Sinners Anonymous : Chapter 32

“RISE AND SHINE, BLUSHING bride!”

I pop an eyelid at the sound of Amelia’s cheery voice. She’s standing at the end of the bed, a champagne flute in her hand and a grin on her face. “It’s finally your big day!”

For flamingo’s sake. I want to roll over and bury my head between the pillows, but unfortunately, that’s not on the agenda for today. Instead, I grit my molars and roll out of bed, blistering rage already consuming me. As I pass Amelia to head toward the bathroom, I snatch the flute out of her hand and sink it in one. I’m going to need the liquid courage today.

Her footsteps creak over the floorboards, so I quickly lock the bathroom door behind me.

“Hey, where did you go last night?” she calls through the keyhole. “You disappeared at like, nine p.m.”

Instead of feigning a crappy excuse, I step in the shower and let the hot water burn my body. I crank the dial up a few more degrees and scrunch my eyes, trying not to wince as it scalds my skin.

I wonder if this is what hell is going to feel like?

By the time I dry off and slip on a fresh pair of silk pajamas, I fully expect Amelia to have gotten the hint and left. Alas, she hasn’t. She’s still hovering by the door, only now, her smile is frozen to her face.

“We’re due at the Visconti Grand at twelve.”

No reply.

“Aurora—”

She reaches for my wrist as I pass her, but I’m quick to snatch it out of her reach. It’s a sharp movement, one that makes her flinch.

“Leave me alone,” I snap. “You tell me what to do, and I’ll do it. But I’m not going to pretend like this is the happiest day of my life, so I’d prefer if you’d cut the crap and stop pretending like it is too.”

She stares at me in shock. My brows shoot up. “Got it?” I hiss. A nod. “Good. Now, where do you want me?”

A few beats pass. “Hair and makeup are set up in the family room.”

I grab my purse and storm out of the bedroom without another word.

Downstairs is chaos. Deliveries come and go, orders are barked rather than spoken, and everyone who crosses the foyer does so in a frantic jog, rather than a walk. I pause at the top of the stairs, shifting my weight from one foot to the other. My plan relies on opportunity, so I need to keep an eye out for one. While the door is wide open, there’s a cluster of suited men standing on the porch, and when one of them turns, his earpiece glints under the harsh winter sunlight.

Not yet, Rory. Not yet.

I suck in a lungful of air, pad down the stairs, and burst into the family room. A wave of applause ripples through it, a chorus of whoops and whistles by a group of women I barely know. There’s the makeup artist, the hairstylist, and the dressmaker, all of whom have had more conversations with Amelia than they have me. And then there are the cousins. Tanned women with silky black hair and judgmental stares. They turned up at the first fitting, where they did nothing but mutter in Italian behind their perfectly manicured hands.

I’m poked and prodded like a cow being prepared for the auction block. My hair screams as it’s braided; my face stings as inch-thick makeup is plastered onto it. Then I’m sewn into a corset, then my dress, and then everyone chuckles and hollers as the dressmaker slides a lace garter up my thigh.

I clamp my jaw shut and sweep the room with my stare. They are all accomplices, and I want nothing more than to chuck a grenade in here and run.

The dressmaker stops fussing with my hemline and sits bolt upright. “All finished! You look beautiful,” she coos, clasping her hands together. “Look.”

With gentle hands on my shoulders, she spins me around to face the full-length mirror before I can protest. My eyes clash with my reflection and I feel like I’ve been shot in the stomach. I do look beautiful. Any outsider would think I’m a virginal bride about to walk down the aisle and find the love of her life waiting for her at the end of it. My hair is fashioned into a long French braid, diamonds adorning it. The dress is voluminous; a bardot neckline framed with puffy lace sleeves and a skirt big enough to hide a bomb underneath.

I look beautiful, but I don’t look like me.

Heat prickles my skin under the scratchy fabric, spreading across my collarbone like a rash. It should have been him. Him at the end of the aisle, him who weighed down my finger with a rock.

I bite back the emotion rising up my throat. No, it shouldn’t have. But for some pathetic reason, I wish it was. Despite the fact he used me, spat me out, and broke his promise, if it was Angelo waiting at the end of the aisle, I wouldn’t be looking for my opportunity to escape.

Like it’s a touch of fate, my opportunity comes the moment I open my eyes. My gaze shifts from my reflection out the window to the front porch. It’s empty.

Calmness engulfs me. Feigning a smile, I smooth down the dress and step off the box. “Thank you, everybody. I just need to use the bathroom.”

