Bad Little Bride

It’s four hours later when someone comes knocking on my door.

I don’t bother moving from where I’m lying, smack-dab in the center of the damn bed. I have a headache from glaring at the chandelier above and counting a total of four hundred and fifteen crystals from this position alone. So when the person slams their fist back down on the heavy wood not five seconds later, I blindly heave a book at it.

The knocking stops and I sigh to myself, finally feeling a hint of satisfaction and allow my eyes to close.

The door swings open and a heavy footstep sounds, but only one and then complete silence fills the space once more. The difference is this silence is ear-piercingly loud and I know who walked in the room. Just as I think it, the universe decides to confirm by sending a soft burst of wind through the open balcony doors.

I hold strong for as long as I can, but when my skin starts to prickle, and still not even the rustle of trees outside reaches my ears, I cave, my eyes flicking open and pointing in his direction.

Enzo isn’t looking at me, though. No, he’s looking at the butt of the blunt and the burn mark beside it where I put it out with the help of the shiny new wood.

“Yeah.” I move my eyes back to the ceiling. “Met the OG wifey. She’s pretty and my age,” I guess. “I would say you have a type but…I’m not sure if younger than you qualifies as a type or a preference.” My eyes slide his way then, noting the way his fist is still wrapped around the handle of my door. He literally froze in place. “Maybe marriage is like a sampler platter for you. You had the brunette, now the blonde.” I force a smirk. “I’ll be sure to start packing if I spot a redhead vying for your attention.”

“This is why you wanted to speak to Rocklin.” He releases his death grip on the handle and steps farther into the room, his eyes scanning over every inch in search of another sign of his first wife.

“What’s the point of having a sister if you can’t talk shit about the people who piss you off together?”

His head snaps my way then, our eyes meeting for the first time since he walked in, and a small laugh leaves me when I spot the slight frown along his brow.

“What?”

“I didn’t expect you to own up to it.”

My brows turn to frown. “Why not?”

“Because now I know you’ll be speaking negatively about me.”

“Hate to break it to you, Enzo. Everyone speaks negatively about you.”

“Jealousy will do that. I am the only man who earned his place on their own and I won’t be sharing, which is why your father hates me in the first place. Because everything I own will remain mine and mine alone. Just as you will.”

I roll my eyes. “So you keep saying.”

His glare is sharp. “Why are you so calm about Katana?”

My brows lift, not having expected him to ask that.

“Answer me,” he pushes when I don’t respond. “Is it because you already knew?”

“If I had known, I never would have approached you.”

Enzo’s jaw clenches at my answer and he studies me a long moment. “Is it because you think you can get away from me now? Because you can’t. I’ll⁠—”

“Find me, hunt me, lock me in a bigger, badder tower. Yeah, yeah, I know. That much you’ve made perfectly clear.”

He presses his lips into a firm line, anger and frustration heavy in his gaze.

I look back to the chandelier and watch him grow closer in my peripheral.

“You’ve detached.”

His words strike a chord I didn’t know existed, and I have to work to keep my expression blank.

“I would have to have been attached to detach.”

“I don’t mean to me,” he admits easily. “I mean the idea of me. You were attached to the idea of us or you never would have run off when I was offered your sister instead. You believed I wanted her. That she would just as easily be to me what you are. You were afraid to lose the one thing you wanted and were brave enough to go and get on your own, consequences be damned. Still are if I had to guess, being you have no word to go on but my own.”

“Yeah, well, had I known those consequences would lead to becoming the scraps of a crime boss one day, forced to live in a lifeless mansion, I would have made a better choice, but hey, we all make mistakes, right?” I pin him with a flat stare, not denying a single word he had to say.

Of course I would expect him to want Rocklin, and of course I’ve detached from the idea of being his wife. For fuck’s sake, he already had one and left her for me.

History always repeats itself and I’m under no impression I am somehow “more than” she was. Is. What the fuck ever.

Enzo sits down beside me, his dark eyes snapping to my hair that lies against the pillows before lifting his gaze to mine. “The only mistake you have made is holding back the questions you really want to ask. So rectify that. Ask me what you wish to know. Ask me what I should have already told you, but haven’t.”

“Why?”

“Because you want to know.”

