me.
“You’ll want this.” I start to undo the shirt, and I see her gaze flick down despite herself. A smirk spreads over my face as I
see her unwittingly watching me undress, her eyes skating over the fine blond hair on my chest, the tattoos inked across my
pectorals and curving over my ribs. I imagine, for a moment, her fingers tracing over my skin, and my cock throbs with a desire
that I hadn’t thought to have.
I don’t care if she touches me, I tell myself, shrugging out of the shirt and letting it drop to the floor. I’m the one touching
her. Taking her. Her desires have no part in this.
I slide my belt out of the loops, not missing the way she flinches at the sound of leather sliding through the fabric. Her gaze
flicks to my zipper, and I see the way she tenses in anticipation of me undoing my pants—but out of fear, not desire.
I’m going to change that.
Slowly, I move onto the bed, my hands gripping her ankles lightly. I feel her instantly flinch back, and I slide them up her
calves slowly, pressing outwards when I reach her knees. “Open your legs, principessa,” I murmur, my fingers pushing into the
soft flesh just above. “There’s no point in fighting this. I will have you before tonight is over. Just give in, and it will be
easier.”
As I speak, I stroke the soft skin of her legs, and I feel the shiver that goes through her. Her legs come apart just a sliver,
almost as if she didn’t mean for them to, and I take full advantage of it as I open them wider, parting her for me.
The first sight of her soft, pink slit as her folds part makes my cock throb with a need that’s close to pain. I slide my hands
up her inner thighs, opening her further, and when I look up, I see that her eyes are squeezed tightly shut again. I slap the inside
of her thigh lightly, just enough to sting, and I hear her whimper.
“Eyes on me, dolcezza,” I murmur, my voice low and rasping. “I want you to watch what I do to you.”
“No, please—” she whispers, but her eyes open anyway, wet and blue, as she looks helplessly down at me as I spread her
wide. Her folds are pink and flushed, framed with the dark curls that I plan to do away with sooner rather than later, but for
tonight, I wanted her fresh and untouched. I wanted all of her just as one of those other undeserving mafiosos would have had
her.
Her cheeks flush as she sees me looking at her, stained with embarrassment, and I laugh low in my throat. “There’s nothing
to be embarrassed about, Lucia,” I murmur, sliding my hands to the very crease of her thighs as I hold her legs open. “You’re
my wife. It’s perfectly natural for me to look at this sweet pussy whenever I please.” I reach up with one hand, spreading her
folds as I reach up to hover the tip of my middle finger over her clit. “So small and tender. But it can bring you so much
pleasure if you allow it. Have you ever touched yourself here?” I brush my fingertip over her soft clit as I speak, and Lucia’s
entire body jerks, her mouth falling open at the sudden sensation.
“No!” She cries out, her hands fisting in the sheets, her hips arching up into my touch despite herself. “No,” she breathes,
trembling, looking at me with welling blue eyes. “I’ve never touched myself. Please—just get it over with. Don’t—”
I laugh again at that, low and promising, as I move closer, stroking her clit with my middle finger again. I can feel it starting
to swell and stiffen just from that faint touch, as much proof that she’s telling me the truth as I could ever need. The delicious
knowledge that she’s so innocent that she’s never even touched herself ripples through me, and I reach down with my other
hand, undoing the front of my suit trousers. My cock is aching, too stiff to bear being trapped any longer, and it slaps against my
abdomen as I release it, pre-cum sliding down the shaft. It takes everything in me not to flatten against the bed and grind against
the sheet for a moment’s pleasure; the ache is so intense. I want to drive myself into her, to feel her hot and tight around me—
She’s not wet. You’d hurt her.
 It’s the only thing holding me back, the knowledge that I would hurt her terribly if I fucked her now the way I want to. I
slide forward, still lightly tapping her clit with my finger, and I feel the way she flinches and trembles as her clit swells
beneath the touch, her thigh muscles tensing as I start to circle it instead.
“Perfect,” I breathe as she arches up into my touch. “It’s just a matter of finding the right spot. With my fingers, or—”
The cry that Lucia lets out when I drag my tongue over her clit is worth every moment of waiting. I feel her resistance to the
sudden pleasure, hear the sobbing moan that follows as I lick her in long, wet strokes of my tongue that leaves her gasping, and
the satisfaction that floods me is enough to make my cock throb with a warning pleasure that makes me reach down and squeeze
the base hard before I lose my cum too soon.
“Please,” she gasps out, and I know that she no longer knows if she’s begging me to stop or keep going.
I hadn’t thought of breaking her with pleasure instead of pain. But this first step is better than I could have imagined.
“Didn’t you ever dream of some handsome man doing this to you?” I mock, pulling back a little so I can enjoy the view of
her newly aroused pussy in front of me. Her folds are swollen now, too, flushed and reddened around her engorged clit, and I
see arousal trickling from her entrance. She’s nearly wet enough for me, and the thought makes my cock twitch with excitement.
“Licking you to your first orgasm?” I smack her thigh again when I see that her eyes are closed. “Eyes open, principessa. Don’t
make me tell you again. I want you watching me when I make you come.”
“I never thought—I didn’t know about—” She gasps, hardly able to speak as I flutter my tongue over her clit again. “Oh,
god—”
The moan that she lets out is a strangled sound in her throat, her hips arching as I curl my tongue around her clit, lips
brushing over it as I lap up the sweet taste of her. I hadn’t planned to do this, but now I find that she tastes so good that I’m
already thinking of the next time that I might spread her open and force an orgasm from her. I could have her anywhere in the
house that I please, anytime that I wish.
I slide my fingers between her folds, teasing her entrance, feeling how wet she is now. “I might order you to never wear
panties again, principessa,” I murmur, fluttering my tongue over her clit again. “So I can eat your pussy and make you come on
my tongue anytime I please. Would you like that? Being ordered to bend over where you stand to come on my face?”
“I won’t—” She lets out another shuddering moan, undoing whatever protest she had been about to make. “I’m not going to
—”
“Oh yes, you are,” I murmur against her swollen flesh, and then I press my lips around her clit, and suck.
The shriek that she lets out fills the room, her hips bucking against my mouth as her fingers claw into the blankets. I’ve
never felt a woman come like this before, as if her entire body is being unraveled at the seams, her legs finally falling open of
her own accord. Her arousal gushes over my tongue, her pussy finally as soaked as I need it to be for my cock, and I suck at her
clit harder as Lucia’s back arches; she grinds against my tongue, all of her embarrassment lost in this first experience of a
pleasure that she didn’t know was possible.
I feel pre-cum dripping down my cock as it throbs, the satisfaction of my victory almost enough to send me over the edge. I
lick her clit once more, swirling my tongue around the pulsing flesh, and laugh as I hear her moan.
“You can say you’re not mine all you want,” I murmur, giving her one more lick before I rise up on my knees between her
thighs. I see her gaze shift to my stiff, dripping cock, pressed to my belly, and the glazed fear in them as I push my trousers
down my hips. “But I made you come on my tongue, dolcezza. You are mine. You came for me.”
Her eyes are welling with tears again, but she doesn’t protest. She knows that she can’t. The tremors running through her
body now are from the aftershocks of her orgasm, there’s no denying that. Her skin is flushed with arousal, her pussy glistening,
and as I shift between her legs with my cock in my hand, there’s nothing stopping me now.
“Relax,” I murmur, stroking one hand along her inner thigh as I line up my cockhead with her now-slick entrance. “It will
be easier if you do.”
Lucia stares up at me, wide-eyed, her gaze flicking between my face and my cock as I ease myself between her folds. I suck
in a sharp breath at the first touch of her slick, hot flesh against my tip, the sensation magnified by how long I’ve been waiting,
how long I’ve been fucking hard tonight. I’ve had an erection off and on since I snuck into the garden and saw her, and the
edging has finally gotten to be too much. I need to sink into her, to feel her velvet heat wrapped around me, to fuck her, and I
can’t wait any longer.
“Just relax, principessa,” I murmur again. “Relax and take my cock—”
She’s still so fucking tight. I groan when I push my cockhead into her, the squeeze of her virgin pussy around my
oversensitive flesh almost enough to squeeze the cum from me, as if I were the virgin again. I feel the resistance, and I force the
urge to simply shove myself inside of her back, clinging to my last shreds of patience. If I take her too hard, I’ll hurt her. I can
feel that more than ever, with the intense clench of her around my cock.
“Take it, Lucia,” I murmur, stroking her hip with one hand and nudging her thighs wider with the other. “Be a good girl,
dolcezza, and let me inside. You feel so good. Your pussy is so fucking good—”
Somehow, although I know she still doesn’t want me in her, the praise seems to soften her. I feel her relent a little, the
squeeze relaxing just enough for me to slip an inch deeper. She cries out, her eyes widening, freezing in place as my thick cock
stretches her wide. I can see her pussy taut around my straining flesh, and the sight is so erotic that I once again have to breathe
slowly to avoid filling her too soon.
The pleasure is incomprehensible. I’ve never felt anything so good. The physical sensation, the power, the knowledge that
she’s mine and mine alone—so much so that the only pleasure she’s ever had has come from me tonight, not even from herself.
It’s dizzying, and I push myself deeper before I can think better of it, needing more of my cock enveloped in her. It’s not until
she claws at my arm that I stop, holding myself still as I feel her ripple around me.
“It hurts,” she gasps, her head flung back and her eyes wide. “It burns—”
I let out a slow breath, fighting my frustration. “I’m halfway,” I murmur, reaching up to stroke her hair away from her face.
It’s meant to reassure her, but her eyes go wider instead, her lips parting on a frightened whimper.
“Only half?” she whispers, and I groan at the awed fear in her voice.
“You can take it, principessa.” I stroke my hand over her flat stomach, sliding down so that my fingers brush against her
clit. “You can take all of it.”
“It’s so big.” The words come out on a breath as she tightens around me again, and my cock throbs with an aching pleasure
that borders on agony.
“It is,” I murmur, rubbing her clit. “It will feel good once you’re used to it. You’ll beg me to fuck you hard with it. You’ll
beg me to make you come while you take my thick, hard cock.” My fingers circle her clit faster, and she whimpers, shaking her
head.
“No. I don’t want—” But her body relaxes, a moan slipping free as her hips arch into the pressure of my fingers, and I feel
her give way as I thrust. My cock slides into her, those last several inches filling her up, and I let out a groan that seems to
come from the bottom of my very soul as I feel her soft folds rub against the base of my cock.
God, I need to fucking come.
“I can’t—” I let out a breath, leaning forward as I keep stroking her clit. “I need to fuck you, dolcezza. I’m too fucking hard,
and you feel too fucking good. You can take it. Just come for me again if you want. Come all over my cock if it makes you feel
better.”
Somewhere in the back of my head, I realize that none of this has gone how I planned. I didn’t intend to make her come, or
to talk her through it as I took her virginity, or urge her to another orgasm as I told her how good she feels. I’d planned to
fucking destroy her, to break her to my will—and yet it doesn’t seem to matter now, as I start to slide my cock in and out of her
blissful heat.
However it happened, I’ve still taken her virginity. She’s still mine, still beneath me, taking every inch of my cock as I fuck
her. She’s still moaning for me. And she’s still going to take every drop of my cum.
I don’t know how long I’ll last. I feel her tensing beneath me as I rub her clit, her pussy gripping me as she gasps with each
flutter of pleasure that my touch sends through her, and I can feel that she’s even wetter than before. The sounds of flesh against
flesh fill the room lewdly, the wet slap of my skin against hers as I sink to the hilt inside of her again and again, rolling my hips
against hers so that I can feel the soft, exquisite clench of her folds around the base of my cock. I feel the throbbing pleasure
that tells me I’m close, and I thrust hard, groaning as I sink into her again.
Innocent as she is, Lucia seems to grasp what’s about to happen. “No—” she gasps out, starting to try to twist away from
me again for the first time since I got her to relax. “No, please don’t come inside of me! Please don’t—”
“Shh, little principessa.” I reach up with my other hand, tapping my fingers against her lips as I keep up a steady pressure
on her clit with my other hand. I fuck her with short, quick strokes as I speak, holding back my climax by the barest of threads.
“I’m going to fill you up now, Lucia. You’re going to take my cum like a good girl. God, I’m going to fucking come so hard—”
I groan, feeling my balls tighten, my cock swell as I press down hard on her clit, rubbing it fiercely. “Please!” Lucia
shrieks, but she arches up as she cries out, her body clenching down on my cock as she comes again, and that’s all I can bear as
my cock swells and erupts within her.
“Oh, god,” I moan as I thrust into her hard, grinding into her as deeply as I can, feeling the first hot rush of my cum filling
her up. “Fuck, it’s so fucking good—”
I thrust again, hard, feeling the heat of her pussy and my cum against my swollen shaft, each spurt bursting out of me in an
exquisite sort of agony that I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to replicate. I fill her virgin pussy up, thrusting hard as I flood her
with it. She cries out with another sobbing moan as I stroke her clit once more and then lean forward, grazing my mouth over
hers as I rock into her once more.
“That’s the first of many,” I promise her, still slowly thrusting as I feel my cock starting to soften. I pull out slowly,
groaning with that last wave of pleasure as my cockhead slips free, and I reach down as I see the white drip of my cum starting
to squeeze out of her folds. I nudge it back inside with two fingers, holding them inside of her as I kiss her again. “I’m going to
come inside of you every day,” I promise her, curling my fingers inside of her. “More than that, if you get my cock as hard as
you did today. I’m going to fuck you until you’re pregnant with my heir, principessa.”
I press my thumb against her oversensitive clit, smiling against her mouth as she whimpers. “I’m going to bring your family
down, Lucia,” I whisper, the words a breath between us as I thrust my fingers into her, pushing my cum deeper. “Mine will be
restored, and I will have my revenge for what was done to the Leone name. And I will do it while you moan, and beg, and
plead for my fingers and tongue and cock, the way you did tonight.”
One more hard thrust, my thumb rolling over her swollen flesh, and then I pull my hand free. I stand up, my softened cock
clinging to my thigh. There’s a red stain on the sheet between her thighs, and I jerk the sheet free of one corner of the bed,
pulling it out from under her as I wad it up in my hands. “Stay just like that,” I order her, when she dazedly starts to push herself
up from the bed. “I’ll tell a maid to come up and remake it. But you stay like that at least until she’s here with the linens. You
lie on your back, full of my cum, and we’ll see how long it takes for it to take root.” I feel my cock twitch, looking at her. She
looks wrecked, her mascara smudged, her cheeks flushed, her pussy swollen and wet with her arousal and my cum. “I’ll know
if you move,” I promise her, reaching down to run my fingers over my cock, pressing my thumb into the sensitive tip, and letting
out a hiss of pleasure. “And then I’ll have to come up here and fuck you all over again. Do you want that?”
She shakes her head, dazedly, but I think I see a flicker of something else in her eyes, too. Something that makes me think
she might not entirely be telling the truth.
For a moment, looking at her, I feel something else. Something besides the vengeful possessiveness that’s gripped me every
moment since I first came up with this plan. I tell myself that it’s just a strange sense of pride. That I’m oddly proud of her for
taking it so well, for responding to me, for giving me what I wanted. The kind of pride one would take in a particularly well-
performing pet.
Because what I cannot do, beyond anything else, is feel anything more than that for her.
I take one last look at Lucia, desire still thrumming through me as I look at what I’ve claimed.
And then I ball the sheet up in my hands and stride out of the room.
 6

LUCIA

have no idea what to think or feel.

