CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER SEVEN

S ARAH AND AN entire team came into the room. Her eyes were wide, and she was looking around as if she was checking to see if someone was holding a gun on me.

“Are you actually insane?”

A red dress was thrust toward her. “Thanks,” she said. “You’re not marrying him.”

“I am,” I said. Because I knew that I had no other choice.

Or maybe you don’t want a different choice. Maybe you’re a sad deluded girl who thinks that this is a fairy tale.

No. I didn’t. I knew who he was.

I knew...

“Is he blackmailing you?”

“Sort of. But I wouldn’t expect anything different from him.”

“You don’t have to do this.”

“Believe me. The wreckage if I don’t isn’t worth it.”

If the various hairstylists and makeup artists were interested in exactly what was going on, they certainly didn’t show it. A stylist looked at me critically and then took three different gowns off a rack that she apparently had determined would be best for me.

One of them was made from layers of floating, diaphanous material, the bodice draped over my curves with soft pleats. The skirt swished with each movement. It was the kind of thing that spoke of femininity. On a level that I normally would never allow myself to project.

I looked like a bride.

Next to Hades in a severe black suit, I would look nothing less than soft . It was the kind of thing that I would never risk in a meeting. But at a wedding?

Our wedding.

I looked at myself in the mirror. My eyes were large, my skin waxen.

Did I look like the spoils? Would he appear to be the victor?

I looked beautiful and I didn’t know how to feel about it. Just like I had no idea how to feel about becoming a mother. About becoming a wife.

The wife of hell, basically.

But the only hell I’d ever willingly flung myself into, so it wasn’t like I didn’t know how I’d gotten here.

Play with hellfire and you might get damned.

“This is the one,” the woman said.

“Perhaps something more tailored,” I said.

A bid to try and find my balance. My comfort. In the middle of something that could not be less comfortable.

“No,” she said. “This one suits you.”

I knew that it did. And I knew that I loved it. It was only that something about it was terrifying. Like going into battle naked when what I needed was armor. Only I didn’t have time to protest. Because then I was draped in a towel and given hairstyling and makeup. Bright blush to cover up the insipid color of my skin. Pink lipstick.

My hair was styled down. Loose, flowing curls.

For all the world to see, it would look like I had surrendered my power to Hades.

This was how he won. I hadn’t seen that when I’d left Lake Como. All I’d thought about was that it was a race against time, and I had to win it. I’d made the classic mistake of not looking far enough ahead.

I had thought that I needed to get here so that I could give Jessica the chance to make a choice.

In the end, he had managed to twist it and make it so I had little time to make a choice of my own.

I could make him wait. And maybe I should have, but instead I was standing there in a wedding dress. I’d let him take control of this situation because I was still too shell-shocked by the last twelve hours to be anything but.

Or maybe I’d allowed it because the teenage girl who’d once thought she loved Hades still lived somewhere inside me.

Hadn’t I learned better over these last ten years? Ten years of fraught sex. And he’d never grown closer to me. His moods were what made us. His intensity driving our encounters. He thought he set the rules, and I’d let him.

That was why he’d said nothing had to change, even after his engagement. Because he thought he got to decide. And what I wanted didn’t matter.

Because I was nothing to him. Nothing but an outlet for his darkest, basest needs. Because there was no need to get me to sign an NDA, after all.

Who would I tell?

He knew, of any lover he could have possibly had, I would be the one most motivated to keep all of his secrets in order to preserve my own self.

Before I knew it, the hour had passed and I was being ushered out of the dressing room. A dressing room that one hour ago had contained a bridal party and a whole different bride. Would the sanctuary be empty? What had he told the guests? Would I be marrying him in front of Jessica’s friends and family?

I stood outside the sanctuary wringing my hands, and Sarah was directed inside. She looked at me, as if waiting to be told the whole thing would be called off. But I didn’t call it off. So, in she went.

I felt another presence in the antechamber and turned.

My half brother Javier was standing there, looking severe. We hadn’t grown up together, but over the years he, Rocco and I had found some sort of rapport. I was shocked to see him here. “How did you...”

“I know Hades. He called because he knew I was in the city.”

My half brother was friends with my nemesis. I’d had a feeling they might be. I wasn’t shocked neither of them had ever mentioned it.

Nemesis? You’re marrying him.

True.

“Oh.” He’d come to my wedding. Last minute. I was so weirdly touched by it.

“Rocco sends his regrets that he couldn’t make it. He’s in Italy, so of course there was no way for him to fly in on time.”

I laughed, though I didn’t find any of this all that amusing. “Well, it was my fault for replacing the bride at the last minute.”

“Do you need help?” he asked.

Did I? I wasn’t sure. I was tempted to take it. Tempted to ask him to get us a helicopter and get us the heck out of Dodge.