“No.” I shake my head, pushing up so we’re nearly eye level. “You misunderstand.”

Slight creases frame his eyes as he searches mine. “Break it down for me.”

“It’s simple. Why didn’t you tell me?”

It’s brief, but for a split second, a stunned expression crosses his face. His smirk appears a moment later. It’s deep and satisfied.

It’s kind of unnerving.

“You didn’t expect me to ask that.”

“Not right away, no, but it’s the question I would have started with.” He tips his head slightly, that smirk loosening in a way that is far too flirty. It annoyingly chips at the ball of anger burning in my chest. “I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you to back out. I wanted this and was willing to hide whatever needed to be hidden to have it.”

This. It.

I pull my lips between my teeth as I turn over his so very carefully worded response. He wanted me more than he wanted Katana, and of course he would. Who else had the ability to give him that offer to our world he’s been after?

Not her, that’s for sure.

So of course he would want me instead…until a better opportunity comes along.

But then again, it’s not Katana’s lips permanently inked into his skin, right there for all to see. It wasn’t her he took to that dinner with the Mitchells, and she’s not the woman he planned to name for Fortune Flave’s magazine article that day.

What is all this about?

What is he about?

A thought crosses my mind. “If you still plan to overthrow my family, it won’t work. We both know when this marriage ends, so does the access going through with it granted you.”

His features harden in an instant. “Who says this marriage is going to end?”

“History.” One word. That’s all I say, but we both know what I mean.

Enzo runs his pointer finger over his lower lip as he stares at me. After a silent moment, he shrugs, nodding. “You’re right. This marriage will end…” He leans in, pulling my hair over my shoulder, his eyes on the tips as they tease my ribs before narrowing on my own. “When I’m six feet under and not a second sooner, so go ahead, Little Bride. Get mad, bury yourself in your thoughts and assume the worst, we both know I’m capable of it, but know all you’re gonna do is strip yourself of the life you could have because you’re so focused on what you fear you won’t.”

Enzo pushes off the bed and heads for the door. Just as he slips into the hall, I shout.

“If you think I entered into this secretly hoping for a fairy tale, you’re wrong.”

He looks over his shoulder, meeting my eyes. “If you think that’s not exactly what I could give you, you’re wrong.”

My mouth opens in rebuttal, but the hard expression that falls over Enzo as he spins to face me fully has me pausing.

“I was coming to tell you we have a fundraiser dinner to be at tonight. I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to reveal our relationship to everyone. Press, friends, family. Enemies. They’ll all be there. I wanted my fiancée on my arm, so I could claim her as mine in front of the world tonight. So everyone would know, without a doubt, that I am yours.”

My lips part. He’s ready to go public. To show them all.

“But…” He lifts a shoulder. “Perhaps I’ll ask Ann-Marie instead.”

My brows snap together, jolting me from my thoughts. “You’re a bastard.”

His smirk is as evil as the look in his eye. “I’m your bastard.”

I throw the stupid phone he gave me—the suddenly serviceless, password-protected, Wi-Fi enabled phone—at his head, but he dodges it effortlessly, laughing loudly as he makes his way down the hall.

It’s not until he’s out of sight that I realize that he not only left my door wide open and unlocked, but that an invitation sits in the place his ass was parked.

Tearing it from the comforter, I glare at the golden-trimmed card, a spark firing in my gut as I read over the words.

The fundraiser is being held at The Enterprise.

My sister owns The Enterprise.

“Wait!” I dart into the hall, running in nothing but thick, comfy socks in the direction Enzo disappeared, and when I round the corner into what was nothing but a wasted space, I freeze.

Much like that day in the courtyard, the space has been transformed, this time into a dressing room of sorts. A woman with the word “crybaby” tattooed above her left eyebrow sits on a vanity chair, playing on her phone, every shade of makeup in existence in a giant trunk to the left of her.

Three-piece mirrors sit in all four corners, a spinning pedestal before them. Five different gown styles in five color options hang from metal hooks, and a woman wearing an apron with dozens of pins at the hem stands beside the racks, fussing with a garment bag, and beside her, a third and final female. This one setting combs out onto a folded cloth as precisely as one would throwing knives—smallest to largest, left to right.