I I watch Andre leave, still trembling on the bed, confused beyond anything I’ve ever experienced in my life.
It wasn’t supposed to feel good.
I close my eyes, curling into a ball on the bare mattress. Now that the pleasure had receded, I feel soft and sore, the ache
between my legs intensifying with every moment. I’m acutely aware of everything—the stickiness of his cum on the inside of
my thighs, mingled with my arousal, the feeling of the mattress underneath me, the hollow ache inside of me where he was a
moment before.
I never really knew what to expect from my wedding night. I knew that it meant a man putting his cock inside of me, and that
was about the extent of it. I knew it was pleasurable for men, that it was something they would do just about anything to have if
they desired it enough, and that whether or not the woman enjoyed it was usually of little consequence to the men in our world.
When I knew that Andre would be taking me to bed tonight and I had no choice in the matter, I expected nothing but pain.
Curling into a tighter ball, I press my hands over my face, trying not to think of the way he touched me. Of his tongue—
I didn’t know men did that. I didn’t know it would feel so good. And I certainly never expected that Andre would do it to
me.
A wave of shame washes over me as I feel a flicker of arousal, thinking of him doing it again. I feel myself tighten, feel a
throb between my thighs followed by another wave of that aching soreness, and I turn my face into the pillow as I burst into
tears.
I don’t know how long I stay like that, sobbing into my pillow, until I hear the door open and someone step into the room.
“Miss Lucia?” A voice comes from just inside the door, soft and soothing, and I realize through my haze that it’s Celeste. I
look up, seeing her through a mist of tears, and another wave of humiliation crashes over me as I realize what I must look like.
Tear-stained, hair tangled, naked, with my husband’s cum still leaking out between my thighs. I look like a woman who has
been utterly ravaged, broken, and then left to consider what’s just happened to her.
I turn my face back into the pillow as I hear Celeste tentatively approach the bed. I can’t look at her. I don’t know how I’ll
ever look at anyone again.
“Miss Lucia.” Celeste pauses, and I can feel her looking at me.
“Go away,” I mumble into the pillow, and I hear her let out a slow breath.
“I’m sorry, miss, but I can’t. Don Leone sent me up to make up the linens on the bed. And he, well—” She pauses again, as
if she’s struggling to find the right words. “He told me to make sure you were tended to.”
That does make me look up, eyes narrowed in confusion. “What do you mean, tended to?” I demand, hearing a slightly
hysterical pitch at the end of my words. “I think he’s done enough, don’t you?” I see Celeste flinch, and I briefly close my eyes.
“I’m sorry. I know you can’t answer that.”
“I would agree, actually,” Celeste says calmly. Her voice is still mild, but I can hear the edge to it, the hint that she has
more feelings about all of this than she’s letting on. She hesitates, and I have a feeling that she’s trying to think of how to
comfort me without overstepping. “You should take another bath, Miss Lucia,” she says finally. “I can draw one for you. It will
help. I’ll make up the bed while you soak, and then you can get a night’s rest.”
The thought of prying myself out of the bed feels almost impossible. But I think of sinking into hot water, of letting the aches
and soreness be soaked away for a little while, and I nod slowly. “Alright,” I say softly. “I—thank you.”
“It’s my job to take care of you, Miss Lucia,” Celeste says firmly. “And on that note, I’m going to check in on you while you
soak, if that’s alright. Just to make sure that you’re—”
 She trails off, but it doesn’t take much for me to figure out what she was thinking. That after what happened tonight, left
alone in a bathtub, I might seek a different way out.
“I promise I’m not thinking of that,” I tell her quietly. I push myself up to a sitting position, tucking my legs close to myself
as I wrap my arms over my breasts. “And you can just call me Lucia.”
“I probably shouldn’t do that, miss—”
I press my lips together, knowing that it’s not exactly fair to ask, when she could get in trouble if she slipped up in front of
Andre, or even someone else above her—like James. But I feel as if I’m grasping at any connection, the slightest bit of care or
sympathy, so that I don’t feel so alone. I take a breath, feeling a little guilty for pushing it, but unable to stop myself. “If you’re
going to be the one tending to me, then this is what I need from you,” I tell her firmly. “Think of it as an order, if that makes it
easier?”
“Alright,” Celeste relents finally. “It feels very strange. But I’ll do my best, m—Lucia.” She gives me a faint smile. “Here.
I’ll get you a robe to wrap up in, and then I’ll draw that bath for you.”
“Thank you,” I whisper, and she smiles.
Fifteen minutes later, I’m sinking into the hot bath, the water glistening with some sort of unscented bath oil that Celeste
said would help soothe anything that hurt. I lean my head back against the rim of the tub, not caring if my hair gets wet this time,
and I close my eyes as I try to force myself to think about this rationally.
For now, I’m married to Andre Leone. Whether or not the marriage can be upheld if it’s challenged, whether or not there’s
any recourse if someone is able to help me, there’s nothing that I can change about that right now. He married me in front of a
priest, with the license signed. I have to find some way to live with that for now, until I can figure out a means of escape.
There must be some way to do that. I think of the possibilities—not leaving the estate, I don’t think, especially since I have
no idea where I am. But I consider the possibility that he might take me somewhere with him eventually, that we might go to an
event, even, where I might see someone who knows me. Don’t panic, I tell myself, trying to breathe, trying not to think about
the possibility of Andre taking me somewhere far away from here, so far that I might never be able to get back to my home and
family. I tell myself that things could be worse.
But deep down, as I huddle in the hot water and search for some scrap of comfort, I know that’s not true. Even if I were to
get away, my life will never be what it was before. Any plans that my father might have had for me are gone now, along with
my virginity. The best that I can hope for is that I find a way out before Andre manages to get me pregnant.
I press a hand against the flat of my stomach, fear chilling me despite the warmth of the bath. I want to believe that my
father would still love me after this. That he would protect me. But the truth is that I’ve always willingly blinded myself to the
harshness of the world that I live in, to how disposable a woman is if she has no value—because I’d never feared for mine.
Now that Andre has had half of what he wants, I have no idea what value I have left to anyone other than him.
And the last thing in the world I want is to give him the rest of what he desires.