“I’ll come with you—”

I shoot Amelia a death glare. “I’ll manage,” I bite back icily.

Snatching up my purse from an armchair, I leave the room lingering in a state of confusion, and with my heart thumping in my chest, I take a sharp right toward the door. The late-fall wind works against me, attempting to blow me back into the house, but I grip the fabric of my dress, put my head down, and break into a run.

Gravel blurs under my heels, blood pounds in my temples. This is happening. It’s really happening. But my twisted excitement is cut short when a pair of shiny men’s dress shoes come into view.

I freeze. Bite back my panic, and look up to see who owns them.

Tor. He’s leaning against the side of his car, cutting a sharp figure in a tux. A lit cigarette is halfway up to his lips, but he pauses to rake a suspicious eye over me.

We stare at each other for three painstakingly long beats. He flicks his tongue between his teeth. Draws in a deep breath and shoots a dark look in the direction of the house. Then he pushes off his car, flicks the cigarette, and drops something at my feet.

“Oops,” he drawls indifferently, without looking at me. “I think I just dropped my car keys.” His shoulder brushes against mine as he passes. I feel his hot breath in my ear. “Hopefully they aren’t found by a runaway bride.”

He leaves me there, panting and bewildered. In the distorted reflection of the car door, I see him stroll into the house without so much of a glance back.

My eyes drop to the silver glinting in the gravel. Thank you, thank you, thank you. A cocktail of disbelief and adrenaline coasts through my veins. I snatch them up and slide behind the wheel, tossing my purse and heels onto the passenger seat.

I’ve never driven anything other than my father’s beat-up Land Rover and a golf buggy, both of which are nowhere near as sleek or as powerful as this. As my bare foot slams against the accelerator, the engine roars in protest, and I lurch forward. Holy crow. My eyes cut to all three mirrors, making sure I haven’t attracted any unwanted attention, and then I try again, slower this time. I need to just drive normally until I get out of the grounds, and then it’s a race to get to the cliff.

Another stroke of fate; the gates are wedged open, probably because of all the deliveries coming in today. The guards are so focused on looking at what’s coming in, they don’t bat an eyelash at Tor’s car driving out.

Okay, I’ve got this. Relief dissolves some of the tension in my shoulders as I turn onto the coastal highway and Devil’s Cove becomes a speck in the rear-view mirror. The journey passes in a numb haze, because I’m too focused on the destination. I don’t drive anywhere near as fast as Angelo, yet, it seems like I’m pulling up under the willow tree next to the graveyard within a matter of minutes.

This is it. The plan I never thought I’d have to resort to. I fill the car with a bitter laugh, remembering when this moment was nothing more than a sick fantasy. So sick that I called Sinners Anonymous to confess that I was merely thinking about it.

I thought it’d feel different, though. I thought my legs would be shaking as I made my way to the edge of the cliff. I thought I’d be scared. But as I stand on the edge, my heels sinking into the mud and pebbles scattering under my toes, I feel alive.

“My name is Rory Carter and I do bad things.”

As always, the wind snatches the words from my lips, carrying them away from the cliff edge and over the choppy sea. I always say it here, just to see how the truth tastes, and today, it tastes delicious.

Another step closer to the edge. The fabric of my dress billows, a gust of wind finding its way up my skirt.

The first time I stood on this cliff, I called it. It was always going to come to this. Me, standing on the edge of the Devil’s Dip’s highest cliff and thinking bad thoughts.

I tried doing a good thing, but good doesn’t seem to ever cancel out the bad.

Balling my fists around the lace of my dress, I close my eyes. I lift my toe and inch it further to the edge, until there’s nothing underneath my foot but air.

Adrenaline zaps down my spine. I’m ready. I pop a lid, but before I can look around for my purse, I’m thrown backward by a force so strong that it knocks the wind out of me me.

What the hell?

Hot hands scorch my rib cage, strong and warm. A familiar scent—one I associate with danger—assaults my senses.

“I swear to God, Rory. You better know how to fly, because if you fall, I’m coming with you.”

Panic punches me in the gut, but it’s quickly replaced with a relief so strong I feel breathless. Angelo. I slam my head against his chest, curl my hands over his, and gasp. Big, desperate gulps of salty air. The buttons of his shirt are cold against my spine, but his labored breaths are warm against my neck.

“What are you doing here?” I gasp.