I glance across the women, wondering where they came from and how Enzo knows them.

“You haven’t showered.”

All eyes fly to me, and my chest heats as I leisurely look to the old woman. “Hello, Grandma. Good to see you too.”

Someone scoffs behind me, and Grandma scowls. “Cute, dear. Now go. Shower. No moisturizer on your face. Jayden will handle everything for you. Shall I prepare some chardonnay?”

My brows jump and she shakes her head, but I don’t miss the small smile she fights as she puts her hands on my shoulders and spins me away. “Go on. You have ten minutes.”

“Can I⁠—”

“I’ve already got the strawberries out. Nine minutes.”

The eye roll I give is full-on dramatic and serves well to hide the sliver of excitement in my gut, but I do my best to push it down by focusing on the task at hand.

I’m showered, shaved, and in nothing but a satin robe, my wet hair in a claw clip as I step back into the makeshift dressing room.

My feet are just crossing the threshold when long pointy fingers wrap around my wrist, tugging me forward. The woman smirks as her eyes travel my makeup-less face, sparkling as if she already knows exactly what she wants to do. The crybaby tattoo above her eye stretches higher when she smiles, ushering me into the chair. “I’m Jayden. I’m on face. Jenna is on hair, and Jazzy is on the dress. I’m just gonna put a quick mask on your eyes and then you’ll pick your gown. After that you’re right back to me, got it?” She pops a large piece of bubble gum, smiling at me. “I can’t believe he’s letting us talk to you.”

At my frown, she just laughs, and neither of us bother mentioning who he is. Jayden smooths a thick, gel-like substance around the contours of my eyes, the eucalyptus smell soothing and reminding me of the spa day I didn’t get to finish.

“Girl, don’t humiliate us like this.” When my eyes meet hers in confusion, she winks. “A pout like that might make me Enzo’s biggest nightmare.”

“Jayden, behave. It was hard enough to get the approval for you girls to be here. Don’t disappoint me now by hitting on the boss’s bride-to-be.”

“Meh, a little family competition never hurt no one. Right, Boston?”

Wrong. So fucking wrong, but I don’t say that, instead focusing way too hard on the “family” part. “You’re related to Enzo?”

“Don’t spot the resemblance?” she teases, pressing a thin white cloth with large cutouts around my eyes, dabbing against it with a featherlight touch to seal it to the gel there.

I look more closely. The woman is tall, her eyes darker than Enzo’s and her hair is jet-black, but not the natural kind. While Enzo is all clear skin—minus the new tattoo of my lips—Jayden is covered in ink. It wraps up her neck and down her arms. Even her long, thin fingers are dipped in ink. Of course that’s all stylistic choices, and doesn’t help as far as resemblances go.

“Fucking the boss’s best friend doesn’t make you family, Jayden.” The girl plugging a blow-dryer in, who must be Jenna, smirks from her place to my right. Her eyes meet mine, the purple contacts she’s wearing bright and glittery. “You met Mino yet, Blondie?”

A hint of embarrassment threatens to creep in, but I force it away. I have nothing to be embarrassed about. I’m not the one keeping someone else prisoner. “I haven’t met anyone.” I decide it’s not a lie, being I would almost guarantee Katana is a topic not to be discussed. Or at least one I don’t want to discuss anyway.

“Girl, you’re missing out. I saw the sex tape he and Jay made. Hot,” the third girl, Jazzy adds, beckoning me over with a crook of her finger.

Jayden pulls me to my feet, and I jolt when she smacks my ass playfully to get me moving. “Not a sex tape when you didn’t know there were cameras, and we’re not fucking, we fucked. A few times.”

The laughs the girls let out clearly say they disagree, and Jayden looks to me expectantly.

“I mean…if there’s a video of you having sex, regardless of knowing you were being recorded or not, it’s still a sex tape.”

“Don’t let her fool you, dear.” Grandma slides into the room with a rolling cart, a gorgeous spread of fruits and a bottle of chardonnay on ice sitting on top. “She knew good and well every inch of the property in question was under surveillance. She’ll be sure to try and blackmail the poor man with it later.”

“Mom!” she gapes.

I gape.

And Grandma just lifts a brow, glancing my way as if to confirm. Jayden is her daughter.