IN THE MORNING , I wake up to bright sunlight and an empty bed. It’s clear that Andre never came upstairs to sleep next to me
last night, and I sit up slowly, wondering what that means. Does he never intend for us to share a bed other than for sex? The
thought reassures me a little. It would give me at least some peace, a little space to compose myself before the next time I have
to see him. Which, I consider as I push back the covers, I have no idea exactly when that will be.
At some point, Celeste must have slipped into the room. She took my wedding dress and discarded lingerie away last night
while I was in the bath, and now I see there’s a red silk slip dress hanging on the edge of the wardrobe on a black velvet
hanger, with black velvet ballerina flats on the floor beneath it. I have none of my own clothes, obviously, so this must be
something Andre had brought here for me.
I wonder if he plans to dress me like a doll every single day. The thought makes me seethe, and I roll over, looking at the
phone next to the bed. It occurs to me that I might be able to have breakfast sent up to the room and avoid him altogether, and I
resolve to try that. Let him seek me out, I decide as I reach for the phone and find the number to ring down to the kitchen.
When someone answers, I try to sound as confident as I can. I grew up in a house like this, after all, and I’m still Don
Fontana’s daughter. “Can you have someone send up breakfast for me, please? To the master suite. Something light, if you don’t
mind.”
There’s a pause, and the voice on the other end almost sounds regretful when they answer, as if they, too, are aware of
what’s going on in the house. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Leone. Don Leone insisted that you be told to come down to the formal dining
room for breakfast once you woke up.”
“Don Leone,” I repeat, biting my tongue against what I really want to say. As far as I can tell from the little bit of
information Andre has given me, his family is in disgrace. He was taken away from his inheritance and brought here by my
father to await punishment. The fact that he’s styling himself as don after he’s kidnapped me from my home is so outrageous that
it’s almost laughable.
“Yes, ma’am.” Another pause. “I’m sorry. Don Leone was very firm.”
“I—” I swallow hard, reminding myself that there’s nothing this person can do about it. If I don’t have the power to
contradict Andre, it’s certain that no one on his staff does. “Alright. Thank you for letting me know.”
“Of course, ma’am.”
The phone clicks off, and I set the receiver down in the cradle, feeling my stomach clench. I’d hoped I would have more
time before I would need to face Andre again. It’s clear that he doesn’t plan to give me that.
If he’s going to demand my presence, then he can wait on it. I’m still more than a little frightened of him, but last night
showed me that, at the very least, he wants to keep me alive. I don’t intend to test his line on that too far, but it does give me a
small bit of power. It’s clearly not enough for him to simply eliminate me in order to punish my father. He wants me humiliated,
too.
With that thought in my head, I take my time getting ready. I notice that there’s no underwear to go with the slip dress
hanging on the wardrobe, and I bite my lip, hating the idea of going downstairs in this. It’s nothing but a glorified nightgown,
and that’s all the more evident the moment I slip the red silk over my head and look in the mirror. The feeling of it sliding
against my bare skin is lewdly sensuous. Every time I move, the peak of my nipples and the faint brush of my pubic hair against
the fabric is evident to anyone who might be looking. The straps are so thin that they look as if they could snap with the
slightest pull, and the neckline dips between my small breasts, showing the smooth skin there.
It’s a dress meant for a mistress, not a wife. A dress meant to embarrass me in front of anyone in the house who might see,
even the staff—to prove that no matter whose daughter I am, no matter what name I bear, whether that be my father’s or
Andre’s, I’m powerless here. His toy, and nothing more than that.
So I’ll just have to pretend not to be embarrassed. It’s easier said than done, but I force myself to go through the steps of
getting ready as if I were wearing the sort of appropriate clothes I would normally dress in, and not this. I run a brush through
my hair until it’s hanging thick and shiny around my shoulders, and slip the flats on. None of my jewelry is here either, and I
touch one earlobe, feeling even more bare without it. I feel even more adrift here, without any of my own things to anchor me.
As I walk downstairs, I realize I have no idea where the formal dining room is. I have a feeling that’s another tactic of
Andre’s to embarrass me—as his wife, I should have already had a tour of the home and be familiar with all of it. He should
have been there this morning when I got up, to show me around the estate that is, technically, mine now as well. Instead, I’m
left to wander like a lost puppy, and I feel sure that it’s another way to throw me off balance and make me feel as if I don’t
belong.
He wants me to remember that nothing here is mine, not even my own self.
Fortunately, I’m familiar enough with the way a mansion like this is typically laid out that I can find it fairly quickly. I end
up catching a glimpse of a huge living room and a smaller parlor-type room before I notice a set of double doors cracked open
just enough that I see a sliver of what looks like a long dining room table. I take a deep breath, steeling myself for the moment I
see Andre again, and push one of the doors open.
The room itself is impossibly grand, and I’m seized with the urge to laugh again. Even in my father’s house, we didn’t eat
in the formal dining room every morning. I either had something sent up while I got ready for the day, or if my father wanted me
to eat with him that morning, we ate in the smaller dining room. The sight of Andre sitting alone at the head of the long table,
with the windows all along the far wall of the room spilling light in and a huge crystal chandelier overhead, tells me just how
much he feels the need to play a role that he’s not accustomed to filling.
It might seem like a small thing to know about him, but it tells me that he’s insecure. That he needs to feel as if he belongs in
this place that he’s trying to elevate himself to. It tells me that I need to step carefully, because if he feels as if he’s being
undermined, there’s no telling how unhinged he might become or how dangerous he could be.
He hears me open the door and looks over at me, standing there, a pleasant smile on his face as if nothing happened. As if
last night didn’t happen, at least not the way I remember it. He’s wearing dark chinos and a blue button-up, and I hate the fact
that I notice that it makes his eyes look brighter than the sapphire blue that they usually are. I hate that I notice that anything
about him is attractive at all.
“Don’t just stand there.” Andre raises an eyebrow. “You must be hungry.”
I feel myself start to tremble all over again, as if just being near him causes it. I’m not sure if it’s fear or anger or both, but I
can feel myself on the cusp of turning and running back upstairs. I’m starving—I haven’t eaten anything substantial since lunch
yesterday, but it almost feels worth it to stay hungry if I can get out of this room.
Andre’s expression turns impatient. “Sit down, Lucia. We’re a normal married couple having breakfast. Stop acting as if
you’re being tortured.”
Something about his patronizing tone and the look on his face tips me over the edge. I’m so close to falling apart, and as
much as I know I need to learn to take all of this in stride if I’m going to survive it, just this moment, it feels impossible.
“Nothing about this is normal!” I bite out, still staring at him from the doorway. “And nothing about that ‘wedding’ last
night was done properly, as much as you kept prattling on about that. You can’t possibly think that you’re going to get away
with this—”
Andre’s expression hardens the moment I say those last words, and I know I’ve gone a step too far. “Oh, I absolutely will,”
he says, his voice deceptively mild, and then he pushes his seat back a little. “I’ve changed my mind, Lucia.” He pats his thigh,
his gaze holding mine. “Come sit on my lap while we eat.”
I swallow hard, shaking my head. “I’d rather not,” I manage, trying to sound as imperious as I possibly can. “You can’t treat
me like this. I’m the daughter of—”
Andre sucks in a breath, snatching his napkin out of his lap and tossing it down onto the table. “I know exactly whose
daughter you are,” he growls, standing up abruptly. “And you know that. You know damn well it’s the reason I brought you
here. Now, are you going to make every moment of this a misery, or are you going to come over here, and—”
Against my better judgment, I turn on my heel and try to flee back the way I came. I should know better—he caught me last
night easily—and even if I got away, there’s nowhere in this house that he wouldn’t find me eventually. But I can’t help myself.
Every instinct in me tells me to get away from this man, that he’s a danger, that he’ll only ever hurt me. He terrifies me, and I
bolt out of the open door without thinking, nearly slipping on the waxed wooden floor as I do.
I make it maybe a dozen steps before I feel his hand grasp my upper arm, dragging me back against him. His other arm goes
around my waist, pulling my back flush against his chest, and I feel his lips against my ear, his hips pressing against my ass.
He’s hard, the thick ridge of his cock grinding into me, and I hate the way it makes me shiver, the arousal that flickers in the pit
of my stomach as I remember how he made me come last night.
“You’re ruining my breakfast, principessa,” Andre murmurs into my ear, sliding his lips over the shell of it. “And I can’t
have you not eating. You’re so thin already. So few curves.” His hand slides up, squeezing my small breast through the thin silk
of the dress. “And if you’re going to have my child, you need to be healthy. I told my staff to ensure you had to come downstairs
if you wanted to eat, so I can only assume that by running, you decided you’d rather starve than sit in my presence?” His fingers
tweak my nipple, rolling it between them, and I close my eyes as I hope that no one walks past and sees me like this. Andre
might not care, but I do. “Nod if you don’t want to speak, principessa.”
I couldn’t speak even if I did want to. I nod slowly, knowing that he’ll demand an answer, and his fingers pinch my nipple
hard. “That’s very bad of you,” he murmurs. “I’ve told you that I intend for you to give me an heir, Lucia. You know as well as I
do that you can’t conceive if you’re starving, no matter how many times I fill you up with my cum. So, it seems I’ll have to
make certain that you eat.”
He sweeps me up into his arms bridal style before I can protest, cradling me against his chest in another gentle mockery of
something a doting husband might do. I turn my head away, pushing ineffectually at his chest, but Andre just laughs, carrying me
back to the seat at the head of the table where he was before.
“Now then,” he murmurs as he sets me down. “Let’s see what we can do about making sure we both enjoy our breakfast.”
I stare at him as he sits, sliding his chair forward as he holds my wrist with one hand, keeping me standing next to him. For
a moment, I don’t understand what it is that he intends to do, until I see him reach for his zipper, and I feel my eyes widen in
horror.
The door is open. Someone from his staff could walk in at any moment, but Andre wraps his arm around my waist, pulling
me in front of him as he drags his zipper down. I hear the rustle of fabric, and twist my head around just in time to see him free
his thick, rigid cock as he drags the skirt of my silk dress up to my hips with his other hand. Before I can fully comprehend
what’s happening, he slides two fingers into his mouth, wetting them with his saliva before he reaches down, dragging them
between my folds.
“Oh,” he murmurs with a chuckle, his fingertips briefly dipping inside of me. “I see that little chase turned you on as well,
dolcezza. Or, at the very least, it won’t be as hard to get inside of you as it was last night. But I find that I care less about that
this morning, too. You need to get used to taking my cock, wife.”
I let out a whimper as he pushes his fingers inside of me, the wet sound of it making my face heat. That one memory of how
hard he made me come last night was enough to make me at least a little damp. The thrust of his fingers into my still-sore pussy
sends a wave of mingled pain and pleasure through me that only adds to it.
I hear Andre laugh again, his fingers slipping out as he grabs my hip, yanking me back onto his lap. He angles his cock
between my thighs, and I feel the swollen head of it press against my folds, rubbing back and forth through the gathered wetness
there for just a moment before he pulls me down onto his lap, pushing himself inside of me to the hilt.
My teeth sink into my lip to keep from crying out as his thick length slides over the raw nerves inside of me. I haven’t
recovered enough from last night for this, but I know he doesn’t care. If anything, taking me again so soon turns him on.
“Oh, fuck,” Andre groans, smoothing my hair back with one hand as he leans forward and presses his lips against my
throat. “God, you’re so fucking tight.” His cock throbs inside of me as he says it, and he uses one hand to turn me slightly, so
that my back is to the door and my legs are hanging over one side of the chair. He carefully arranges my skirt around us so that
I’m mostly covered, and nudges his chair in, reaching for his fork as nonchalantly as if his cock weren’t currently buried inside
of me.
“Andre—” I try to twist away, but his left arm snakes around my waist, holding me securely in his lap. “Someone could
walk in. Please—”
“And all they would see is a man spoiling his beautiful new wife.” Andre smirks at me, shifting his hips just enough that I
can feel him thrust shallowly, making me gasp despite myself. He feels even bigger like this, with me on top, deeper than he
was last night. I can feel the swollen head of his cock rubbing against places inside of me that I couldn’t have imagined ever
being touched. I close my eyes, willing myself not to cry—not only because of what he’s doing to me, but because of the utter
shame that it makes me feel. It feels good, having his cock buried inside of me. I feel my cheeks heat at the knowledge that a
part of me wishes that he’d bend me over the table and fuck me right now, instead of keeping me torturously impaled like this.
A part of me wants to feel what I felt last night again, no matter how much I know that I shouldn’t.
Andre cuts off a small piece of omelet, holding it to my lips. “Eat, principessa,” he murmurs. “I’m sure you’ve figured out
by now that it does no good to refuse. You might as well enjoy what I want to give you.”
I don’t miss the double meaning in his words. I also can’t resist the food much longer. It all smells delicious—I’m sure that
his cooking staff is nearly as good as what I’m used to—and I open my mouth reluctantly, allowing him to feed me the bite.
“Good girl.” His fingers slide through my hair, and I feel his hips rock inside of me again, almost a reward. The flavors of
the food burst over my tongue—herbs and sharp cheese and sweet fresh eggs, and I feel tears pricking the corners of my eyes.
This could be fun, if I didn’t hate him so much. Without meaning to, I imagine this scene with someone else, a man who didn’t
kidnap me against my will and force me to marry him. I imagine myself being fed breakfast while my new husband fucked me
slowly on his lap, a sort of lewd tableau I would never have even thought to fantasize about—but it’s more erotic than I could
have imagined.
Even now, as Andre feeds me another bite, his fingers caressing the back of my neck as he slowly rocks his hips against