My feet leave the mud as he grips me by the hips and pulls me even further away from the edge. Even if I wanted to jump, his body is wrapped around me so tightly, I’d never be able to escape him.

“Making sure you don’t do something stupid,” he growls in my ear. The venom rolls off his tongue in waves.

He gives me just enough room to twist around in his arms and face him. I look up at him and take a moment to drink in the planes of his handsome face. The dark rage that masks it. Holy crow. Every fiber of my body is buzzing with the urge to kiss him. With hope.

His gaze is stormy but conflicted, but when it falls to my lips, it softens just enough to let me in. “Fucking hell, Rory.” He squeezes the back of my neck as his nose brushes against mine. “Are you trying to give me a heart attack?”

“Ask me for a sin.”

He stills. Eyes dart to the raging sea behind me, then he gives a small shake of his head. “I don’t want it.” His hand moves to the nape of my neck possessively. “Not here.”

I suck in a lungful of air and give it to him anyway.

“The day you saw me up here, I wasn’t going to jump.” I swallow. “I was never going to jump. Not then, not today.”

His eyes thin. He doesn’t believe me.

“I was trying to see if it was high enough. Because I need it to be high enough so that if I push Alberto off it, he’ll definitely die.”

My sin sits heavy between us. His hardened expression gives nothing away. “You’re going to kill Alberto.” It’s strange, hearing it aloud. Coming from someone else’s lips. I nod. An emotion I can’t name coasts over his features, but he doesn’t say anything. Instead, he pins me with his intense stare and waits.

“I think, deep down, I always knew his contract was bogus. So, if the marriage wasn’t going to keep my father safe, I needed a back-up plan.” I twist around, glancing at the rolling tide on the horizon. “I was going to call him to come get me. I know he’d come himself, because he’d be mortified if anyone else knew he had a runaway bride. And then…” I swallow, turning back around to Angelo. “I’d do it. I’d push him.”

Silence. Angelo rakes his teeth over his bottom lip. “I was your backup plan,” he bites, running a hard thumb over my cheekbone. “I told you I’d get you out of it. You said you trusted me.”

“I did, and then you disappeared!”

“Because I was working on a plan, Rory, like I told you I would. This shit doesn’t happen overnight.”

“Tor told me you weren’t coming back!”“Tor?” I nod and his expression hardens. “Bastard. I told him to keep you safe while I was gone, so what the fuck was he playing at?” Before I can reply, he palms the back of his neck, his nostrils flaring. “Fuck, baby. Do you know what it feels like to kill a man?”

“A man like Alberto? Probably pretty good.”

Despite his fury, dark amusement tugs at his lips. He gives a small shake of his head. Disbelief. “My bad girl.”

Fireworks spark in my stomach. I can’t believe he came back to me. For me. I tilt my chin upward. “So, what’s the plan?”

His grip tightens around my nape. “Remember how you told me to think like a businessman, not a thug?”

I nod. His jaw muscles flex as his eyes drop to my hand pressed flat against his chest. His slips his over mine, fingering the ring on my finger. Then he tugs it off, rough and fast.

“What are you—?”

The diamond glints against the gloomy sky as he hurls it, hard, over the edge of the cliff. When he looks back at me, his gaze clashes with mine, the word vicious flashing across his eyes like a warning sign.

“Sorry, Magpie. I’m a thug through and through.”

Before I can respond, he scoops me up and slings me over his shoulder, roughly gripping the fabric of my dress. His hands are warm and possessive as they find my thigh. He snaps the garter against my skin, hard,, and lets out an animalistic growl. “I’m going to burn this fucking dress when we get home.”

Home. The word alone makes my pulse flutter.

“What’s going on?!” I gasp, dizzy from the sudden movement and the feeling of him touching me.

“I’m taking what’s mine”

“Yours?”

He drops me onto the passenger seat of his car and leans against the door frame. “Yeah. A capo needs a wife. Guess I choose you.”

Heat rips through my veins, and I can feel my heart sewing itself back together.

“You guess?” I whisper, looking up at him through my lashes.

He grips my chin. Runs a soft line over my bottom lip. “I know. I’ve always fucking known.”

The pleats of my dress get caught in the car door as he slams it shut, but I couldn’t care less. My heart is beating to a different rhythm, now that it’s been stitched back together and it’s heavy with hope. I’m not marrying Alberto.

As Angelo’s warmth brushes up against me from the driver’s seat, a million questions fight for space in my throat. One of them being, am I really marrying you instead?

