Chapter 24

The Rolls has two opposing sets of bench seats that face each other. I stumble onto one, crawling to the other end of it in my dress until I’m pressed against the door on the opposite side.

I’m surprised to find a man sitting facing me. He looks as startled by my sudden appearance as I am by his, but gives no clue as to his identity.

I notice he has a white collar, but don’t have the time to process him or that information before Thiago follows me into the car and slams the door shut behind him. The windows are blacked out and that, combined with his massive, stormy presence, makes the space feel like it shrinks down around us.

“Father,” Thiago says, ignoring me. “Proceed.”

“Father?” I question.

My head whips back to the man. More precisely, my gaze drops to his collar and the dots finally connect in my head.

“Jefe,” he says, inclining his head deferentially.

“What’s going on?” Panic stretches the edges of my voice, a hint of mania shining through.

“Get on with it,” Thiago clips impatiently. “Just skip to the important part.”

The man clears his throat.

“Do you, Thiago da Silva, take this woman, Tess Noble, to be your lawfully wedded wife?”

Horror dawns as my suspicions are confirmed. This is a priest and Thiago intends to have us married this very instant.

“Hold on—”

“I do.”

I gasp, my gaze pinging back and forth between the two men. “No!”

Thiago’s hand wraps around my wrist and he tugs me until I fall against him. My chest touches his, my wide eyes clashing with his narrowed, angry ones.

“Remember your promise,” he orders.

I’ll come willingly.

“Do you, Tess Noble, take this man, Thiago da Silva, to be your lawfully wedded husband?”

I hadn’t known what I was signing up for.

I thought I’d have more time.

“Why are you doing this?” I plead.

Thiago’s hand wraps once more around my throat, the tattooed collar literally and figuratively closing with the gesture and shackling me for good this time.

“So you never run from me again,” he growls. “Now say the words.”

I feel like I’m on fire. The air is both insufficient and suffocating. I’m gasping for breath, considering my options and fighting against the inevitable even when I know it’s a losing battle. There is no escape.

“I do,” I whisper, barely audibly.

“Louder.”

“I do!” I snap, eyes blazing with fury as they fly up to meet his.

But I only find deep satisfaction burning in his irises. “Yeah,” he purrs. “You do.”

I glare at him, venom shining in my eyes. “You can force me to marry you, but you can’t force me to ever submit to you.”

“We’ll see about that,” he promises.

An uncomfortable throat clearing comes from the opposite seats. “Wonderful,” the priest says. “Now to make it official.”

Thiago snatches a paper from his hands and places it on my lap. A pen is foisted into my fingers next.

‘Certificate of Marriage’ is stamped at the top, my name engraved below a blank line at the bottom.

I stare at it uncomprehendingly. It feels surrealistic to be looking down at my marriage certificate. To know this one flimsy sheet of paper is all that’s needed to tie us together. Did he have it drawn up the day I ran away?

“Sign,” he orders.

A storm of emotion rolls through me. I’m trapped. Trapped in a loveless, likely abusive marriage just like my mother is. I was so desperate to escape her fate. For a second, I thought I had.

Tears sting at the corners of my eyes.

“Sign it or I’m going back out there and properly introducing myself to your brother.”

I throw him a scathing look that would level anyone else down to dust. Thiago simply grins, seeming to enjoy my anger as much as he does my capitulation.

My hand shakes as the pen makes contact with the page. And then it’s done, over in less than a second, almost underwhelming in its lack of pomp and circumstance.

Thiago rips the paper from beneath my palm and stares at my signature for a long moment, a sinisterly satisfied smile pulling at his lips. He signs above his own name, takes a picture, and then hands it back to the priest.

“The witnesses are outside. Have them sign, then get it registered.”

“Of course.”

“First thing tomorrow.”

The priest visibly swallows at the stern command, understanding the not-so-subtle subtext of what’ll happen to him if he doesn’t deliver.

The last ten minutes feel like a complete blur. I just signed my life away to this man who wants everything from me.

This man who wants everything while not being able to give me anything remotely close to the same in return. Bitterness chokes me, as does the unfairness of my circumstances.

I’m married.

Married.

Thiago removes his black suit jacket, his shoulder planes moving erotically beneath his dress shirt as he does so. Even though I can’t see his skin, I can imagine the way his muscles move lithely to shuck off the offending garment.

He folds it, then tosses it on the other seats. His eyes flip glacially back up to meet the priest’s.

“Get out,” he snaps.

“Wait–”

The priest does as ordered without even sparing me a glance, happy to save his own skin. Then the door slams shut. My disbelief over my marital status evaporates in an instant as I suddenly realize that I’m stuck in a cage with an angry predator hellbent on eating his prey.

But Thiago doesn’t look at me. He bends his arm at the elbow and unbuttons the wrist cuff of his dress shirt before he starts to slowly — so slowly, it’s torturous to watch — roll his sleeve up his arm.

My throat dries, my eyes glued to the skin he reveals inch by inch. His forearm is covered in tattoos and made up of corded muscles and pronounced, masculine veins traveling up the length of his arm and disappearing into his shirt.

He repeats the same process on his other sleeve, his movements as unhurried as with the first because he knows he has me trapped with nowhere to go. When he’s done, he grabs the knot of his tie and yanks it down. He rips it off like it suffocates him and stuffs it inside the pocket of his trousers, his action in complete opposition to the care he showed his sleeves. His fingers dance at his collar next, opening first one button, then another, exposing more tattooed skin.

Then, and only then, does he finally look at me.

Animalistic eyes find mine and rob me of my breath with one devastatingly searing look. His gaze drives through me with the destructiveness of a shrapnel explosion, sending fragments shattering and piercing through all my vital organs.

He comes towards me, his body growing in size until I feel like he eats up the entire space, and then his lip curls back and his teeth bare and he utters one word.

A promise, a threat.

A physical brand.

“Wife.”