me, I can feel the wetness gathering between my thighs. From the way he leans in to run his lips over my ear, that dark chuckle
vibrating deep in his throat, I know he feels it too.
“There, little principessa,” he murmurs, his hand resting on my thigh as he brushes his lips over my earlobe. “I can feel you
getting wet for my cock. You want more?” He shifts his hips again, the hand on my thigh pulling me down into his lap as he
thrusts up, and I let out a helpless whimper. “I’ll give you more eventually, dolcezza.”
I feel him rock into me again, almost a promise, and then he holds a bite of breakfast sausage to my lips. I taste maple and
blueberries and the rich taste of the meat, the flavors bursting over my tongue. Everything feels heightened like this, the food
given to me one small bite at a time as pleasure trickles through my veins, each throb of Andre’s cock inside of me heightening
that slow build a little more. It feels like exquisite torture, and I close my eyes, letting out a whimper without meaning to as he
pulls me down against him again.
“See?” His lips brush against my ear again, the fingers of his other hand tracing my lower lip as he sets down his fork. “I’ll
make you crave my cock, principessa. I hadn’t thought of breaking you like this, of making you want me. But I’m beginning to
warm to the idea. I like making you come, while you beg and plead for me to let you stay frigid instead. I like the idea of
making you desire me, even if you hate me.”
He reaches for the fork again. “So sweet,” he murmurs, and I feel another gush of arousal as he wraps his arm around my
waist, lightly bouncing me on his cock before setting me down on his lap again. “Fuck, that feels good,” he moans, rocking
against me. “Now, something sweet for you.”
This time, he puts a bite of something soft and syrupy into my mouth, the sweetness flooding my tongue. I let out a small
moan of pleasure at the taste, and Andre’s hand presses more tightly against my side, his cock throbbing inside of me. “That’s
it, dolcezza,” he murmurs as I tighten around him helplessly, the sensations heightening bit by bit. “That feels so good.” His
teeth nip at my ear as he feeds me another syrupy bite. “It feels good for you too, doesn’t it?”
I feel his fingers press into my side almost painfully as he bounces me on his cock again, and I shake my head with a
whimper. He pulls me down against him, hard, his teeth biting more sharply at my ear.
“Don’t lie to me, wife,” he growls into my ear, rocking his hips against me. “I can feel you squeezing around me. You can
deny it all you want, but the way your tight little pussy is gripping me tells me otherwise.” He moves again, rolling his hips a
little faster as he thrusts up into me, groaning. “Squeeze me like that again, principessa.”
I shake my head, biting my lip, but I can’t seem to stop myself. The raw pain of his initial invasion has blurred into a
throbbing pleasure with each shift of his cock inside of me, his thick, swollen cockhead rubbing over a spot with each
movement that makes me tighten, swallowing back a moan. Andre makes another low sound of pleasure in his throat as I ripple
around his cock, burying his face in my neck, nipping lightly at the soft flesh there. “You’re going to make me come,” he
murmurs against my skin, his breath warm against me as he moves me up and down his cock ever so slightly. “Just like that
—fuck, you’re so warm and tight—”
His voice is thick, strangled with pleasure, and I feel an odd sense of satisfaction at the knowledge that I’m doing this
somehow. I’m not even really doing anything, other than sitting in his lap and letting him guide me, but I can feel him coming
undone. It occurs to me that there’s power in this, that if I played my cards correctly, I might be able to use it to my advantage.
“A few more bites, principessa,” he murmurs, settling me on his lap again as he reaches for the fork again. He feels
impossibly hard inside of me, stretching me open, and the fullness alone feels better than I could have imagined. When he
slides another bite of sausage between my lips, I let out a soft moan despite myself, the ache between my thighs bordering on
unbearable. I’ve never really had the urge to touch myself before, but if we weren’t in the dining room, if I didn’t think I’d be
punished for it, I’d be tempted to slide my hand between my thighs and see if I could replicate the sensation of Andre stroking
my clit last night.
I know I’m playing right into his hands, literally as well as figuratively, but I don’t know how to stop.
He rocks into me as he feeds me a few more bites, a steady rhythm that leaves me biting back sounds of pleasure, knowing
as my cheeks flush hot that if anyone were to walk in, there would be no more pretending that I’m just sitting on my husband’s
lap enjoying a meal. I swallow the last bite of syrupy pancake that he feeds me, and then he drops his fork onto the table,
grasping my hips as he turns me so that my back is to him, still impaled on his throbbing length. His hand smooths down my
back, and he reaches down with his other hand, spreading my legs so that they’re on either side of his as he starts to thrust.
“That’s it, principessa,” he murmurs, leaning me forward just a little as I feel his thick shaft slide in and out of me, gliding
through the arousal that’s gathered between my thighs. “You’ve got me ready to come. I’m going to fill you up, dolcezza. So
fucking good—”
He groans, thrusting into me hard, hard enough to make me grip the edge of the table as he pushes deeply into me again and
again. I close my eyes, willing back the tears of shame, not only because I’m terrified someone will come in and see—but also
because I can feel that I’m close to coming, too. That pressure is wound tight, deep in my belly, the ache spreading through me,
and I gasp aloud as he thrusts into me once more and lets out a strangled groan as his cock swells and hardens with the first
spurt of his cum.
I can feel him flooding me, hot and thick. He pumps his cock into me again and holds himself there, pulling me back down
onto his lap as I feel his teeth sink into my shoulder, more of his cum spurting deeply inside of me. I can feel him throbbing, feel
his groan vibrate against my skin, and he wraps one arm around my waist, holding me as close as he possibly can.
“God, you make me come so hard, principessa,” he murmurs against my shoulder, his tongue sliding over the bite mark he
left there. “Better than anyone else I’ve fucked.” He kisses my shoulder lightly, the praise and the gentle touch feeling
altogether at odds with the violence of what he does to me, and I think for a moment that he’s going to let me go. I want to
leave, to flee the room, but at the same time, I feel a throb of disappointment that he didn’t make me come. I can feel my clit,
swollen and sensitive between my thighs, aching to be touched. I wonder if he would know if I got myself off after, back in my
own room alone.
But instead of letting me go, he turns me on his lap so that I’m sitting sideways again, nudging his chair closer to the table.
“What are you doing?” I ask with a gasp, squirming on his half-hard cock that’s still buried inside of me in an effort to get
away, but Andre holds me still.
“Finishing my breakfast while you keep my cock warm, principessa,” he says with a smirk, reaching for his fork. “I thought
it was best if you ate first, and you got me so hard that I couldn’t wait to come. My little vixen of a wife.” He smiles
indulgently, as if it was me that seduced him into fucking me at the breakfast table, stroking my hair away from my face with his
free hand. “But now, you’ll sit here while I have mine.”
I stare at him, not entirely able to believe what’s happening. “But—”
He takes a bite and then glances at me as if he’s confused as to what I’m protesting about. “Do you want more, dolcezza?
Greedy little girl.”
“No, I just—” I swallow hard, trying to think of how to say that I want to go back to my room without angering him, but he
just smirks.
“Oh,” he murmurs, as if purposely misunderstanding me. “I see. I didn’t make you come, did I, principessa? Do you expect
to come every time, my spoiled little wife?”
“No.” I glare at him, twisting on his lap, and to my horror, I feel his cock twitch inside of me again, as if the struggle is
arousing him a second time. “Andre—”
“I do like how you say my name.” He reaches up, turning my face into his so he can kiss me lightly on the lips. “My pretty,
spoiled little bride. One taste of pleasure and she wants to come again.” His tongue slides over my lower lip, and I taste spices
and syrup on his mouth, as he smiles almost indulgently into the kiss. “You did make me come so hard. And you still feel good
around my cock, dolcezza. I think I can reward you for that.”
His hand slides down my waist before I can protest, lifting my skirt where it’s draped over my thighs, hiding where he’s
still buried inside of me. My back is to the door, so no one would be able to see immediately what’s happening, but my face
still flushes hot as he pushes the fabric up to my waist, his fingers sliding between my folds to find my engorged clit.
I cry out the moment he touches me. I can’t help it. I’m so sensitive from the teasing, and I look down as he spreads my
folds, the sight of my swollen, reddened clit beneath his fingertips only serving to turn me on more. It’s almost as if the utter
humiliation turns me on more. The sight of him pleasuring me, the base of his cum-soaked cock visible where he’s still
stretching me open even half-hard, makes another gush of arousal coat his cock and fingers, and I hear Andre groan as he takes
a bite, twitching inside of me.
His fingers press down, rubbing and circling over my clit, and I close my eyes, moaning again. Andre chuckles, still eating
his breakfast as if I’m not helplessly rocking against his hand, on the verge of coming in his lap. “The staff is going to hear you,
principessa,” he murmurs teasingly. “Aren’t you ashamed of yourself, little wife? Grinding on my cock like this where anyone
could see you? You’re going to come all over my fingers, aren’t you? My slutty little bride.” He swallows, turning his mouth to
mine again as his fingers speed up. I feel him thicken inside of me, hard all over again, and I let out another helpless, sobbing
moan.
“You’ll be more likely to get pregnant this way,” he murmurs, thrusting up into me as he rubs my clit faster. “Did you know
that? You’re just helping me achieve everything I want, little bride, by begging for the pleasure I can give you.”
The words hit me like a shock of cold water, but it’s too late—and he knows it. I can see it in the cruel smirk on his face as
I tip over the edge, grasping blindly for the table to cling to as I start to come, my pussy clenching rhythmically around his cock
as I spasm and cry out. The pleasure tears through me, seizing every muscle in my body as I gush over his fingers and cock, and
I hear him groan, his other hand gripping my thigh as he thrusts into me. “You’re going to make me come again, principessa,”
he growls. “God, you make me want to keep you here and fuck you all goddamn day.” His mouth finds mine, kissing me hot and
hard, his cock swelling as I pulse around him, tight and squeezing as I come hard on his length. “I’m going to fill you up—so
fucking full—god—”
Andre’s teeth sink into my lip, vicious enough to draw blood as I feel him flood me with another hot rush of cum, his
fingers pinching my clit as he does. The sensation is half pain, half pleasure. I feel the cum leaking out around the base of his
cock, more than I can possibly keep inside of me, as the rough friction of his fingers between my thighs pushes me into a second
spasm of near-blinding pleasure. I writhe on his lap, clinging to him, crying out as I experience wave after wave of sensation
that I never knew I could feel.
I slump against his chest without meaning to, wrung dry from the force of the climax. Andre is breathing hard, his arm
around my waist still, his fingers making small circles on my oversensitive clit as I come down from the climax. And just then,
as I find the strength to sit up, I hear footsteps.
I twist my head around and see a woman in one of the maids’ uniforms step in, her expression carefully blank. I haven’t
seen her before, but it doesn’t matter. I can’t imagine that she didn’t hear me moaning for Andre a moment ago, that this looks
like anything other than what it is, with both of us flushed and Andre holding me in his lap, his cum still leaking out around his
softening cock. My skirt is tangled up around my hips, and I don’t know how much she can see, but that doesn’t matter either.
My face burns hot with shame, my eyes welling up with tears.
Last night, I was begging for anyone to help me, to get me out of here. Now I’m begging for my unwanted husband to make
me come. What was I thinking? What am I doing? Has he really gotten what he wanted so quickly?
I start to try to scramble out of Andre’s lap, but he holds me tight, refusing to let me go. He looks over my shoulder at the
maid, thrusting his hips up against me once more, just to remind me of my place. “We don’t need anything just now,” he says to
the maid with a smile, and he pinches my clit again as he speaks, making me cry out despite myself. “I’ll call if I need you.”
I don’t know what expression is on the maid’s face; I can’t bear to look at her. “Of course, sir,” she says tonelessly, and I
hear the door close behind her. Andre keeps me pinned on his lap, and then a moment later, he stands up, swinging me into his
arms bridal-style again as he holds me against his chest, one arm around my thighs to keep them pinned closed.
“What are you doing?” I push at his chest, but he just laughs.
“Didn’t you understand last night?” He looks down at me, almost amused by my attempts to escape. “You need to lie down
after I fuck you, Lucia. This is all very pleasurable for us both, of course, but the real purpose is to get you pregnant. I can’t
have all that hard work undone because you want to run around the mansion.” Andre gives me another indulgent smile, a
husband placating his spoiled wife. “I’m taking you up to your room.”
“I know how to get there—”
“That’s my room,” he says with a frown, as he carries me towards the stairs. “I let you sleep there last night, since it was
our wedding night, and you deserved the rest. But your room is across the hall. So I can get to you easily whenever I want, of
course, but still have my privacy. It’s how things used to be done—the old ways, and I think some of those are better. Your
father would likely agree. Or doesn’t he keep his wife elsewhere, so he only has to see her when he pleases?”
A cold shock goes through me at the realization that Andre knows enough about the private details of my family to know
that my stepmother lives in Rome. From the way his gaze hardens as he says it, his smile not quite reaching his eyes, I know it
was meant to inform me of just that. That I have no idea how much about me he really knows.
“Anyway,” he continues, carrying me up the stairs and to the door across from the room I stayed in last night. “My cum
would be all over your thighs by the time you walked up here, instead of inside of you, where it should be. Of course, I could
keep my cock inside of you for the rest of the day—but I have things to do, principessa. As much as I would like to stay buried
in you, I can’t give you every moment of my day.”
He pushes the door open, carrying me to the huge bed, and setting me down on the embroidered floral duvet. “Stay here,
principessa,” he murmurs, smoothing my hair away from my forehead as he leans down to brush a kiss over my lips. “Take a
nap, perhaps. And afterward, the mansion is yours to enjoy as you wish.”
Andre turns away as if to leave, but halfway to the door, he turns, that steely expression in his eyes again. “Just remember,
Lucia, you can’t leave. Go wherever you like in the house and on the property, but don’t even try to escape. You’ll be caught
immediately. And you won’t like the consequences.”
And with that, he turns, striding out of the room.
 7