I scan the room, my eyes narrowing.

They are all her daughters.

Well, that’s…unexpected. I assumed she was a childless woman who devoted her life serving the Fikiles, having raised Enzo on her own and just never left.

I kind of like that I was wrong. Maybe her devotion to him doesn’t run as deep as I had thought, and I can learn to trust her.

Maybe, in time, she’ll become someone I can lean on should I need to.

“Okay, what are we thinking gown-wise?” Jazzy asks, gripping my hips and sliding her hands up my ribs as if to gauge my figure better. “Your posture is on point. No wonder he chose all these strapless pieces. He wants your shoulders on display.”

“Oh, I’ve got the perfect updo!” Jenna smiles.

“No.” The word comes out too harsh, too fast, and all eyes find mine. Shit. I force myself not to swallow. “My hair stays down and no open back.”

“Of course.” Grandma nods, pouring my wine and setting it back down on the rolling cart she parked beside the makeup chair.

“My sister will wear an open back,” I say as way of reason, focusing on Jazzy. “What does that leave?”

She quickly moves things around, and then I’m staring at two gowns, one a deep purple with a square set to the shoulders and plunging neckline that stops just below the breastbone, but it’s the other that has a small smile tipping my lips.

“And we have a winner.” Jazzy plays with her necklace, eyes glued to the stretchy material like she’s memorizing every detail, which should be simple enough considering.

I look to her hand, to the where her finger presses against the circular pendant hanging from a familiar, if only thinner, gold chain. A frown pulls at my brows, but before I can ask anything, not sure I would have, she clears her throat, tucking it beneath her shirt. “The more I look at this, the more perfect it looks for you. Okay. Let’s do this.”

I’m measured, then shoved back into Jayden’s chair when Jazzy announces the dresses Enzo had ordered are already tailored to my exact measurements.

Face wiped clean of the facial mask, my hair removed from the clip, and wine is thrust into my hand. I do all I can to sit back and enjoy the glamour session, even if I am fully capable of making myself presentable for an upscale event, but I am grateful not to have to, even if that isn’t the reason these women were called here today.

My mind is running a mile a minute, half thoughts and concerns stressing me out before a new one blooms, and it starts all over again.

If these are Grandma’s daughters, does that mean they were raised with Enzo? How well do they know him?

How well does he know them?

Well, obviously if he trusts them in his house unsupervised. It hadn’t gone unnoticed to me that there are zero women who work for him, and no, Grandma doesn’t count. She only seems to work for me.

Why did he tattoo my lips on his skin?

Why does it thrill me beyond reason that he did?

I want to be a spoiled little bitch, do the whole I kissed it so it’s mine. Dig my nails into the opposite side and pet him like my favored toy in front of anyone who will watch.

It’s ridiculous to be possessive over someone you hardly know, but the urge to do so is there regardless. Even if in the next second, all I want to do is knee him in the nuts for putting me in this situation.

A second wife. I’m someone’s second wife just like I’m the second daughter.

It just doesn’t end, does it?

It’s not until I’m slipping into the dress of the night that my mind settles on one thing, a thought that shouldn’t draw a smile to my face but does.

Enzo was simply trying to get a rise out of me earlier when he said he’d take Ann-Marie. He wouldn’t have. He couldn’t have…because these dresses weren’t made to be able to fit us both.

They were made for me specifically.

But that smile drops the instant I spin to face Grandma and see the sparkling monstrosities dangling from both hands.

“No.”

“Yes,” she challenges. “I’ve locked your door and the only way to get inside the room now would be to ask Enzo for the key. Should I show you to him?” Her tone is silky sweet, and honestly kind of bratty for being a seventy-something-year-old.

With a fake smile, I take the hazardous heels and sit.

It takes effort and about a teaspoon of Vaseline, but I managed to push through the pain and make my way into the elevator in time.

I close my eyes when the doors press together, and I don’t open them until the ding sounds, letting me know I’ve reached the first floor. I don’t expect Enzo to be standing there waiting the second they do.