I shook my head. “No, Javier. I don’t. These are the consequences of my actions.”

My brother treated me to one raised brow. “I hope that’s in your wedding vows.”

“What do you think marriage is?” I asked.

It was more a genuine question than I had meant it to be.

“If you ask our mother, a moneymaking venture.” He stared ahead for a moment. “I’m not sure I can answer that. Or, not sure I should.”

“Tell me.”

“I don’t believe in love, hermanita . At least not in the way of fairy tales. I believe in loyalty, and I believe in family. There is love in that. Otherwise I think it is a way we try and make lust into something palatable. A way for men to keep women with them so they can be certain their offspring are theirs.”

“Romantic,” I said, dryly, thinking about my and Hades’ offspring then.

“Why are you marrying him?”

I looked up at the ceiling. “Offspring.”

“Ah. Congratulations.”

I gave him a disparaging look. “You don’t mean that.”

He looked back at me, the glint in his eye familiar to me. I’d seen it in the mirror enough times. Strange. I’d always associated that steel with my father, but Javier and I shared a mother.

It made me wonder how much steel I missed in our mother because she camouflaged it so well with all the softness I’d always thought would make a woman seem weak.

“I do,” he said. “A person needs heirs to carry on a legacy.”

What was my legacy actually going to be? I’d never been less certain.

The doors to the sanctuary swung open, and my brother extended his arm. “Come, let me walk you down the aisle.”

“Are you giving me away, Javier?”

“Only you can give yourself away. I’m simply there to provide backup if you decide you need to run.”

The music changed and we began to walk forward.

Run .

The word echoed inside of me. As we made our way down the long aisle. And then I looked up, and I saw him. Standing there looking severe. Looking every inch the ruthless monster who had made threats to me in the form of a marriage proposal.

Looking every inch the avenging angel he so often was when he appeared in my hotel rooms, ready to claim me, take me.

Looking like the man I sparred with in boardrooms.

The man I surrendered to in bedrooms.

Hades was far too many things to me to ever be simple. And running would never solve the problem.

It hadn’t yet.

Now he was going to be the father of my child. That was something I could barely wrap my head around. Because it required me fully taking on board the fact that I was going to be a mother.

I knew how to parent in the way my father had. I could imagine it. After all, I was also dedicated to my work. Dedicated to Edison. Dedicated to the future, to the family legacy.

But there was something missing from that. And I knew it. I also would never be my mother. Didn’t want to be. Suddenly, I felt like I was falling through a void. Toward a man who knew as little about being a father as I knew about being a mother. What were we doing?

Would the child be raised by nannies? While he and I continued to battle against each other?

I couldn’t see it. I couldn’t even understand it.

But far too soon, we had arrived at the head of the aisle, and Hades reached his hand out to me.

I already knew there was no other option but to take it. I already knew that the devil’s bargain had been made. Perhaps sealed with a kiss ten years ago, on my eighteenth birthday.

Perhaps then I had sealed my own fate.

Perhaps there had never been a different outcome.

Eventually, we were bound to be careless. In one way or another. Whether it was pregnancy, being discovered by the press or something else entirely, we had been destined for destruction. I had to figure out a way to make sure we didn’t destroy the baby we had created.

I had to.

I was smart, and I could figure it out. I could figure out how to do this.

Maybe I would bring the baby with me to work.

I was going to be exposed as being a female. I was going to be a pregnant CEO. One who had fallen in the basest way. One who had slept with her business rival. And then married him.

There was no more hope left for me to wander through this landscape an untouchable robot.

There was a freedom in this disaster I had not anticipated.

I had made a mistake.

The biggest mistake, and it was being broadcast to the world even now.

His wedding had been upended. I was going to be portrayed as a home-wrecker, at least in part, whether Jessica was able to control the narrative or not.

Some people would enjoy the spectacle of us being together. Others would scoff.

And I had no control.

For the first time in my life, I felt the freedom in the surrender of that.

His dark eyes caught mine, and my stomach went hollow.

No. It wasn’t for the first time.

Because I had found freedom in surrender and Hades’ arms before. That had always been a part of who I was. But I had never understood how I could live my life that way.

I suddenly did.

I might not have all the logistics together, but I was not devastated.

I had lost control. And that meant no more trying so hard to hold it all together. No more desperate attempts at making sure the narrative was in my power. It wasn’t. Nothing was.

I took Hades’ hand, and he brought me to the head of the altar, facing him.

I looked out at the audience and tried to see who I recognized there.

It was full of Jessica’s friends and family. Because everyone was glued to the spectacle.

And so I would give them one. Because the only acceptable way to spin this was...

I had to be the opposite of everything I had been up until now. I had to be soft. I had to be absolutely overcome by emotion. I was. It wasn’t hard for me to play that part. I was angry, yes, frightened. But I was also...