LUCIA

he moment Andre leaves, I burst into tears. I have to get away, I think to myself, curling onto my side atop the bed, staring
T at the room that is now—apparently—mine. I have to get a message to my father somehow. It’s been less than twenty-
four hours, and Andre has already figured out how to leverage my desires against me. I can’t bear it, I think as I lie there,
tears dripping down my cheeks.
The problem is that I have no idea where we are, exactly—how far from my father’s home Andre’s mansion is, or what
means I could use to get a message to him. The only thing I can think of is to ask Celeste, and I know I would be putting her in
danger if I did.
Wouldn’t she understand, though? I bite my lip, trying to think it through. It seems wrong to ask that of her—but she could
always say no. And lying there, looking around the lavishly furnished room, I can’t think of any other option. If I stay here, I’ll
end up pregnant with Andre’s child. And he’ll make me enjoy it, every time—make me beg for him to give me pleasure, too—
until I won’t be able to live with myself when it’s all over.
Despite the emotional turmoil—or maybe because of it—I do fall asleep for a little while. When I wake up, I can still feel
his hands on me, the insides of my thighs sticky with his cum, and I desperately want a shower. I sit up, rubbing my hands over
my face, and look around the room that I’m going to be staying in.
For all that I don’t want to be here, it is a beautiful room. The furniture is all cream-colored, painted wood with gold
accents, the bedding white and blue, with another of those expensive patterned rugs across the wooden floor next to the bed.
There’s a tall wardrobe and dresser, a vanity and bookshelf, and a velvet wing chair with an ottoman and a soft-looking blanket
tossed over it. The curtains are velvet with a gauzy inner set, and I can see from the dimming light outside that it’s late
afternoon. I slept for a long time.
Cautiously, I get up and pad over to the wardrobe and closet. I don’t know what I’m meant to do about clothes—a quick
inspection of my dress’s skirt tells me that it’s unwearable without being laundered, and maybe not even then. It’s stained with
Andre’s cum in a number of places. While he seems bent on embarrassing me whenever possible, I think continuing to wear
this where I could be seen might be beyond even him. But when I open the closet, my mouth nearly drops open.
It’s full of clothes. Dresses of every imaginable style for every occasion—everything from sundresses to soft knit sweater
dresses, cocktail gowns, and evening gowns for galas, every possible style and color that I could imagine. Every single one of
them is designer, the tags still attached, and I feel slightly dizzy when I look at them all. Jeans and pants are folded on the shelf
above them, and there are rows of shoe boxes below. When I turn to look through the drawers in the wardrobe, I find sweaters
carefully folded, blouses hung up side by side with nightgowns and other lingerie, and drawers of panties, t-shirts, tank tops,
and clothes for me to sleep in. There’s a staggering amount of clothing, totaling up to more than I could possibly imagine Andre
having spent if I weren’t looking at the evidence right in front of me. I find it hard to believe, even so. The only thing I don’t
find are bras, likely because he couldn’t have found out that information, and I expect he prefers me without them anyway. I’m
small enough that I don’t necessarily need them to stay decent, even if I would prefer it—especially in this circumstance.
Numbly, I reach for a pair of jeans and a soft, loose cashmere sweater, setting the clothes on the bed as I strip off the silk
slip dress I was wearing and let it drift to the floor. A chill runs over my skin as I stand there naked, and I hurry into the
adjoining bathroom, turning on the shower as quickly as I can. The bathroom is almost as large as my bedroom—with heated
tiles, I realize as I curl my toes against the warm floor—another of those standing bowl sinks, and a large soaking tub.
I step into the shower, letting out a sigh as the hot water splashes over me, rinsing away the feeling of Andre’s touch. I tell
myself as I scrub clean that I won’t give into it again, that the next time he fucks me, I’ll pretend not to enjoy it, that I won’t let
him know even if I do want to come. But as I wash away the traces of his cum between my thighs, my fingers graze over my
clit, and the shudder of pleasure that goes through me tells me that that’s easier said than done.
I never knew sex could feel good at all, let alone this good. No one ever mentioned it to me. All of the focus was always
on the men, on what a good mafia wife was expected to let her husband do, that giving him an heir was the most important thing
of all. No one ever, even for a moment, suggested to me that I might like it so much that I would crave it—that even a man I hate
could make me ache for his touch. And I wish, desperately, that someone had.
Maybe then I would have been prepared. Maybe I wouldn’t feel so lost.
I pile my wet hair up in a loose bun when I get out, slipping into the clothes I brought into the bathroom with me. I feel a
little better once I’m dressed in something that covers most of me—and with panties on. I can see from my reflection that I still
look pale and frightened, but I resolve to spend the rest of the afternoon looking around the mansion, trying to get some sense of
where I’m living. Andre did, after all, say that I could have the run of the place as long as I don’t try to leave.
Celeste is standing in the bedroom when I step out, picking my dress up off of the floor. My face flames red instantly,
knowing she must see the stains on it—or if she doesn’t, she will soon.
“You can just throw that away,” I blurt out, feeling as if I could sink into the floor with embarrassment. That’s something
else no one ever talked to me about—how to deal with the maids seeing the evidence of what husbands and wives do. Between
last night and today, Celeste has had to remake the bed Andre fucked me in, after seeing me laying naked in it—and now she’s
holding my cum-stained dress.
Celeste frowns at me. “Are you sure? It’s probably expensive—” She breaks off, her cheeks turning a little pink, too. “But
of course, you know that already, miss—I mean, Lucia. If that’s what you want.”
“Please.” I look at the red silk in her hands, unable to stomach the thought of wearing it again. “Just get rid of it.”
Celeste looks at me for a long moment, and I think I see something like a flicker of understanding in her eyes. “Alright,” she
says quietly. “I’ll throw it out.”
“Thank you.” That small bit of understanding gives me the courage to ask the question that I thought of earlier. “Do you—do
you think you could help me get a message to my father? Do you know where we are—how far we are from the Fontana
estate?”
Celeste’s eyes widen. “Lucia,” she breathes, so startled that she forgets to trip over the informality. “You can’t do that. If
Don Leone finds out—”
“He’s not Don Leone,” I snap, and Celeste recoils instantly. I feel a stab of guilt, realizing that she must have been spoken
to harshly dozens of times in this house, physically hurt, even. I soften my voice, trying to push back the fear.
“I’m sorry,” I murmur. “He’s not really what he pretends to be. His family—my father did something to them. He’s trying to
get revenge through me. But he’s not a don.”
Celeste lets out a slow breath. “Whether he is or isn’t,” she says slowly, “it doesn’t really matter to me. What matters is
what he will do to you if he finds out that you’ve tried to contact your father.”
And to me. She doesn’t say it, but I can hear it underlying her words. If Celeste were to get a message through for me and
Andre found out, it wouldn’t be just me that he punishes. He might not even punish me physically—hurting someone else for the
favor I asked would be punishment enough. It’s the sort of twisted thing that I can imagine him doing. By pushing the matter, I’m
putting Celeste in unthinkable danger.
But I’m desperate. I never imagined what it would be like to feel this kind of desperation. I never even had reason to
consider it. I look at Celeste, and I can feel myself trying to think of what it would take to convince her. What would be worth it
to her.
“I could talk my father into letting me bring you with me, once he gets me out of here,” I whisper, twisting my hands
together in my lap. “I wouldn’t say he’s a kind man, but he’s not like—like—”
Celeste presses her lips together. “I know Andre is hurting you,” she says slowly. “He married you—it’s obvious what he
must be making you do. But I don’t think you understand how much worse it could be—”
“He’s making me like it.” The words burst out of me, my cheeks flushing, but I need her to understand. I meet her gaze as
my eyes fill with tears, thinking of this morning, of the way anyone within earshot of the dining room would have heard my
whimpers and moans. “He’s making me want it. How could it be worse?”
“You have no idea,” Celeste murmurs. But I can see the wheels spinning behind her eyes, that she’s trying to think of
something. “If you really think your father will help—”
I grab on to the small hint that she might be willing to help, clinging to it with both hands. “Yes! Yes, I’m sure he would.
He’d do anything to get me back.”
“You’re certain.” She looks at me cautiously. “I don’t mean to be cruel, miss—Lucia. But you’re not—”
“I know.” I bite my lip, trying to keep the tears in my eyes from spilling over. “I know I won’t have the same—value. But he
wouldn’t abandon me. I can’t believe that he would. Especially not to Andre.” If nothing else, I have to cling to that—that even
if my father might work something out with some other man who might have taken me like this, his history with Andre will
prevent that from happening here. That the insult will be too much for him to let it stand.
Slowly, Celeste nods. “Alright,” she says reluctantly. “Don’t write anything out; I can’t get that to him. But I know someone
who works at one of the estates near your father’s. I can try to call them and ask them to relay a message. I can’t promise that
they will. But your father is known to be powerful enough that they might like the idea of him being in their debt. And they have
no reason to fear Andre.” She lets out a breath, and I can see that she’s afraid. “I’ll try,” she repeats, and I nod.
“Thank you,” I whisper. “You don’t know what this means to me.”
“I have some idea.” Celeste gives me a small, shaky smile. “Let’s not talk about it again. Just to be safe.” She balls the
dress up in her hands, nodding to the door. “Go explore the mansion a bit. Give Andre a reason to think you’re trying to settle
in. But don’t be too pliable, either, or he’ll suspect you. Just—act the way you have been. Like you’re frightened and angry
with him.”
“That won’t be hard,” I say wryly, and it earns me a small smile from Celeste.
“I’ll do my best,” she repeats. “Just make sure you’re dressed nicely and downstairs at eight for dinner with Don Leone.
He’ll expect you then.”
She slips out of the room then, leaving me sitting on the bed. I don’t move for a long moment, afraid to hope that this might
actually work. That Celeste might be able to help me.
After a little while, I manage to get myself to get up and explore. The mansion itself is nearly as grand as my own home—
especially the first floor. I find a library on the third floor further down the hall, and the second seems to be primarily
comprised of guest bedrooms and a large sitting room overlooking the estate grounds. But the first is sprawling and expansive,
made up of the formal dining room and a smaller one, the same for two living rooms, the study where Andre married me, and
more. There is a wooden-floored room with mirrored walls, yoga mats rolled up in one corner, a barre along one wall, and an
adjoining room with huge windows that are fully outfitted as a gym. When I walk out to the large sunroom at the very back of
the mansion, I see the huge gardens sprawling beyond it, the greenhouse at one side, and the rolling hills of the estate beyond
that. There’s a pool as well, though it’s been drained and covered for the season, and an in-ground stone hot tub. There’s every
luxury that I could imagine, and as I wander through the house, I see a number of staff members, all of whom ask me if there’s
anything I need. It’s clear that Andre has, at least, not given instructions that I be treated as anything less than the wife of a self-
styled don.
A part of me wants to try to defy him about dinner, to refuse to come down. But I remember what Celeste said—to try not to
anger him, to play along at least a little for now—and I change for dinner into a pair of slim black pants and a soft green
sweater, noticing just before I turn to leave that there are two boxes on my vanity that weren’t there before. When I open them, I
find a diamond bracelet—a rose gold bangle with small diamonds embedded in it—and a pair of diamond studs set in rose
gold.
They’re from Andre, there’s no doubt about that. Another tactic, like his sometimes gentle touches, like the kisses this
morning, like his insistence that I enjoy it when he fucks me. A way to make me feel as if I’m insane for not wanting this, for
being angry that he’s kidnapped me and forced me into a marriage that my father would never have agreed to. I want to leave
them where they are, to pretend as if I never received them, but I know he expects me to wear them tonight. If I don’t, he’ll be
angry.
I can almost hear Celeste’s voice in my head telling me to pick my battles, while I wait for someone to help me. So I slip
the jewelry on, running my fingers through my hair as I pin the front of it back, and go downstairs to dinner.
Andre is already sitting at the head of the table, the chandelier glowing above it, the large windows looking out on the
dimly lit gardens. He has a glass of wine already poured and sitting next to his plate, and he looks up as I walk in. My face
instantly heats, remembering this morning and what we did, and from the small smirk at the corners of his mouth, I can tell that
he knows what I’m thinking.
“I see you liked my presents,” he says casually as I sit down, glancing over at me. “They suit you. I should make sure you
have jewels to wear every single day.”
“I knew you’d be angry if I didn’t wear them.” I look at him as coolly as I can manage, trying not to show how very afraid I
am. “That’s not the same as liking something.”
His smirk widens. “Should I bring you over here for a repeat of this morning, then? You liked that. Don’t try and tell me that
you didn’t—any number of the staff could probably attest otherwise.”
He knows exactly what to say to cut straight to the bone. I feel myself stiffen in my seat, looking down at my empty plate,
unable to look at him.
“Relax, Lucia.” Andre chuckles. “I’m not going to fuck you at the dinner table every day. Only on special occasions.” He
winks at me, that smirk still curving one half of his mouth, and I can’t help but glare at him.
The first course is brought in before I can say anything—Caesar salad—and set down in front of us. There’s no wine for
me, only a glass of water, and I stop the maid who sets down the bowls.
“I’d like a glass of wine as well,” I tell her, but Andre shakes his head.
“Absolutely not,” he says firmly, and I turn to look at him, my eyes narrowing.
“So I’m old enough to kidnap and forcibly marry, but not old enough to have a glass of wine with dinner?”
He laughs darkly. “Don’t make a scene in front of the staff, principessa. It has nothing to do with your age, and everything
to do with the fact that we’re trying very hard for a baby.” He smiles. “After all, it takes a little while to know, doesn’t it? You
could be drinking wine for weeks and already be pregnant. Better safe than sorry.” Andre motions at the maid, flicking his hand
to dismiss her. “No wine for my wife. Or any other alcohol.”
I grit my teeth, irritation welling up within me. He takes a bite of his salad as if nothing is wrong, and I poke at mine,
wishing I could simply go back upstairs and hide away in my room. The fact that Andre wants separate bedrooms is one small
mercy.
“You look as if something is bothering you,” he says finally, reaching for his wine. “You might as well tell me what it is.”
“Other than the obvious?” I glare at him, as the salad bowls are swept away and replaced with a plate of some sort of
parmesan dish—veal maybe—along with roasted vegetables and risotto. “The fact that I’m here against my will?”
Andre cocks his head, taking a sip of the wine. “Is it more than that?”
I bite my lip, trying to hold back everything I want to say. I’m only partially successful. “I don’t understand,” I say quietly,
and a flicker of confusion crosses Andre’s face.
“Don’t understand what?” He frowns. “I’ve explained all you need to know, Lucia. Anything else is unnecessary.”
I disagree with that, but I manage to hold my tongue on it for now. “Why are you treating me like this?” I mean to leave it at
that, but once I start speaking, I can’t seem to help myself. “You bring me here and marry me against my will and force me into
bed with you, but you make sure that you don’t hurt me too badly. You claim to want to force me to enjoy it as a part of your
revenge, but then you kiss me while you fuck me. You give me my own room, fill it up with a fortune in clothing, give me the
run of a house with every luxury and my own maid to do whatever I ask. You give me diamonds as a gift. I don’t understand,” I
repeat, feeling tears prick at the corners of my eyes. “How is this revenge? I don’t know what you want.”
Andre looks at me quizzically. “I’ve told you what I want, Lucia. I’ve had half of it. You are my wife now. I’ve taken your
virginity; the marriage is consummated, unbreakable. Now, I want a child—an heir. With both of those things accomplished,
your father will have to recognize me as a legitimate don, as having reclaimed my family’s position and name. I don’t need to
keep you locked in a room and starve you to accomplish that.”
“Wouldn’t it make you happier if you did?” I tilt my chin up, meeting his gaze as best as I can manage. “Don’t you want to
hurt me?”
Andre regards me for a moment. “I thought I did, at first,” he admits finally. “I thought about killing you in the garden at
your home.” The way he says it is chilling, as matter-of-fact as if he were telling me about the events of his day. “But I realized
that hurting you serves no purpose. Your father won’t be angrier or more hurt or more humiliated if I keep you in rags and feed
you bread and water. Hell, he kept me in luxury for two years while he had me under house arrest. No, Lucia, the better
revenge is to try to make you happy here. To treat you well, so that you start to question if you really want to leave or not.”
“So you don’t really want to. It’s all a trick.” I bite my lip. “You’re insane, you know that?” I blurt out the words before I
can stop myself, emotions churning within me that feel hard to control. I feel overwhelmed by all of it, by the machinations in
his head, by what’s happening to and all around me. I’m not equipped for this. I never needed to be.
“That’s where you’re wrong, Lucia.” His voice is almost gentle, the look in his dark blue eyes so sincere that I almost want
to believe him. “You’re the priceless treasure of your family. If your father hadn’t demeaned my family name, I could have been
there with the rest of the men on your debut night, vying for your hand.”
“If your family fell so far, how did you get all of this?” I wave my hand around the gilded dining room, gesturing at my
clothing and the jewelry he gave me. “You don’t exactly seem to be in poverty.”
Andre chuckles. “I’ve been planning this for a long time, Lucia. Including how to make sure I would be given access to my
late father’s accounts—which are my inheritance, after all—and how to reclaim this estate, which is my family’s. I’ve stolen
nothing, dolcezza, only taken back what was mine in the first place. And I have every intention of treating you as the treasure
you are, if you’ll only do your duty and accept that you are my wife now. That I have claimed you, married you, and intend for
you to bear my child and continue my line. It’s nothing that any other man wouldn’t have done, only I chose not to be bullied by
your father’s feelings about things that I had nothing to do with.”
“Things you won’t explain to me.” I press my lips together. “You just want me to accept that you’re somehow entitled to not
only all of this, but me.”
Andre lets out a long breath, draining his glass of wine. “This doesn’t have to be the terrible thing that you’re behaving as if
it is, Lucia,” he says finally. “Our marriage could be pleasant for both of us, if you’d let it.”
He almost sounds as if he means it. I sit there as we eat, mulling it over, wondering how he can believe that he’s in the
right. How a man whose servants are terrified of him and who forced me into an unwilling marriage can truly believe that he’s
not a monster.
I try to relax and enjoy my surroundings, but it’s impossible. I’m enveloped in luxury, the food is beyond exquisite, and my
husband at least doesn’t force me to make small talk for the rest of the meal, content to eat in silence. But it’s impossible. I
can’t stop thinking about what’s ahead of me—about a future where I’m not rescued before Andre manages to get me pregnant
with his child, about the more immediate concerns, like what happens tonight.
It doesn’t take long for me to find out. When dessert is finished—a raspberry mousse with a delicate macaron tucked into
the corner of the glass—Andre takes the last sip of his wine and stands up. “I’ll be in my study, reading and having a drink,” he
says calmly. “You’re welcome to spend your evening however you wish, wife. But I’ll come up to your room to fetch you when
I’m ready to go to bed. I expect you to come to mine without complaint.”
I tell myself to think of it as a business arrangement, a necessary evil to keep myself safe until I can figure out a way to get
out of this, until Celeste can send a message for me. I spend the rest of the evening in the smaller living room in front of a fire
that I ask one of the maids to build for me, staring into the flickering flames and resolving not to enjoy it when Andre takes me
to bed. I tell myself to lie down and pretend that he’s not there. That nothing is really happening.
It’s easier to think of than to do.
When Andre opens my door—not bothering to knock—I’ve already gotten ready for bed, as if I’m not planning to obey him.
I chose the least sexy thing I could find in the drawers—a pair of soft floral-printed pajama pants and a loose t-shirt, but it
doesn’t seem to help. Andre smirks as he looks at me, standing in the doorway, and then he shuts the door sharply behind him.
He crosses the room to me in a few long strides, one hand on my waist and the other in my hair as he drags me up against him,
kissing me with a ferocity that’s startling.
He doesn’t touch me as if his only purpose is to come inside of me and get me pregnant. He touches me like he wants to
devour me. To possess me. To make sure that I’m his.
“You can ignore the lingerie I bought you and dress like this all you want,” Andre murmurs against my lips, his hand on my
hip pulling me closer. I can feel how hard he is already, straining against his fly, eager to be inside of me. “I know what you
look like underneath it, principessa. The lingerie would be a nice touch, but I’ll have you naked either way.”
His hand slides between us, slipping into the front of my pajama pants, his fingers brushing over the curls between my
thighs. “I want this gone by tomorrow night,” he murmurs. “I want you soft and bare here for me.”
I grit my teeth, anger flaring up all over again at his arrogance. I pull back from the kiss as much as I can, trying to ignore
his fingers brushing over my folds, so close to where I’ve already started to ache. “And if I don’t?” I whisper, my pulse
fluttering in my throat with fear at the challenge, but I can’t stand continuing to be so cowed in front of him. He believes he
owns me, and a part of me wants to test just how far I can push before he starts to shove back.
Andre smirks, kissing me again as his fingers dip between my folds, brushing over my clit lightly, enough to make me
shiver. I’d resolved not to enjoy it, but Andre knows better than to simply strip me and lay me back, unceremoniously shoving
himself inside of me. He knows how to make it impossible to ignore his seduction, so much more skilled at it than I could ever
have imagined.
“Then I’ll shave you myself,” he murmurs, lightly circling my clit with his fingertip. “But if you obey me for once,
principessa, I’ll make certain I eat that sweet pussy until you come for me, before I fuck you tomorrow night.”
He pulls his hand free, just as my hips start to arch forward into his touch. “Come with me,” he says, taking my hand and
leading me towards the door. “I intend to fuck you in my own bed.”
Fear overwhelms me as he tugs me forward—both the fear of getting pregnant too soon, before help can come for me, and
the fear of my body’s reaction to what he’s going to do. I hear Andre let out a sigh, and before I can say a word, he scoops me
into his arms again, ignoring me as I start to writhe in his grasp.
“It only turns me on more when you fight, Lucia,” he murmurs as he crosses the hall into the bedroom where I stayed last
night, setting me down as soon as we’re inside with the door closed. “I would have thought you would have figured that out by
now.”
He’s not lying. I can see the thick outline of his cock straining to be freed, as he strips off his shirt, his hand going to his
belt. I can’t take my eyes off of his muscled chest and arms, inked with tattoos, the soft blond hair trailing down to his trousers
as he steps forward and grasps my t-shirt, dragging it over my head with one quick motion.
“My pretty wife.” He shoves my pajama pants down with the other hand, together with my panties, leaving me bare in a
matter of seconds. “Are you going to lie on the bed for me, or do I have to make you do everything?”
I grit my teeth, refusing to give in. The moment I do, I’m afraid I’ll be lost entirely. The moment I let him have me, instead
of fighting as long as I can. He backs me towards the bed, his hand going to my waist, his fingers finding their way between my
thighs as he drags them along my pussy, laughing darkly when he finds out that I’m already damp for him.
“Your pretense is getting thinner, principessa,” Andre murmurs, lifting me onto the bed. He follows me immediately,
spreading my legs with a quick nudge of his knee, his hand fisting around his cock as he guides it to my entrance. “Let me feel
you around me, and then I’ll decide if I’ll allow you to come.”
I tell myself not to enjoy it. But it feels so fucking good. His cock, stretching me open, filling me up as he thrusts into me,
his handsome face above mine as his blond hair falls around it. His muscles flex with every thrust, the tight clench of his jaw as
his face goes taut with pleasure, his pelvis grinding against my clit every time he drives himself into me. I can’t help how it
feels, can’t help the bliss that spreads through me, and I feel my clit throb with every brush of his skin against me, the pleasure
building and building until I know I’m going to come.
I can’t stop it, not even when I see the victorious smile on his face, and I know that he still pushed me over the edge on
purpose, wanting to make me lose control.
 If this is a war between us, Andre has won another battle.
Afterward, he rolls off of me, breathing hard, his skin faintly glistening with sweat. I find myself wishing that he was uglier,
older, that he didn’t look like the kind of man that I would, in other circumstances, have begged my father to let me marry. Lying
there naked next to me, his hair tousled around his sharply chiseled face and his muscled body gleaming, his cock still large,
even half-softened, he looks like a sculpture of a god.
“I’m going back to my room.” I sit up, and he doesn’t stop me this time. He watches me as I get up, thighs pressed together
so I don’t have to hear him chastise me for not doing my best to make sure it all stays inside, and scoop my clothes up off of the
floor. I slip them back on, and I wait for him to say something, but he’s entirely silent as I slip out of the room and back into
mine.
I can’t take a shower—he’ll hear, and be angry with me. Instead, I go to the bathroom and do my best to clean up, wadding
up the tissues and shoving them in the trash so that he won’t hear the toilet flush. I toss my now damp pajamas into the laundry
hamper and slip into fresh sleep clothes, burrowing under my blanket as I close my eyes and try to be grateful that, at least, I
don’t have to sleep next to him.
I close my eyes and hope that, at this very moment, Celeste is doing her best to get a message out for me.
It’s the only hope I have of getting out of here.
 8