My gaze instantly snags his, though he only holds the contact for one heartbeat, lowering it and following the length of my body at the same steady pace. When his attention falls to the shiny statement pieces on my feet, I fight the urge to curl my toes within them. Not that there’s much room for that, but a habit is a habit for a reason. As thorough as his perusal down was, it follows the same path upward, pausing a moment longer at the highest point of the slit, my entire thigh on display, more than it should be with the slanted way I’m standing.

“My first choice,” he rasps, his attention snapping to my hair and back.

The elevator doors threaten to close me inside, but his arm shoots out to stop them, his eyes not bothering to hurry their way back to mine, rather admiring the long rope-like diamonds in my ears.

“Odd, considering it was the exact opposite of the other options.” I push past him, staring at his reflection in the glass ahead as he turns, his dark gaze following my every step, settling on my ass.

It takes a conscious effort not to clench my muscles and I try not to wonder what he’s thinking.

Too round. Too soft to be a real dancer.

I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard that over the years, but the way Enzo swipes a finger over his lower lip when no one’s watching tells me he doesn’t hate it. That or he can’t decide. Who knows.

“It’s the opposite if you only focus on how the others are open around the shoulder and this one isn’t.” He comes around to stand in front of me, blocking the old man waiting to open the door from my view. “But they do the same job.”

I consider his words, realizing he’s not entirely wrong. The dress, a soft pink in color, is full coverage with long sleeves and a neckline that reaches halfway up my throat, the material soft and stretchy, forming to my body like a second skin. Somehow, it reveals even more than the shoulderless options. It literally fits like the tightest of gloves. So no, there’s not much left to the imagination in this thing, especially with the slit at the bottom running all the way up, stopping but an inch from where my thigh meets my panty line.

A sudden self-consciousness falls over me and I flex my muscles, breaking his stare. “And what job is that, just so we’re clear?”

Enzo tips his head, recapturing my gaze, his jaw set in determination. When he speaks, it’s with arrogance, but there’s a hint of something else in there too, I just can’t place it.

“I want every man whose eyes fall on you to wish it were them you were going home with at the end of the night. I want every woman who witnesses the look in their man’s eyes to burn with jealousy.” His chin lowers, as does his tone. “I want every person with a heartbeat to see you at my side and know, without a doubt, that you are mine and mine alone. That you chose me and I you, and nothing and no one could ever rival what we have. I want them to see murder in my eyes when they look at me and the possessiveness in yours, because like it or not, you are possessive over me, so show them. Let them see.”

Silence stretches between us, and I swallow, his words wielding their way far deeper than they should and leaving a pathetic thought in their wake, because there is no way a reality exists where Enzo actually respects the ring he slid onto my finger. Right?

“That’s—” Ridiculous. The complete opposite of how people are going to react to seeing the man who threatened the Revenaw empire with a Revenaw on his arm. “Oddly specific, and quite presumptuous of you.”

Enzo stands perfectly still for a moment before a slow smirk curves his lips. “Tonight will be the first night the rumors are confirmed. There will be no you or I, only us.” His attention shifts to my hair, and he reaches out, pulling the long Hollywood waves forward. “Tonight.” He takes in the deep part to the right, focusing on the left side that’s slicked down and tucked behind my ear, held in place with three diamond-tipped pins he runs the pad of his thumb over. “The burning curiosity will be fed, and trust me when I say, they’re famished, Little Bride.”

His wrist, so close to my lips, forces his scent down my throat, and I can’t deny the way the spicy sweetness warms my skin. I swear the man isn’t wearing cologne. There is no lab on this planet that could produce the masculinity encompassing him. It’s simply…him.

I can’t believe we’re about to do this.

I shouldn’t be so excited, but I can’t deny I am.

Months in the making, I’m finally at Enzo’s side.

This is what I’ve been waiting for, our first official outing in front of the masses, and we look damn good together, if I do say so myself.

We’re about to blow people’s minds and call me crazy, but I think he might be as eager for this as I am.

Enzo’s gaze snaps to the left then, and my eyes lock onto my mark on his skin. The ink is healing beautifully, though it looks like he could use a little balm to soften it out.

I almost tell him so, but then his attention moves over my shoulder, and he smiles.

It’s a smile I haven’t seen, and curiosity wins out. I glance back, every nerve in my body jolting at once as shock snaps through me.

Katana stands there with a tiara on her head, absolutely glowing in a glittery, golden gown.