Chapter 32
Aurora POV
The moment the wedding coordinator grabs me and hauls me down the hall to where the venue doors are, it all hits me at once.
The nerves, the fear, the crushing realization that there’s no stopping any of it now. Everything has been set in motion—whether by my own hands or Dominic’s. Whatever’s to come once I walk down that aisle, I’ll no longer be in control of it.
As the music swells on the other side of the doors, I find myself drowning inside my own body. Everything feels distant like I’m watching my life happen to someone else.
I barely notice my father looping his arm under mine and readjusting out place marks as the coordinator moves over to the doors with another assistant, both of them counting down to each other with their hands wrapped around the handles, ready to pull them apart.
The thought makes my stomach cramp violently.
Before I can spiral any further, the grand oak doors swing open and I’m pulled forward without hesitation.
Hundreds of faces turn toward me in an instant.
Somehow, my body moves even though my mind feels completely detached, led by my father who slowly walks us down to the altar, keeping me in step with him.
It feels endless, a glittering runway of white marble and candlelight on either side of us. People I recognize—rival families, my father’s business partners, faces of the underground’s twisted version of royalty—and those that I don’t, all stand in perfect rows watching.
I don’t bother searching for Gianna’s face among the crowd. Not when it might mean seeing Dominic among them. For the sake of my sanity, I keep my eyes straight ahead, locked on the altar where Leonardo waits with a grotesque smile stretched across his aging face.
I feel the bile rise again, but I swallow it back down. When I reach him, my father passes me off to him right as he grabs my hand to tug me up onto the marble altar.
I force my face into a neutral mask, even as revulsion climbs up my spine like a thousand spiders.
The officiant begins speaking—something about sacred vows, eternal bonds, the merging of two great families that I barely register. All of it blurs together into a meaningless drone.
I’m too busy listening to the crowd, half-expecting chaos to erupt at any moment or the sound of gunfire to start going off. Screams, blood spattering everywhere as bullets fly. Anything to interrupt this ceremony from going through just like Dominic planned.
But nothing happens.
Leonardo says his vows, beaming at me as he slips the solid gold band around my finger and then brings my hand up to his lips to kiss. My voice shakes as I deliver mine, words I memorized last night when I quickly scrambled to put something together just in case.
My hands shake as I slip Leonardo’s ring onto his finger, fighting to get it over his thick knuckle with more force than necessary. If that isn’t the sign this marriage is doomed, I don’t know what is.
When he kisses me, it isn’t chaste like I’m expecting. It’s hot and heavy in a way that sickly reminds me of his son and the way that he’d kissed me just before I’d gotten dragged out here. The thought is revolting, causing me to shove Leonardo away out of pure instinct.
His eyes flash with something that sends a cold chill running down my spine.
“Congratulations!” The officiant calls out. “You are now husband and wife!”
Applause fills the room.
It’s done.
I blink, trying to process it, but the longer I stand here with Leonardo’s hands wrapping around mine, the more I can feel my brain has short-circuit.
This is the moment I expected Dominic to strike. This is when I thought guns would be drawn and blood would start staining the marble while screams echoed through the hall.
But there’s nothing. Not even movement caught out of my peripheral vision of someone slipping through the crowd and reaching for a weapon tucked under their suit jacket.
Leonardo remains alive.
Why?
I glance out across the sea of faces until I see him.
Dominic stands towards the back of the venue in one of the last rows. He isn’t clapping, nor is he smirking like usual. There’s nothing in his expression that tells me anything—just cold, flat indifference.
What is this? Why isn’t he striking like I thought he would? Like he planned on doing?
Maybe he hasn’t thought of another way yet. Maybe he’s waiting until he’s alone with Leonardo and do it then.
But as I’m dragged down from the altar and out the doors of the venue to the car awaiting us to take me to the reception hall, I can’t help the urge to look back over my shoulder right as the door to the back of the car is opened for me.
Among the crowd that’s come out to see us off, Dominic isn’t a part of. In fact, even as I climb into the car and look out the window when the door is shut behind me, I don’t see his face at all as the crowd continues to pour out the doors of the venue.
A sick thought hits me.
Is he punishing me?
He has to be. This is how he’s going to do it—not with violence or betrayal, but with abandonment.
He promised to protect me from his father touching me again, but after blackmailing him maybe that promise doesn’t hold up anymore. Maybe tonight, when Leonardo takes me to some hotel suite like he did before, Dominic won’t come crashing through the door to save me like last time.
He’ll simply let it happen. Let me suffer. He’ll make me pay for forcing his hand and causing him to rework his entire plan to kill the man I would now be begging him to keep me safe from.
That’s how he’ll get his revenge on me.
Leonardo’s breath ghosts against my neck, his hand finding my thigh. “I can’t wait to get this off you later tonight.”
Oh, god. What have I done?
Leonardo keeps a possessive hand at the small of my back like he’s staking his claim publicly during the entire reception, reminding everyone that I belong to him now.
The classical music should be nice and soothing but all it does is thump in my ears. The smell of food and perfume clogs the air while people come and go around us, coming over to congratulate us and kiss up to Leonardo as much as they can.
I can barely keep my smile plastered on.
Gianna finds me once when I’m able to slip away from my new husband’s side for just a few minutes with the excuse to run to the bathroom. She grabs me and pulls me off to the side where the dance floor is, her eyes sympathetic.
“You hanging in there?”
I don’t know what to say other than to nod my head. My thoughts have been spiraling since my realization earlier about Dominic throwing me to the wolves, AKA his father. What a twist of events I never saw coming but should have.
I’d planned for everything else but Dominic going down the route of letting his father live long enough to take me back to a hotel room and fuck me first.
“Aurora?” Gianna squeezes my hands again.
He’s here somewhere. I know it because I can feel him watching me though he’s staying just out of my eye sight each time when I turn to look for him. It’s on purpose, I know it is. Everything he does is with smooth and careful precision.
He’s a machine that doesn’t make mistakes. This distance he’s put between us speaks volumes. It tells me exactly how he’s actually feeling about my blackmail plan unlike him lying to me in my dressing room, telling me he’d been impressed.
He doesn’t intervene when Leonardo finds me again and rips me away from Gianna’s side in order to start pawing at me in front of everyone. He doesn’t stop it when Leonardo pulls me in for a sloppy kiss the second forks ring against glasses. Or when he whispers the disgusting things he plans on doing to me the moment he gets me alone later tonight.
I want to be sick. I want to scream.
But I can’t.
All I can do is endure like I always have for my entire life.