ANDRE

wondered how long it would take before Fontana realized I was gone, before he made some effort to track me down. I
I wondered if he would put my escape and the disappearance of his daughter together. He’s a smart and canny man—he
couldn’t have risen to his position without those traits—and I expected he might connect those dots eventually.
I didn’t expect it to happen so quickly.
I get two peaceful nights with my wife—or at least, as peaceful as nights can be with a wife who doesn’t want the marriage
she’s been forced into. I know, somewhere in the back of my mind, that I’m enjoying fucking Lucia a little too much. I know that
the pleasure I’m taking in making her enjoy it as well is wholly unnecessary, that making her marry me and bear my child is
revenge enough. But it’s become almost addictive from the moment I first touched her. I hadn’t expected her to be so
responsive, for her to have so much difficulty fighting her own desires. She wants me every bit as much as I want her, and the
rush of power that comes from making her desire me is intoxicating.
We’re having dinner on the third night when I hear the chaos outside. I hear shouts from across the mansion, and then more
on the other side of the windows that face out towards the garden, as if there’s some commotion coming from the side of the
house. I get up instantly, tossing my napkin onto the table and reaching for Lucia’s arm.
“What’s going on?” She sounds genuinely frightened, but I’m not sure that I believe her. If someone is attacking the house,
it’s almost certainly men that her father has sent. And for him to have found out where she is so quickly, I feel sure that she must
have had some hand in it.
“I’m not sure. But I’m going to find out—as soon as I know you’re safely tucked away.” I march her out of the dining room,
my hand hard on her upper arm, not bothering to be gentle. There’s a sharp crack from the side of the house, a sound that I
know is a gunshot, but Lucia shies away to one side, her eyes going wide.
“What was that?” she gasps, and it’s all I can do not to roll my eyes at her.
“Sheltered little mafia principessa.” I unlock the door to my study, pushing her inside. “You don’t know a gunshot when
you hear one?”
Her mouth drops open. “A gunshot? What—”
“Don’t play so innocent.” I point to one of the chairs in front of the fire. “Sit down and stay in here—not that you can do
otherwise; I’m going to lock the door. Don’t touch anything you shouldn’t; I’ll know if you do. Although I don’t need to worry
about that much either—most of the drawers and such are locked.”
I step back before Lucia can say another word, ignoring the shocked look on her face, and lock the door behind me. I’ll
deal with her once I’m sure the house is secured.
Three of my security team are already coming down the hall as I tuck the key away. One hands me a gun without my having
to ask, his expression grim. There’s another sharp crack from outside, and I grit my teeth.
“Fontana’s men?” I ask, and the man in front—Antoni—frowns.
“Hard to say. I can’t imagine who else would be out here causing a ruckus. Don’t think many of the other families even
know you’re here.”
“And they’re firing at the house?”
Antoni nods. “At your men. From a distance. Maybe trying to figure out how heavy of a security detail you really have?
Better not to show your hand on that, I think. That lets him plan better next time, if it is Fontana. If he thinks you don’t have
much to protect you, he’ll keep sending small groups to try to get in.”
“Exactly what I was thinking.” I nod. “They’re at the front and side?”
“From what we can tell. You should stay in here, sir. We’ll stay with you; there are enough men already outside to deal with
what’s out there. They’ll let me know if they need more backup.”
I want to go out and take care of Fontana’s men myself. I feel sure that it must be him, that no one else would mount an
assault on my estate. If they’re not his personal foot soldiers, then they belong to one of his allies, someone he’s talked into
testing the waters and seeing how much of a force I have to protect my estate and keep Lucia here. I frown, itching to go out and
send a personal message to Fontana—but I know deep down that he won’t know if it was me or my men who put a bullet in the
men he sent to assault the house.
“Fine,” I grit out. “Keep an ear out for what’s happening out there. I want to know everything.”
There are more shouts as I make my way towards the front hall, away from any windows. I hear the shattering of one from
the living room, a volley of gunfire, and then the low moan of someone dying. I push past the three men towards the living
room, ignoring Antoni’s shout for me to wait, my blood boiling under my skin.
This is my home. Lucia is my wife. And I’ll be damned if Don Fontana is going to take anything more from me.
I see movement outside one of the windows, a flash of dark hair and a face half-covered in a black balaclava. I know for a
fact none of my men are wearing those, and I raise my gun, firing through the shattered window at the man just outside of it. I
feel the jerk of the pistol in my hand, the sound of the shot ringing in my ears, and satisfaction spreads through me as I see the
man outside fall.
I always was a good shot. My father made certain of that.
“Don Leone!” Antoni catches up to me, his voice tight with worry. “I’m sorry, sir, but I really need you to move away from
the windows. Our men are pushing them back, but it’s not safe—”
My blood is up, and my lust to finish this myself is far from sated. My hand clenches the pistol, and I hear Antoni behind
me, his voice low and calming.
“You can’t avenge your father or bring your family back to power if you’re dead, Don Leone. Come with me, please.”
As difficult as it is to swallow, I know he’s right. I nod, stepping back from the doorway, and out into the hall. Outside, I
can still hear the sounds of fighting, but it’s growing quieter. I lean against the wall, my thoughts briefly drifting back to Lucia.
“Fontana figured out his daughter was here awfully fast,” Antoni remarks, as if his thoughts have gone in the same
direction. “Someone must have said something—alerted him that she was here.” He rubs a hand over his mouth, looking at me
warily, as if he doesn’t want to say what’s on his mind.
“Just say it,” I snap irritably, and Andre shrugs.
“Might have been her. Maybe she’s more resourceful than you think.”
If she did, I’ll make sure she regrets it. My anger churns, finding a different target. I might not be able to do much about the
men outside without putting myself at too great a risk, but I can unleash that anger on Lucia, if she’s the reason this has
happened at all. She needs to learn that this is her place now, at my side. There is no escape for her.
Antoni turns his head towards the walkie at his shoulder. “Is it all clear?” he asks, and a gravelly voice comes through from
the other side, confirming that it is. He glances at me. “I’ll handle the cleanup outside,” he says calmly. “I’ll come and give you
an update once we have any information.”
“Alright. Let me know quickly.” I glance back towards the study, torn between wanting to see the results of what’s
happened outside, and wanting to question Lucia about her part in it. My anger surges again at the thought, and I give Antoni a
sharp nod, pivoting to walk back to the study.
I don’t hear anything from inside—no sounds of her snooping or trying to dig through the desk drawers—not that she would
find anything, unless she were oddly good at picking a lock. I listen for a moment, wanting to know if I’ll hear anything unusual,
and then I unlock the door and step inside.
Lucia is slumped in one of the chairs by the fireplace, her face pale, her hands knotted together in her lap. She looks up at
me sharply when I walk in, her eyes wide, and I can see that she’s been biting her lips nervously. “What’s happening?” she
asks, her voice high and breathy, and I close the door behind me, locking it behind me as I lean back.
“You look nervous, Lucia.” I raise an eyebrow at her. “Any particular reason?”
She stares at me as if I’ve lost my mind. “Other than what was apparently a gunshot outside? The fact that you didn’t tell
me anything about what you thought was going on? You just locked me in here and—and left me—”
I smirk, crossing my arms over my chest. “Now you’re eager for my company? A little fear does wonders for you, I think.”
Lucia’s jaw tightens, and she glares at me. “Andre, what the hell was happening out there?”
“Mm, what a filthy mouth. Not very becoming of the mafia princess that I wed.” I narrow my eyes at her. “Neither is lying
and pretending that you don’t have any idea what all of that was. After all, it was you that brought your father’s men here,
wasn’t it? To save his little damsel in distress?” I cock my head, looking at her as she glares up at me. “You couldn’t have done
it alone, though, I don’t think. Someone must have helped you. A traitor among the staff, maybe, someone with a soft spot for
sad little princesses. But I’ll find out who it is, eventually. And they’ll pay for their mistake.”
I watch her face carefully as I speak, looking for some sign of recognition, some flinch that lets me know I’m onto
something. But she only looks back at me wide-eyed, her eyes welling up as if she’s genuinely shocked by what I’m saying.
Either my little wife is better at lying than I thought, or she honestly didn’t know.
 “No,” she whispers, shaking her head rapidly. “I didn’t do anything—no one helped with anything—I had no idea this was
going to happen! Are you sure it was my father?” Her voice is shaking, a thin thread of terror running through every word, and
it’s hard to be sure whether that terror is from being caught out, or because she’s truly afraid of the attack.
I can’t imagine how this could have happened, especially so soon, without her being in on it somehow.
“One of my men is looking into whether or not they were your father’s men right now.” I smile coldly at her. “But
regardless, they’re all dead. Your father must not have sent enough. Maybe he’s not as concerned with getting his darling girl
back as you think he is. Maybe he knows you’re worthless to him now.”
Lucia’s mouth opens on a silent protest, her eyes welling with tears. I stalk towards her, my jaw tight with fury as I stop in
front of the chair. Even like this, she looks stunningly beautiful, fragile, and breakable as a porcelain doll, as if I could crush
her with one clench of my fist. I feel myself harden, the rush of power flowing through me as I loom over her.
“This wasn’t me,” Lucia whispers, trembling as she looks up at me. “I swear! I had nothing to do with it, if it was him—”
Tears hang on the edge of her lashes, and I smirk, reaching down to brush my thumb over her cheekbone.
“I think you’re lying,” I tell her, my voice deceptively gentle. “So perhaps there’s something else you can do with your
mouth besides making me listen to my own wife lie to me. Down on your knees, Lucia. Show me how sorry you are—or prove
to me how loyal you are, depending on how truthful you really are being.”
Her eyes widen, and she shakes her head. “Please,” she whispers, flinching away from me. “Please, just let me go to bed.
This was terrifying. I just want—”
Quick as a flash, I wind my fingers into her hair, fisting my hand in the soft strands so that she’s forced to look directly up at
me. “I don’t care what you want right now, principessa,” I murmur. “What I want is to see my wife obey me. And I ordered you
down onto your knees.”
“You said you wanted to get me pregnant.” She’s frozen in place, shaking down to her lips. “This won’t help you... Please,
just one night—after what happened—”
“See, I still don’t believe that what happened wasn’t your fault.” I tighten my hand in her hair, jerking her head back a little
more. “And now, I want either your apology, or your obedience. Will you get down on your knees, Lucia, or am I going to put
you there?”
Her eyes are full of tears, but she shakes her head stubbornly, tugging back against my grasp. “Andre, please—”
“God, if you only knew how hard it makes me when you beg.” I smile at her, my hand going to my belt as I flick it open
easily. “Fortunately, I can show you, right now.”
With one swift tug, I pull her out of the chair and down onto her knees in front of me on the soft rug, my knuckles pressing
into the back of her neck as I free my cock. I’m achingly hard, pre-cum already pearling from the tip, and I give myself a long,
languorous stroke as I guide myself toward her lips. She keeps them stubbornly closed, glaring up at me, and I rub the swollen
head over her lower lip, feeling myself throb pleasantly as I see my pre-cum glaze over her skin.
“Lick it off,” I order her, and she grits her teeth, her gaze furious.
“Haven’t you humiliated me enou—”
Before she can finish speaking, I push my cock between her lips, muffling anything further she might have said. She rears
back, but my grip on her hair keeps her still, and I thrust forward, filling her mouth with my cock all the way to the back of her
throat. I feel my cockhead slide over her tongue, the wet heat of her mouth surrounding me, and I groan with pleasure as I push
her down toward the base.
“Swallow it all, principessa,” I murmur, my voice thick with pleasure. “Soon enough, you’ll be pregnant, and I can enjoy
all of your holes whenever I please, without concern over where I come. But tonight, for the sake of teaching you the purpose
of your mouth, I think I can afford to waste one orgasm. And feeling you choke on my cock and swallow my cum will be every
bit as pleasurable.”
I feel her choke as I push my cock into her throat, groaning as I feel her lips tightening around the base. It feels so fucking
good, and I hold her there for a moment, her throat tightening and convulsing around my shaft. Her eyes are full of tears as she
chokes, dripping down her cheeks, and I thrust once more before I pull her off of my length, giving her a moment to breathe.
“I can’t—” she gasps as she eyes my twitching length in front of her face, glistening with her saliva and dripping arousal. “I
can’t do it again—”
“You can, and you will.” I reach for her with my free hand, stroking the pad of my thumb over her now-puffy lips. “Your
mouth feels good, principessa. You look so beautiful like this, down on your knees for your husband.”
Lucia looks up at me, her eyes wide and pleading, and I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a more erotic sight. I’ve been with
dozens of women, had more lips around my cock than I can count, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything more beautiful than
Lucia on her knees for me while I push my cock between her lips again.
“Suck it for me, principessa,” I murmur, my fingers running through her hair as I loosen my grip a little. “Please me, and
maybe I won’t be so angry with you.” I stroke my fingers over her jaw, sliding my cockhead over her tongue. I feel her slide it
around the tip, just a little, as she laps up a bit of my pre-cum, and I groan.
“That’s it. Good girl. I know you’ve never had a cock in your mouth before. I’ll teach you. Just swirl it around, just like that
—”
Lucia stiffens, her lips tightening as she tries to pull back again, but my hand fists in her hair before she can. “No,
principessa. You’re not getting out of it that easily. You can please me yourself, or I’ll take what I want.” I tighten my hand in
her hair, pushing her down on my length again as my hips snap forward, and she lets out a broken moan as I push my cock into
her throat.
God, the way she feels when she chokes on it is so fucking good. I groan, thrusting into her throat as I fuck her face,
quickening my pace as she struggles to breathe. I feel the same rush that I did in the garden, when I had my hand around her
throat, only this feels a thousand times better. My cock throbs in her mouth, veins swollen, and my cockhead dripping over her
tongue, and I know I won’t be able to hold out much longer.
“I’m going to come down your throat, principessa,” I pant, thrusting over her tongue, feeling the wet heat of her mouth
surround me. “And you’re going to swallow it all like a good girl. Every drop that you waste, I’ll make certain that you pay
for.”
Lucia whimpers, trying to pull back, and I allow her one more moment to slide off of my length, letting her gasp a breath
before I thrust myself between her lips again. “Take it all,” I growl as I push myself into her throat, feeling my balls tighten as I
hover at the edge. “Take my fucking cum, principessa—”
The feeling of spurting hot cum down her throat is the sweetest ecstasy. Every orgasm I have with her feels as if I’m coming
unraveled, my entire body tensing as pleasure bursts through me, my hips thrusting into her wet mouth as she chokes and
sputters. My hand tightens in her hair, holding her flush to my skin, feeling her lips press against me as I push as deeply as I
can. Her damp, pleading gaze meets mine as I throb in her mouth, every pulse of my cock sending more of my cum down her
throat, and I don’t want it to stop. It feels so fucking good.
I’m never letting her go.
“Good girl,” I croon as I feel the last of my orgasm drip onto her tongue. I stroke the side of her face, brushing away the
tears that I can feel clinging to her cheek. “My good princess.” I slide my thumb over her lower lip, feeling the softness of it,
my cock twitching slightly as I slide it out of her mouth. “You swallowed your first load so well. I can’t wait to give you
more.”
Lucia looks up at me, her gaze full of accusation, and I laugh darkly. “Don’t pretend that you aren’t wet, dolcezza,” I
murmur, still stroking her lower lip. “Or else I’ll have to check, and that would embarrass you even more, wouldn’t it?”
She tries to turn away as best as she can, with my hand still in her hair, and that’s all the answer I need. I reach down,
tucking myself away as I pull her to her feet with my other hand, grasping my arm so she can’t go anywhere.
“I’ll take you up to your room,” I tell her firmly. “And for once, you can simply sleep there tonight, since I have other things
I need to do. But don’t worry, principessa.” I smile coldly at her. “Tomorrow, my cock will be in you again. And you’ll be
pregnant before your father can break in here and sweep you away. We’ll see what use he has for you after that.”
Lucia doesn’t say a word as I march her upstairs, all the way to her room. I lock the door behind me, despite her protests,
and turn away to go and find Antoni. Tomorrow, I have a meeting with the dons, who I hope will take my side in the coming
fight to win supremacy over Fontana and his rule. If I want it to go well, I’ll need all my focus. And tonight’s scuffle risks their
withdrawal from the tentative plans I’ve already made.
My wife shouldn’t linger in my thoughts, especially when I still suspect that she had some hand in this.
But she does, nevertheless.