But I don’t say it. Instead, I watch as he pulls out a gun from his waistband, another from the breast pocket of his suit jacket, and sets them carefully on the central console.

“Are you really coming back?”

“Yes.”

“For good?”

His hand finds my thigh, heavy and reassuring. “For good.”

He kicks the car into drive and races through country lanes, until his house appears on the horizon. I can’t take my eyes off him; I’m worried that if I do, I’ll wake up in the guest suite of the Cove mansion and realize this was all a fever dream.

“Why didn’t you call?” I whisper. “I wouldn’t have believed Tor if you’d just called.”

His gaze flickers sideways and he looks disgruntled. “I gave you my number to call in an emergency. I don’t even have yours.”

“And you couldn’t have come back a few days ago? You know, before the actual wedding day?”

“Do you know how much shit I had to do in a week, Rory?”

“Like?”

“Like, appoint a new CEO for my business, sell my London apartment. Completely upend my life and move to Devil’s Dip.” His jaw flexes. “Also, I took a detour to San Fran. I had…unfinished business there.”

I nod, slowly taking it all in. “But you hate Devil’s Dip.”

His eyes harden on the windshield. “But I don’t hate you.”

My pulse beats like a drum, and I lean against the cold window in an attempt to cool myself down. As we wind our way around the hill, I bask in the all-too-familiar scent of the car; a cocktail of aftershave and leather, it’s unapologetically him. I inhale it, all of it, getting high like it’s a drug.

We reach the top of the hill, and I’m surprised to see the house is as busy as the Cove mansion, and there’s definitely no wedding being planned here today.

Is there?

Despite the unknown crackling in the air like static, the hope in my heart flickers. But when I glance over at Angelo, he nods to the burly men pouring out of the house.

“Gabe’s men. They’ll be here for a while, at least until we figure things out. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Gabe’s going to keep you safe. I’m going to need you to do everything he says until I get back.”

I whip round. “Get back? Where are you going?”

His expression darkens. “To tell Alberto not to expect you to walk down the aisle today.”

Dread trickles into my chest. “No,” I murmur, putting my hand over his. “Stay with me. At least for today? He’ll figure it out soon enough.”

His smirk is cold, calculated. Vicious. The darkest part of me wants to clamp my mouth over it and breathe it all in. “It’s not the only thing I need to tell him, baby.”

The thought of Angelo walking into the Cove mansion and announcing he’s stolen me and he’s reclaiming Devil’s Dip makes me sick to my stomach.

“Shouldn’t you take Gabe with you? Just in case?”

Annoyance coats his features. “In case what? You think I can’t handle it?”

I know he can handle it. Angelo might have been on a straight and narrow path for the last nine years, but I’ve never met a man scarier than him. He reigns a quiet terror; it hums off him like a sonic signal when he walks into a room, and it makes the air immediately shift.

He was raised to be a made man, but he was destined to be a king.

“Kiss me.”

Instinctively, his eyes drop to my lips. “What?”

“I’ve always wondered what it’d feel like to kiss you, ever since you turned up to that first Friday night dinner. So kiss me before you go, because if anything happens to you, then at least I’ll know.” I swallow. Shift in my seat. “I’ll know what it feels like to kiss Angelo Visconti.”

The silence is heavy, and it lasts for a few achy seconds.

With one hand still resting on the steering wheel, he leans in. Drugs me with a more concentrated version of his scent. My heart stills as his lips brush over mine; as his stubble grazes my chin.

But then he pauses.

“If I kiss you, it means I’m not sure if I’ll make it back to you.” He nips on my bottom lip, provoking a pathetic moan from me. “And I’m very fucking sure I’ll make it back, Magpie.”

He watches me intently as I reluctantly get out of the car. Gabe strides over the gravel and comes to a stop next to me.

Angelo greets his brother with a stern expression. “Look after my girl for me.”

“Yes, boss.”

His gaze shifts to mine. “Come here.”

Swallowing, I take a step toward the car and wrap my hands over the window frame. He rakes a hand through his hair.

“When I come back, you better have taken that fucking dress off, or I’m going to rip it off with my teeth.”

Breathless from the venom threaded through his tone, I only have enough wits to nod foolishly.

His voice and expression soften. “Good girl.”

Gabe and I stand shoulder to shoulder as we watch Angelo’s Aston Martin disappear down the hill, taking a piece of me with it.

Beside me, he shifts. “Shame.”

I turn. “What is?”

“I was looking forward to listening to your call. I never could stand uncle Alberto.”