Enthralled with him. As I had ever been.

The feelings that I had for Hades were complicated. I had wanted to call it hate , but it had never been able to be contained in such a short, simple word. Not honestly.

It was now, and had ever been, something bigger than the both of us. And so now, I did my best to let that show.

One thing that was never in short supply between us was passion. So I looked at him, with every ounce of passion that I had ever felt for him. And I felt a ripple move through the room.

Because our chemistry was undeniable. That much I knew.

What I hoped, was that this moment would seem undeniable to the people around us. As inevitable and essential as it suddenly did to me.

I could see a dark flame in his eyes. He felt it.

Good.

In some ways, I wanted to punish him. Here in front of everybody. He had been prepared to give himself to another woman. To make vows to another woman. On some level, I had been contending with my feelings of being the woman scorned for weeks now, and it felt good to remind him of what he had nearly lost.

The priest began to recite an extremely benign wedding script. It might have been for Jessica and Hades. It might have been for Hades and me. It didn’t make a difference.

And I wouldn’t allow it to be a problem.

Because I had found a small scrap of control within myself, and I would not surrender it. Not for anything. I would not allow him to see me crack.

So I made vows to him, promised myself to him, publicly, made vows that I had been keeping for the past ten years. Forsaking all others. Clinging only to him.

I had done all these things. Even as I had told him, told myself, that he was my nemesis.

He had nearly married another woman.

That stabbed me.

It wasn’t fair, perhaps. Because I had never intended to take this public. Not ever. I had, somewhere in the back of my mind, imagined that I might marry someone else someday.

Still, he had devastated me.

But now I was here. I was the one having his baby.

I was the one marrying him.

It was time for us to kiss then.

I knew a moment of very real fear. What would it be like to kiss him in full view of all these people? What would it be like to kiss him and have to stop?

That had never happened. Because we kissed in private, behind locked doors. We kissed when we knew that the kiss was tinder for a fire we would let rage all night long.

We did not kiss as a destination.

And we certainly didn’t do it with an audience.

He wrapped his arm around my waist then, his other hand going to grip my chin. My breath left my body. When he touched me like this, it was always the end for me. The end of my control. The end of everything.

There was nothing but this. Nothing but those dark eyes burning into mine. That dominant hold, the promise of what would come later.

We didn’t have to manufacture a kiss for the crowd. We had to find a way to keep from revealing ourselves entirely.

The kiss was carnal. It was all we knew. I kissed him back, because I was now, as ever, powerless to do anything but surrender to the driving need between us. In truth, if we could control it we would have. If we could have found control now, it would have made a mockery of all that had occurred before. It would have indicated we might have been able to stop this. But I already knew we couldn’t have.

It was, in that sense, a relief to be lost.

A relief to prove we had no other choice. Then and now.

When we parted, he was breathing as hard as I was. I knew it hadn’t been a show. The wounded lover inside of me wanted to claim that as a trophy. And I let her.

I was surprised when Hades addressed the crowd.

“My wife and I will not be staying for the reception, but I invite all of you to do so. Enjoy the cake. Enjoy the party. We have some things to discuss.”

And with that, he gripped my hand and began to walk me down the aisle. I heard very fast footsteps behind us, and I turned to see Sarah close.

My brother was not far behind.

The four of us arrived in the antechamber of the sanctuary.

“You don’t have to go with him,” said Sarah.

Javier looked at her. “No,” he said. “She doesn’t.”

“I’m going with him,” I said. “Thank you. For being here with me.”

Hades regarded both Sarah and Javier. “Your protective natures are admirable. But Florence made her choice when she came here today. She knows that.”

I did. It was clear then, when he said that. I had always known what would happen. Somewhere, deep down. I had known he would marry Jessica. Not if I was carrying his baby.

I had known that he would feel a need to make his child legitimate. Because that was who Hades was. He was a businessman, in all things, and that meant acquisition was the purest of things in his mind.

He had acquired me.

He had acquired a baby.

In one fell swoop.

But that means that you’ve also acquired him.

It went both ways. It always had between us. I was not, nor had I ever been helpless. I had never been a damsel in distress. I had gone to him the first time. I was the one who had made it clear that I wanted to take the simmering attraction between us and turn it into something real.

I had more power here than even I had realized when I had first decided to go to the church.

Yes. I had much more power here than I had given myself credit for.

“I’m all right,” I said.

“You’re much more than all right,” Hades said, propelling me out of the church and down the stairs, toward the limousine that had just pulled up to the curb. That was when I realized paparazzi were everywhere. Flashbulbs went off all around us. And he wrapped his arm around my waist, holding me up against him, pressing one hand to the top of the limousine, my body wedged against the open door. “You’ve won,” he said.

And then he claimed my mouth. And I was lost.