The next morning, I call my driver to take me to the meeting, after tripling the guard on the first and third floors, to make
sure there’s no chance of Lucia escaping. I don’t doubt that she’ll try to get up to something while I’m gone, with this first
opportunity to explore and plot. But I’ve also made certain that she won’t be leaving the grounds of the estate—and that I’ll
know about it if she tries.
The meeting is being held at Don Amalfi’s estate, and I take Antoni and four other of my security guards with me, out of an
abundance of caution. I can’t trust anyone entirely, not without fearing that they might turn on me if Don Fontana presents them
with a better offer. There’s always the possibility that I might be lured into a trap, and I won’t go into any meeting without
trusted men at my back—men who have worked for my family for long enough that I feel confident in their loyalty.
Don Amalfi was a friend of my father, and three other of his friends have agreed to hear me out—Don Brusetta, Don Di
Falci, Don Gaeta, and Don Luisi. None of them are high enough in the Sicilian hierarchy to be close to Fontana or the senior
dons, except for Amalfi, but that’s to my benefit. If I can convince them that I’m capable of bringing Fontana low, they might see
the possibility for their own profit in my ambitions. I just need to make them feel certain that I’m capable of managing it.
They’re in Don Amalfi’s private study when I arrive. I’m escorted through the mansion—which is as old and luxurious as
my family’s—and brought to the large room where the men are sitting in a half-circle, smoking cigars and drinking port, and
sharing stories of their recent travels. I can hear Don Gaeta talking about a recent trip to France as I step inside, Antoni close
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captive with the wish to complete his escape, and return to Scotland.
But no. A secret influence—a sort of charm—bound him to the spot;
he was fascinated; he had no power to fly, even if the massy gates of
the castle had unfolded themselves before him.
Bred up in the camp, Douglas was unused to the small sweet
courtesies of life; his hours, when in his paternal towers of
Drumlanrig, were chiefly spent in the chase, or in warlike exercises
with his brothers, and the vassals of their house. His mother, a lady
of noble birth, descended from the bold Seatons, encouraged such
feelings, and kept up that state in her castle and retinue which
befitted her high rank. His sister Bertha was a mere child, whom he
used to fondle and caress in his moments of relaxation. But now a
new world broke upon his astonished senses. He had seen a young, a
beautiful lady, to whom he owed life and liberty, who, unsought, had
generously come forward to his relief. Of the female character he
knew nothing; if he did think of them, it was either invested with the
matronly air of his mother, or the playful fondness of his sister. His
emotions were new and delightful, and he longed to tell his fair
deliverer all he felt; and he did tell her, and—she listened.
But why prolong the tale? Interview succeeded interview, till even
Father Anselm became aware of their growing attachment. Alas! the
good priest saw his error too late; and although, even then, he
attempted to reason with both on the consequences of their passion,
yet his arguments made no impression.
“You will turn war into peace,” whispered Lady Emma, as she
listened to her spiritual director, “by healing the feud between the
families.”
“And you will, by uniting us,” boldly exclaimed the youthful lover,
“give to the Mowbrays a friend who will never fail in council or in
field.”
Overcome by these and similar arguments, the tender-hearted
Anselm at last consented to join their hands. At the solemn hour of
midnight, when the menials and retainers were bound in sleep, an
agitated yet happy group stood by the altar of the castle chapel.
There might be seen the noble form of Douglas, with a rich mantle
wrapped round him, and the fair and beautiful figure of his bride, as
she blushingly left the arm of her attendant to bestow her hand
where her heart was already given. The light of the sacred tapers fell
full upon the reverend form of Father Anselm, and the chapel
reverberated the solemn words he uttered as he invoked Heaven to
bless their union. The athletic figure of Ralph Teesdale was seen near
the door to guard against surprise.
 Chapter II.
Nothing occurred for some time to mar the harmony and peace of
the married lovers. At length their tranquillity was broken by
accounts of the fatal and bloody battle of Towton, which gave a
death-blow to the interests of the Lancastrians. This news spread
consternation among the small party at Holme Cultrum. The
question was, whether to remain and boldly confront the Mowbrays,
or fly towards Scotland and endeavour to reach Drumlanrig; but the
distracted state of the country forbade this plan, and the arrival of
some fugitives from the field of battle having brought the intelligence
that both Earl Mowbray and his son were unwounded, and had fled
to France, determined the party to remain where they were. This,
however, they soon repented of, when they understood that a large
body of Yorkists were in full march northwards to demolish all the
castles held by the insurgent noblemen. This trumpet-note roused
the warlike spirit of Douglas. He boldly showed himself to the
soldiers, and swore to defend the castle to the last, or be buried in its
ruins, if they would stand by him. But the men-at-arms, either
unwilling to fight under a stranger, or panicstruck at their late defeat,
coldly met this proposal; and while Father Anselm and Douglas were
examining the outward works, they made their escape by a postern,
leaving only two or three infirm old men, besides the menials, to
resist the conquering army. Sir John, undaunted by the dastardly
behaviour of the men, still continued his preparations, and inspired
such courage into the hearts of his little garrison, that they vowed to
stand by him to the last. But these preparations proved needless:
Edward, either allured by the prospect of greater booty in some
richer castle, or afraid of harassing his troops, turned aside into the
midland counties, and left the bold-hearted Douglas to the
enjoyment of his wife’s society.
Months of unalloyed felicity were theirs; and while England was
torn by civil dissensions,—when the father pursued the son, and the
son the father, and the most sacred bonds of nature were rent
asunder at the shrine of party, and while the unburied dead gave the
fields of merry England the appearance of a charnel-house,—all was
peace, love, and joy within the walls of Holme Cultrum. Seated in the
lofty halls of her fathers, Lady Emma appeared the personification of
content; hers was indeed that felicity she had not dared to hope for
even in her wildest daydreams. It was indeed a lovely sight to behold
her leaning on the arm of her noble husband, listening to his details
of well-fought fields; her eye now sparkling with hope, and her cheek
now blanched with terror, as they paced in the twilight the ample
battlements of the castle: it was like the ivy clinging and clasping
round the stately oak. If at such moments Douglas wearied of the
monotony of existence, and half-wished he was once more in the
front of battle, he had only to look in the soft blue eye of his Emma,
press her to his heart, and everything else was forgot.
Summer had passed away, and the fields wore the golden livery of
autumn. It was on a beautiful evening, while Douglas, Lady Emma,
and Father Anselm, were enjoying the soothing breeze, when Ralph
Teesdale rushed before them, his face pale and his trembling accents
proclaiming his terror.
“Fly, my lord!” addressing Douglas; “fly, for you are betrayed; the
earl is come, at the head of a band of mercenaries, and vows to have
your head stuck on the battlements before tomorrow’s sun rise.”
“I will not fly,” said Douglas; “boldly will I confront the earl, and
claim my wife.”
“My father is good, is kind; he will yield to the prayers and tears of
his Emma.”
“Alas, alas! my dearest and honoured lady,” rejoined her foster-
brother, “your noble father is no more, and ’tis your brother who now
seeks the life of Douglas.”
The first part of the sentence was only heard by Lady Emma, who
fell senseless into the arms of her husband, and was immediately
conveyed to her chamber by her ever-ready attendant. A hasty
council was then held between Father Anselm and Douglas.
“You had better take the advice of that faithful fellow, and give
way. You know,” continued the priest, “the dreadful temper and
baleful passions of Richard de Mowbray. Not only your own life, but
that of your wife, may fall a sacrifice to his fury, were he to find you. I
am well aware that he has long considered his sister as an
encumbrance on his succession, and will either cause her to be shut
up in a convent, or secretly destroyed.”
Douglas shuddered at the picture, and asked the holy father what
he should do.
“Retreat to my secret chamber, in the first instance; it were
madness, and worse, to attempt to exclude the Earl de Mowbray
from his castle, even if we had sufficient strength within, which you
know we have not. I shall cause Lady Emma to be conveyed there
also when she recovers; we must resolve on some scheme instantly;
the secret of the spring is unknown to all but your faithful friends.”
Sir John at length complied, and was shortly afterwards joined in
his retreat by Lady Emma and Edith. Flight—instant flight—was
resolved on; and the timid and gentle Emma, who had hardly ever
ventured beyond the walls of the castle, declared she was ready to
dare everything rather than be torn from her husband, or be the
means of his being consigned to endless captivity, or, it might be, a
cruel and lingering death. Father Anselm set off again in search of
Ralph, and soon returned with the joyful intelligence that De
Mowbray was still at a castle a few miles distant; that those of his
followers who had already arrived were then carousing deeply; and
as soon as the first watch was set, a pair of fleet horses would be
waiting at the small postern, to which Douglas and his lady could
steal unobserved, wrapt in horsemen’s cloaks. The short interval
which intervened was spent by Edith in making such preparations as
were required for the travellers, and by the churchman in fervent
petitions to Heaven for their safety. At length the expected signal was
given from the chapel, and the agitated party stood at the low
postern, where Ralph waited with the horses. It was some moments
before the lady could disengage herself from the arms of her weeping
attendant; but the father hurried them away, and soon their figures
were lost in the gloom, and their horses’ tread became faint in the
distance.
Well it was for the fugitives that their plans had been so quickly
executed, for ere midnight the trumpets of De Mowbray sounded
before the castle gate. There all was uproar and confusion. The
means of refreshment had been given with unsparing hand, and the
wild spirits of the mercenaries whom he commanded were then in a
state bordering on stupefaction from their lengthened debauch. The
few who accompanied him were not much better, and he himself had
all his evil passions inflamed by the wine he had quaffed with the
Lord of Barnard Castle. Hastily throwing himself from his reeking
charger, he entered his castle sword in hand, and ordered his sister
to be brought before him, and the castle to be searched, from turret
to foundation stone, for the presumptuous Douglas. Pale, trembling,
and in tears, Edith threw herself at his feet.
“O, my good lord, my lady, my dear lady is ill, very ill, ever since
she heard of the death of her honoured father. To-morrow she will
endeavour to see you.”
“Off, woman!” he exclaimed. “This night I must and shall see my
sister, dead or alive,” and he arose with fury in his looks.
But Wolfstone, his lieutenant, a brave young man, stepped before
him, and, drawing his sword, exclaimed—
“You must pass over my dead body ere you break in upon the
sacred sorrows of Lady Emma.”
There was something in the brave bearing of the gallant foreigner
which even De Mowbray respected, for he lowered his voice, and
stealing his hand from his dagger, said—
“And where is Father Anselm, that he comes not to welcome me to
the halls of my fathers?”
“He is gone,” returned Edith, “to the neighbouring monastery, to
say a mass for the honoured dead,” and she devoutly crossed herself,
turning her tearful eye on Wolfstone, who, with the most respectful
tone, added—
“Go, faithful maiden! say to your lady that Conrad Wolfstone
guards her chamber till her pleasure is known.”
“Now lead in our prisoner there;” but a dozen of voices exclaimed
against further duty that night.
“He sleeps sound in his dungeon,” said De Mowbray’s squire; “and
tomorrow you may make him sleep sounder, if you will. A cup of
wine would be more to the purpose, methinks, after our long and
toilsome march.”
A hundred voices joined in the request. The wine was brought, and
the tyrant soon forgot his projects of vengeance in a prolonged
debauch. He slept too—that unnatural monster slept—and dreamt of
his victims, and the sweet revenge that was awaiting him. It was
owing to the presence of mind of Ralph that the flight of Douglas was
not discovered. He had the address to persuade the half-inebriated
soldiers that the prisoner was actually securely fettered in the
dungeon which he had all along occupied. No sooner did he see them
engaged in the new carousal than he hastened to join Edith in the
secret chamber, where they united with Father Anselm in his
devotions, and prayed for blessings on the head of their noble lord
and lady.
Meanwhile the fugitives had reached Scotland, and were now
leisurely pursuing their way, thinking themselves far beyond the
reach of pursuit. On their first crossing the border, a shepherd’s hut
afforded the agitated Lady Emma an hour’s repose and a draught of
milk. The morning air revived her spirits, and once more she smiled
sweetly as her husband bade her welcome to his native soil. From the
fear of pursuit, they durst not take the most direct road to
Drumlanrig, but continued to follow the narrow tracks among the
hills, known only to huntsmen and shepherds.
It was now evening; the sun was sinking among a lofty range of
mountains, tinging their heathy summits with a purple hue, as his
broad disc seemed to touch their tops. The travellers were entering a
narrow defile, at the end of which a small but beautiful mountain
lake or loch burst upon their sight; its waters lay delightfully still and
placid, reflecting aslant a few alder bushes which grew on its banks,
while the canna, or wild cotton grass, reared its white head here and
there among the bushes of wild thyme which sent their perfume far
on the air. The wild and melancholy note of the curlew, as she was
roused from her nest by the travellers, or the occasional bleat of a
lamb, was all that broke the universal stillness.
“Ah, my love,” said Lady Emma, riding up close to her husband,
“what a scene of peace and tranquillity! Why could we not live here,
far from courts and camps, from battle and bloodshed? But,” she
continued, looking fondly and fixedly at her husband, “this
displeases you,—think of it only as a fond dream, and pardon me.”
“True, my Emma,” returned Douglas, “these are but fond dreams;
the state of our poor country commands every man to do his duty,
and how could the followers of the Bloody Heart sheath their swords,
and live like bondsmen? Never—never! But let us ride on now; the
smoke from yonder cabin on the brow of the hill promises shelter for
the night, and, ere to-morrow’s sun go down, you shall be welcomed
as the daughter of one of the noblest dames of Scotland. Ride on—the
night wears apace.”
Scarcely had the words passed his lips, when the quick tramp of a
steed behind caused him to turn round. It was Mowbray, his eyes
glaring with fury, and his frame trembling with rage and excitement.
“Turn, traitor! coward! robber! turn, and meet your just
punishment!”
“Coward was never heard by a Douglas unrevenged,” was the
haughty answer to this defiance, as he wheeled round to meet the
challenger, at the same time waving to Lady Emma to ride on; but
she became paralysed with fear and surprise, and sat on her palfrey
motionless. Both drew their swords, and the combat began. It was
furious but short: Douglas unhorsed his antagonist, and then,
leaping from his own steed, went to assist in raising him, unwilling
farther to harm the brother of his wife. But oh, the treachery and
cruelty of the wicked! No sooner did the tender-hearted Douglas
kneel down beside him to ascertain the nature of his wounds, than
Mowbray drew his secret dagger, and stabbed him to the heart.

The moon rose pale and cold on the waters of this inland lake, and
showed distinctly the body of a female lying near its shore, while a
dark heap, resembling men asleep, was seen at a little distance on a
rising ground,—the mournful howl of a large dog only broke the
death-like stillness. Soon, however, a horseman was seen descending
the pass; he was directed by the dog to the female, who still lay as if
life indeed had fled. He sprung from his horse, and brought water
from the lake, which he sprinkled on her face and hands. Long his
efforts were unavailing, but at last the pulse of life began once more
to beat, the eye opened, and she wildly exclaimed—
“O do not kill him!”
“He is safe for me, lady,” said the well-known voice of Ralph
Teesdale.
“Thou here, my trusty friend!” murmured Lady Emma; “bear me
to Douglas, and all may yet be well.”
 She could utter no more; insensibility again seized her, and Ralph,
lifting her up, bore her in his arms to what he supposed to be a
shepherd’s cottage, but found it only a deserted summer sheiling. He
was almost distracted, and, laying down his precious burden,
wrapped in his horseman’s cloak, he ran out again in search of
assistance, though hardly hoping to find it in such a wild district, still
closely followed by the dog, which continued at intervals the same
dismal howl which had attracted the notice of Ralph as they
ascended the hill. The sad note of the hound was answered by a loud
barking, and never fell sounds more welcome on the ear of the
faithful vassal. He followed the sounds, and they led him to a hut
tenanted by a shepherd and his wife. His tale was soon told. They
hastened with him to the deserted sheiling, where they found the
object of their solicitude in a situation to demand instant and female
assistance. There, amid the wilds of Scotland, in a comfortless cabin,
the heir of the warlike and noble Sir John Douglas first saw the light.
Long ere perfect consciousness returned, Lady Emma was removed
to the more comfortable home of the shepherd, and there his wife
paid her every possible attention.
The care of Ralph consigned the remains of the rival chiefs to one
grave. It was supposed that De Mowbray had expired soon after
giving Douglas the fatal stroke, as his fingers still firmly grasped the
hilt of his dagger. Their horses and accoutrements were disposed of
by the shepherd, and thus furnished a fund for the maintenance of
the noble lady, who was so strangely cast upon their care. Many
weeks elapsed ere she was aware she had neither husband nor
brother.

Time, which calms or extinguishes every passion of the human

heart, had exerted its healing influence over the mind of Lady Emma.
She sat watching the gambols of her son on the banks of the peaceful
lake, whose waters had first recalled her to life on the disastrous
evening of his birth. There was even a smile on her pale thin lip, as
he tottered to her knee, and laid there a handful of yellow
wildflowers. She clasped the blooming boy to her heart, murmuring,
“My Douglas!” On her first awakening to a full sense of her loss and
forlorn condition, it was only by presenting her son to her that she
could be persuaded to live; and when her strength returned, she
determined to go to Drumlanrig, and claim protection for herself and
child. But the prudence of Ralph suggested the propriety of his first
going to ascertain the state of the family; and recommending his lady
to the care of Gilbert Scott and his kind-hearted wife, he set out on
his embassy. But sad was his welcome: the noble pile was a heap of
blackened and smoking ruins, and the lady fled no one knew
whither. Sad and sorrowful he returned to the mountain retreat, and
was surprised at the calmness with which his honoured mistress
heard his tale. Alas! he knew not that the pang she had already
suffered made every other loss appear trivial!
The lonely sheiling was repaired and furnished. Here Lady Emma,
in placid content, nursed her child, attended by her faithful foster-
brother, who made occasional excursions to the neighbouring town
to supply her with any necessary she required. On an occasion of this
kind, when the lovely boy was nearly two years old, she sat at the
door of her humble dwelling, listening to his sweet prattle. It was the
first time he had attempted to say the most endearing of all words.
She forgot her sorrows, and was almost happy. Her attention was
soon called to some domestic concern within the cottage. The boy
was on his accustomed seat at the door, when a shrill and piercing
scream caused her to run out. Need her anguish and despair be
painted, when she saw her lovely boy borne aloft in the air in the
talons of an eagle? To run, to scream, to shout, was the first
movement of the frenzied mother; but vain had been her efforts, had
she not been almost immediately joined by some of her neighbours,
whose united efforts made the fatigued bird quit its prey and drop it
into the loch. Many a willing heart, many an active hand, was ready
to save the boy. He was delivered to his mother, but, alas! only as a
drenched and nerveless corse. Human nature could endure no more.
Her brain reeled, and reason fled for ever. Her faithful and attached
follower returned to find his lady a wandering maniac. Year after
year did he follow her footsteps, nor, till death put a period to her
sufferings, did his care slacken for one instant. After he had seen her
laid by her husband and brother, he bade adieu to the simple
inhabitants, and it is supposed he fell in some of the border raids of
the period, as he was never more heard of.
Reader, this tale is no idle fiction. On the borders of Alemoor Loch,
in Selkirkshire, may still be seen a small clump of moss-grown trees,
among which were one or two of the crab-apple kind, which showed
that here the hand of cultivation had once been. Within this
enclosure was a small green mound, to which tradition, in reference
to the above story, gave the name of the Lady’s Seat; and about half a
mile to the south-west of the lonely loch is an oblong bench, with a
rising ground above, still called the Chieftain’s Grave.—Chambers’s
Edinburgh Journal.
 TIBBY FOWLER.

By John Mackay Wilson.

