Marry the Devil, Bury the Truce

Chapter Three: Blood on the Wedding Sheets

The lights died, and the room dissolved into chaos, glass raining across silk sheets, a scream lodged somewhere in Tori's throat that never made it out because survival instinct clamped her jaw shut instead.

She heard the fight before she could see it. A grunt. A body slamming into the dresser hard enough to crack wood. Dante's voice, low and furious, cut through the dark.

"Vittoria, move."

She didn't need telling twice. Some old drill of her mother's took over, the kind that used to feel paranoid at family dinners and now felt like the only inheritance that mattered. She rolled off the bed, hit the floor, and crawled toward the wall beside the door, out of the sightline of the shattered balcony.

Moonlight cut through the broken glass just enough to show her the shape of it. Dante had the intruder pinned against the wall, forearm braced across his throat, but the man was fighting dirty, driving an elbow into Dante's ribs hard enough that she heard the air leave his lungs.

Her eyes landed on the nightstand. A candlestick, heavy iron, cold in her palm before she'd even decided to move.

"Vittoria, stay back—"

She didn't stay back.

She swung with everything she'd been swallowing since the folder, since the altar, since the moment her father told her this marriage was happening whether she agreed or not.

The man crumpled.

Dante caught his breath, staring at her over the body now bleeding quietly onto the hardwood, gun finally drawn but no longer needed.

"Remind me," he said, voice rough, "never to underestimate my wife."

"Remind me," she shot back, hands shaking around the candlestick, "why someone just tried to kill you on our wedding night."

He didn't answer right away. He crouched, ripped the mask free, and went very still.

Tori looked over his shoulder and felt the floor tilt.

She knew that face.

"That's my father's man," she whispered. "Enzo. He's worked security for my family since I was a child."

"Then your father just declared war on his own daughter's wedding night."

"No." She shook her head, thoughts racing ahead of her own mouth. "No, he sold me to save the family, not to lose me. Killing you tonight undoes everything he negotiated. It doesn't make sense."

"Unless," Dante said slowly, standing, "your father was never the one who set the terms."

Something cold slid down her spine. "What are you talking about?"

He looked at her, and for the first time since the altar, something like reluctant honesty crossed his face.

"That folder wasn't just a sale contract. There was a second signature on the last page. I saw it before you did." He checked Enzo's pulse, confirming the man was alive but out. "Your father didn't negotiate this marriage alone. Someone financed the whole arrangement. Someone who wanted a Marchetti bride inside my house badly enough to pay your father's debts twice over."

"Who?"

His eyes flicked to the shattered balcony, to the city skyline glittering coldly beyond, and his voice dropped into something she hadn't heard from him yet. Not calculation. Not cruelty.

Fear is carefully disguised as control.

"I don't know yet," he said. "But someone wanted us married badly enough to bankroll it and desperate enough to try killing me hours after the vows were signed."

He crossed the room and, for the first time, didn't put distance between them. His hand found her jaw, tilting her face up to his, and despite the blood on the floor and the body at their feet, his touch was almost careful.

"It means somebody out there wanted you inside these walls for a reason neither of our fathers agreed to," he said quietly. "And until I find out who, you're not safe anywhere in this city. Not even in your own father's house."

Behind them, Enzo groaned, beginning to stir.

Dante's grip on his gun tightened, eyes going hard as steel.

"Get behind me," he said. "He's about to tell us the truth, whether he wants to or not."