Tibby Fowler o’ the glen,
A’ the lads are wooin’ at her.—Old Song.

All our readers have heard and sung of “Tibby Fowler o’ the glen;”
but they may not all be aware that the glen referred to lies within
about four miles of Berwick. No one has seen and not admired the
romantic amphitheatre below Edrington Castle, through which the
Whitadder coils like a beautiful serpent glittering in the sun, and
sports in fantastic curves beneath the pasture-clad hills, the gray
ruin, the mossy and precipitous crag, and the pyramid of woods,
whose branches, meeting from either side, bend down and kiss the
glittering river, till its waters seem lost in their leafy bosom. Now,
gentle reader, if you have looked upon the scene we have described,
we shall make plain to you the situation of Tibby Fowler’s cottage, by
a homely map, which is generally at hand. You have only to bend
your arm, and suppose your shoulder to represent Edrington Castle,
your hand Clarabad, and near the elbow you will have the spot where
“ten cam rowing ower the water;” a little nearer to Clarabad is the
“lang dyke side,” and immediately at the foot of it is the site of
Tibby’s cottage, which stood upon the Edrington side of the river;
and a little to the west of the cottage, you will find a shadowy row of
palm-trees, planted, as tradition testifieth, by the hands of Tibby’s
father, old Ned Fowler, of whom many speak until this day. The
locality of the song was known to many; and if any should be inclined
to inquire how we became acquainted with the other particulars of
our story, we have only to reply, that that belongs to a class of
questions to which we do not return an answer. There is no necessity
for a writer of tales taking for his motto—vitam impendere vero.
Tibby’s parents had the character of being “bien bodies;” and,
together with their own savings, and a legacy that had been left them
by a relative, they were enabled at their death to leave their daughter
in possession of five hundred pounds. This was esteemed a fortune in
those days, and would afford a very respectable foundation for the
rearing of one yet. Tibby, however, was left an orphan, as well as the
sole mistress of five hundred pounds, and the proprietor of a neat
and well-furnished cottage, with a piece of land adjoining, before she
had completed her nineteenth year; and when we add that she had
hair like the raven’s wings when the sun glances upon them, cheeks
where the lily and the rose seemed to have lent their most delicate
hues, and eyes like twin dew-drops glistening beneath a summer
moonbeam, with a waist and an arm rounded like a model for a
sculptor, it is not to be wondered at that “a’ the lads cam wooin’ at
her.” But she had a woman’s heart as well as woman’s beauty and the
portion of an heiress. She found her cottage surrounded, and her
path beset, by a herd of grovelling pounds-shillings-and-pence
hunters, whom her very soul loathed. The sneaking wretches, who
profaned the name of lovers, seemed to have money written on their
very eyeballs, and the sighs they professed to heave in her presence
sounded to her like stifled groans of—Your gold—your gold! She did
not hate them, but she despised their meanness; and as they one by
one gave up persecuting her with their addresses, they consoled
themselves with retorting upon her the words of the adage, that “her
pride would have a fall!” But it was not from pride that she rejected
them, but because her heart was capable of love—of love, pure,
devoted, unchangeable, springing from being beloved, and because
her feelings were sensitive as the quivering aspen, which trembles at
the rustling of an insect’s wing. Amongst her suitors there might
have been some who were disinterested; but the meanness and
sordid objects of many caused her to regard all with suspicion, and
there was none among the number to whose voice her bosom
responded as the needle turns to the magnet, and frequently from a
cause as inexplicable. She had resolved that the man to whom she
gave her hand should wed her for herself—and for herself only. Her
parents had died in the same month; and about a year after their
death she sold the cottage and the piece of ground, and took her
journey towards Edinburgh, where the report of her being a “great
fortune,” as her neighbours termed her, might be unknown. But
Tibby, although a sensitive girl, was also, in many respects, a prudent
one. Frequently she had heard her mother, when she had to take but
a shilling from the legacy, quote the proverb, that it was
Like a cow in a clout,
That soon wears out.

Proverbs we know are in bad taste, but we quote it, because by its
repetition the mother produced a deeper impression on her
daughter’s mind than could have been effected by a volume of
sentiment. Bearing therefore in her memory the maxim of her frugal
parent, Tibby deposited her money in the only bank, we believe, that
was at that period in the Scottish capital, and hired herself as a
child’s maid in the family of a gentleman who occupied a house in
the neighbourhood of Restalrig. Here the story of her fortune was
unknown, and Tibby was distinguished only for a kind heart and a
lovely countenance. It was during the summer months, and Leith
Links became her daily resort; and there she was wont to walk, with
a child in her arms and leading another by the hand, for there she
could wander by the side of the sounding sea; and her heart still
glowed for her father’s cottage and its fairy glen, where she had often
heard the voice of its deep waters, and she felt the sensation which
we believe may have been experienced by many who have been born
within hearing of old ocean’s roar, that wherever they may be, they
hear the murmur of its billows as the voice of a youthful friend; and
she almost fancied, as she approached the sea, that she drew nearer
the home which sheltered her infancy. She had been but a few weeks
in the family we have alluded to, when, returning from her
accustomed walk, her eyes met those of a young man habited as a
seaman. He appeared to be about five-and-twenty, and his features
were rather manly than handsome. There was a dash of boldness and
confidence in his countenance; but as the eyes of the maiden met his,
he turned aside as if abashed, and passed on. Tibby blushed at her
foolishness, but she could not help it; she felt interested in the
stranger. There was an expression, a language, an inquiry in his gaze,
she had never witnessed before. She would have turned round to cast
a look after him, but she blushed deeper at the thought, and modesty
forbade it. She walked on for a few minutes, upbraiding herself for
entertaining the silly wish, when the child who walked by her side fell
a few yards behind. She turned round to call him by his name. Tibby
was certain that she had no motive but to call the child, and though
she did steal a sidelong glance towards the spot where she had
passed the stranger, it was a mere accident; it could not be avoided—
at least so the maiden wished to persuade her conscience against her
conviction; but that glance revealed to her the young sailor, not
pursuing the path on which she had met him, but following her
within the distance of a few yards, and until she reached her master’s
door she heard the sound of his footsteps behind her. She
experienced an emotion between being pleased and offended at his
conduct, though we suspect the former eventually predominated; for
the next day she was upon the Links as usual, and there also was the
young seaman, and again he followed her to within sight of her
master’s house. How long this sort of dumb love-making, or the
pleasures of diffidence, continued, we cannot tell. Certain it is that at
length he spoke, wooed, and conquered; and about a twelvemonth
after their first meeting, Tibby Fowler became the wife of William
Gordon, the mate of a foreign trader. On the second week after their
marriage, William was to sail upon a long, long voyage, and might
not be expected to return for more than twelve months. This was a
severe trial for poor Tibby, and she felt as if she would not be able to
stand up against it. As yet her husband knew nothing of her dowry,
and for this hour she had reserved its discovery. A few days before
their marriage she had drawn her money from the bank and
deposited it in her chest.
“No, Willie, my ain Willie,” she cried, “ye maunna, ye winna leave
me already: I have neither faither, mother, brother, nor kindred;
naebody but you, Willie; only you in the wide world; and I am a
stranger here, and ye winna leave your Tibby. Say that ye winna,
Willie?” And she wrung his hand, gazed in his face, and wept.
“I maun gang, dearest; I maun gang,” said Willie, and pressed her
to his breast; “but the thocht o’ my ain wifie will mak the months
chase ane anither like the moon driving shadows ower the sea.
There’s nae danger in the voyage, hinny; no a grain o’ danger; sae
dinna greet; but come, kiss me, Tibby, and when I come hame I’ll
mak ye leddy o’ them a’.”
“Oh no, no, Willie!” she replied; “I want to be nae leddy; I want
naething but my Willie. Only say that ye’ll no gang, and here’s
something here, something for ye to look at.” And she hurried to her
chest, and took from it a large leathern pocket-book that had been
her father’s, and which contained her treasure, now amounting to
somewhat more than six hundred pounds. In a moment she returned
to her husband; she threw her arms around his neck; she thrust the
pocket-book into his bosom. “There, Willie, there!” she exclaimed;
“that is yours—my faither placed it in my hand wi’ a blessing, and wi’
the same blessing I transfer it to you; but dinna, dinna leave me.”
Thus saying, she hurried out of the room. We will not attempt to
describe the astonishment, we may say the joy, of the fond husband,
on opening the pocket-book and finding the unlooked-for dowry.
However intensely a man may love a woman, there is little chance
that her putting an unexpected portion of six hundred pounds into
his hands will diminish his attachment; nor did it diminish that of
William Gordon. He relinquished his intention of proceeding on the
foreign voyage, and purchased a small coasting vessel, of which he
was both owner and commander. Five years of unclouded prosperity
passed over them, and Tibby had become the mother of three fair
children. William sold his small vessel, and purchased a larger one,
and in fitting it up all the gains of his five successful years were
swallowed up. But trade was good. She was a beautiful brig, and he
had her called the Tibby Fowler. He now took a fond farewell of his
wife and little ones upon a foreign voyage which was not calculated
to exceed four months, and which held out high promise of
advantage. But four, eight, twelve months passed away, and there
was no tidings of the Tibby Fowler. Britain was then at war; there
were enemies’ ships and pirates upon the sea, and there had been
fierce storms and hurricanes since her husband left; and Tibby
thought of all these things and wept; and her lisping children asked
her when their father would return, for he had promised presents to
all, and she answered, to-morrow, and to-morrow, and turned from
them, and wept again. She began to be in want, and at first she
received assistance from some of the friends of their prosperity; but
all hope of her husband’s return was now abandoned. The ship was
not insured, and the mother and her family were reduced to beggary.
In order to support them, she sold one article of furniture after
another, until what remained was seized by the landlord in security
for his rent. It was then that Tibby and her children, with scarce a
blanket to cover them, were cast friendless upon the streets, to die or
to beg. To the last resource she could not yet stoop, and from the
remnants of former friendship she was furnished with a basket and a
few trifling wares, with which, with her children by her side, she set
out, with a broken and sorrowful heart, wandering from village to
village. She had journeyed in this manner for some months, when
she drew near her native glen, and the cottage that had been her
father’s—that had been her own—stood before her. She had travelled
all the day and sold nothing. Her children were pulling by her
tattered gown, weeping and crying, “Bread, mother, give us bread!”
and her own heart was sick with hunger.
“Oh, wheesht, my darlings, wheesht!” she exclaimed, and she fell
upon her knees, and threw her arms round the necks of all the three,
“You will get bread soon; the Almighty will not permit my bairns to
perish; no, no, ye shall have bread.”
In despair she hurried to the cottage of her birth. The door was
opened by one who had been a rejected suitor. He gazed upon her
intently for a few seconds; and she was still young, being scarce more
than six-and-twenty, and in the midst of her wretchedness yet lovely.
“Gude gracious, Tibby Fowler!” he exclaimed, “is that you? Poor
creature! are ye seeking charity? Weel, I think ye’ll mind what I said
to you now, that your pride would have a fa’!”
While the heartless owner of the cottage yet spoke, a voice behind
her was heard exclaiming, “It is her! it is her! my ain Tibby and her
bairns!”
At the well-known voice, Tibby uttered a wild scream of joy, and
fell senseless on the earth; but the next moment her husband,
William Gordon, raised her to his breast. Three weeks before, he had
returned to Britain, and traced her from village to village, till he
found her in the midst of their children, on the threshold of the place
of her nativity. His story we need not here tell. He had fallen into the
hands of the enemy; he had been retained for months on board of
their vessel; and when a storm had arisen, and hope was gone, he
had saved her from being lost and her crew from perishing. In
reward for his services, his own vessel had been restored to him, and
he was returned to his country, after an absence of eighteen months,
richer than when he left, and laden with honours. The rest is soon
told. After Tibby and her husband had wept upon each other’s neck,
and he had kissed his children, and again their mother, with his
youngest child on one arm, and his wife resting on the other, he
hastened from the spot that had been the scene of such bitterness
and transport. In a few years more, William Gordon having obtained
a competency, they re-purchased the cottage in the glen, where Tibby
Fowler lived to see her children’s children, and died at a good old age
in the house in which she had been born—the remains of which, we
have only to add, for the edification of the curious, may be seen until
this day.
 DANIEL CATHIE, TOBACCONIST.

Daniel Cathie was a reputable dealer in snuff, tobacco, and

candles, in a considerable market town in Scotland. His shop had,
externally, something neat and enticing about it. In the centre of one
window glowed a transparency of a ferocious-looking Celt, bonneted,
plaided, and kilted, with his unsheathed claymore in one hand, and
his ram’s-horn mull in the other; intended, no doubt, to emblem to
the spectator, that from thence he recruited his animal spirits,
drawing courage from the titillation of every pinch. Around him were
tastefully distributed jars of different dimensions, bearing each the
appropriate title of the various compounds within, from Maccuba
and Lundy Foot down to Beggar’s Brown and Irish Blackguard. In
the other, one half was allotted to tobacco pipes of all dimensions,
tastefully arranged, so as to form a variety of figures, such as crosses,
triangles, and squares; decorated at intervals with rolls of twist,
serpentinings of pigtail, and monticuli of shag. The upper half
displayed candles, distributed with equal exhibition of taste, from the
prime four in the pound down to the halfpenny dip; some of a snowy
whiteness, and others of an aged and delicate yellow tinge; enticing
to the eyes of experienced housewives and spectacled cognoscenti.
Over the door rode a swarthy son of Congo, with broad nostrils, and
eyes whose whites were fearfully dilated,—astride on a tobacco
hogshead,—his woolly head bound with a coronal of feathers, a
quiver peeping over his shoulder, and a pipe in his cheeks blown up
for the eternity of his wooden existence, in the ecstasy of inhalation.
Daniel himself, the autocrat of this domicile, was a little squat
fellow, five feet and upwards, of a rosy complexion, with broad
shoulders, and no inconsiderable rotundity of paunch. His eye was
quick and sparkling, with something of an archness in its twinkle, as
if he loved a joke occasionally, and could wink at any one who
presumed so far in tampering with his shrewdness. His forehead was
bald, as well as no small portion of either temple; and the black curls,
which projected above his ears, gave to his face the appearance of
more than its actual breadth, which was scantily relieved by a slight
blue spotted handkerchief, loosely tied around a rather apoplectic
neck.
His dress was commonly a bottle-green jacket, single-breasted,
and square in the tails; a striped cotton waistcoat; velveteen
breeches, and light blue ridge-and-furrow worsted stockings. A
watch-chain, of a broad steel pattern, hung glittering before him, at
which depended a small gold seal, a white almond-shaped shell, and
a perforated Queen Anne’s sixpence. Over all this lower display,
suppose that you fasten a clean, glossy linen apron, and you have his
entire portrait and appearance.
From very small beginnings he had risen, by careful industry, to a
respectable place in society, and was now the landlord of the
property he had for many years only rented.
Matters prospered, and he got on by slow but steady paces.
Business began to extend its circle around him, and his customers
became more respectable and genteel.
In a short time Daniel opened accounts with his banker. His
establishment became more extensive; and after the lapse of a few
not unimproved years, he took his place in the first rank of the
merchants of a populous burgh.
His lengthening purse and respectable character pointed him out
as a fit candidate for city honours, and the town-council pitched
upon him as an eligible person to grace their board. This was a new
field opened for him. His reasoning powers were publicly called into
play; and he had, what he had never before been accustomed to,
luxurious eating and drinking, and both without being obliged to put
his hand into his breeches-pocket. Daniel was a happy man—
No dolphin ever was so gay
Upon the tropic sea.

He now cogitated with his own mighty mind on the propriety of

entering upon the matrimonial estate, and of paying his worship to
the blind god. With the precision of a man of business, he took down