Marrying the Mafia King's Enemy

Mine

The car ate the miles to the Kastellanos estate in silence, and Elena spent every second of it aware of exactly how close Dimitri sat beside her — close enough that she could feel the heat radiating off him, close enough that the word he'd used in the chapel kept echoing in her skull.

*Mine.*

"You can't just decide that," she said finally, watching the city blur past the tinted glass. "I'm not a possession."

"No," Dimitri agreed, not looking up from his phone, thumb moving across the screen with clipped, efficient strokes. "You're a Marchetti hiding in plain sight, married to the one man your family's spent two years trying to destroy. That makes you considerably more dangerous than a possession."

"So which is it? Am I your wife, your hostage, or your weapon?"

He finally turned to look at her, and the intensity in his gaze made her breath catch despite her best effort to stay unaffected. "Tonight, you're whatever keeps you alive. Tomorrow, we figure out the rest."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only honest one I have right now." Something almost like amusement flickered at the corner of his mouth. "You want reassurance, little wife? I don't deal in it. I deal in what's true, even when it's inconvenient."

The gates of the estate swallowed them into darkness, iron bars closing behind the car like the jaws of something that didn't intend to let go. Elena watched them disappear in the rear window, the last visible piece of the life she used to have, and felt something in her chest tighten at the finality of it.

---

Her room, when Niko showed her to it, was larger than her old apartment — silk sheets, a private balcony overlooking manicured gardens she suspected she'd never be allowed to walk unescorted, a wardrobe already stocked with clothes in her exact size. She was still staring at that particular detail, unsettled by how thoroughly he'd planned for her arrival before she'd even agreed to any of it, when the door opened without a knock.

Dimitri stood in the doorway, jacket gone, sleeves rolled to his forearms, looking less like the controlled man from the chapel and more like something restless and dangerous that had been let off a leash.

"You could knock," Elena said, pulse spiking.

"This is my house." He stepped inside anyway, closing the door behind him with a soft click that felt louder than it should have. "I wanted to see you without an audience. Ask you something honestly."

"Ask, then."

"Did you know?" He crossed the room slowly, and Elena forced herself not to step back, even as every inch of distance between them seemed to shrink under the weight of his attention. "About the Marchetti blood. Before tonight."

"No." Her voice came out steadier than she felt. "I found out standing at that altar, same as you. My mother died when I was six. Nobody ever told me anything about her family, and I never once thought to ask, because I didn't know there was anything worth asking about."

Dimitri studied her face for a long moment, close enough now that she could count the flecks of storm-grey in his eyes, close enough that her whole body went taut with an awareness she hated herself for feeling toward a man who'd just declared he owned her like property.

"I believe you," he said finally. "Which is inconvenient, because it would be considerably easier to use you if I thought you were lying."

"Easier for who?"

"For me." His voice dropped, rough at the edges. "It's difficult to treat someone as leverage when every time she looks at me like she's daring me to prove I'm as ruthless as my reputation, I find myself wanting to prove her wrong instead."

"That sounds like a warning."

"It is one." Dimitri reached out, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear with a gentleness that contradicted everything about the man who'd just had her stepmother dragged out of a chapel screaming. "Don't mistake this for softness, Elena. I will use every advantage your name gives me against the people hunting you. I will burn down anyone who tries to take you back. That's not romance. That's ownership."

"I don't belong to you."

"Not yet," he agreed, and the low certainty in his voice sent a shiver down her spine that had nothing to do with fear. "But you will, little wife. One way or another."

He left before she could respond, and Elena stood alone in the dark, furious at herself for the way her pulse still hadn't slowed, furious at the way some traitorous part of her chest had leaned toward him instead of away.

---

She didn't sleep. Sometime past midnight, unable to lie still with his voice still echoing in her head, she wandered down to the estate's library, restless and unwilling to examine too closely what she was actually looking for. The house was quiet at that hour, corridors lit low, the occasional silhouette of an armed man passing at the end of a hallway the only reminder of exactly what kind of home she'd married into.

She found Dimitri there instead, jacket still gone, a glass of untouched whiskey beside him, staring at a black ledger she recognized from nowhere — except something about the initials scrawled across its spine made her stomach twist with instinctive dread.

"Couldn't sleep either," he said, not looking up.

"What is that?"

"Something I've been hunting for months." He finally met her eyes, and whatever softness had lived in his voice upstairs was gone now, replaced by something colder and far more alert. "Your father's ledger. Smuggling routes, dressed up as shipping manifests. Payments to someone with your stepmother's initials."

Elena's blood went cold. "You think my father—"

"I think your father's been protecting a secret dangerous enough to get someone killed for it," Dimitri said, standing, crossing the room until he stood close enough that she had to tilt her head to hold his gaze. "And I think you just became the only person in this house who can help me prove it before whoever's watching this family decides to finish what your wedding almost started."

"Watching," Elena repeated slowly, a chill working down her spine. "What do you mean, watching?"

Dimitri's jaw tightened, and for the first time since the chapel, Elena saw something that looked almost like fear cross his face.

"I mean," he said, "someone outside is signaling this house right now, and it's not one of mine. I've built this estate to feel a certain way when it's actually secure — a rhythm to the guard rotations, a particular quality to the silence. None of that rhythm is where it should be right now, and after fifteen years in this life, I've learned not to argue with that instinct."

"How do you know it isn't just the wind, or a car passing on the road?" Elena asked, though even as she said it, some old animal instinct in her had already started reaching for the same dread she saw building in his face.

"Because I've spent fifteen years learning what silence sounds like right before someone tries to kill me," Dimitri said.

He crossed to the desk phone, dialing a short internal code, waiting three rings before Niko's voice crackled through, tense and low. "Boss, perimeter's been dark for ninety seconds. We're checking cameras now."

"Don't wait to check," Dimitri said. "Move everyone to defensive positions. Now."

He set the phone down, and for a moment the office was silent except for the low hum of the desk lamp and Elena's own unsteady breathing. She watched him reach beneath the desk drawer and withdraw a second weapon, checking the chamber with the same efficient calm he'd shown at the altar hours earlier, as though violence were simply another language he'd long since learned to speak fluently.

"You keep a gun in your library," Elena said, half disbelief, half something closer to grim understanding.

"I keep a gun in every room of this house," Dimitri said. "Including yours, if you look under the nightstand. I should have shown you before now. I didn't expect to need to this soon."

A car door slammed outside — too sharp, too sudden — and before Elena could ask another question, Dimitri's arm closed around her, hauling her down behind the heavy desk half a second before the library window exploded inward in a spray of glass and gunfire, the ledger scattering across the floor between them like a warning neither of them had heeded in time.

Somewhere in the chaos of the next few seconds, Elena registered three separate facts with a clarity that would stay with her long after the night ended: that Dimitri's body had already curled protectively around hers before she'd even finished flinching, that the estate's silence had broken into a dozen overlapping shouts from men who clearly knew exactly what to do in this exact situation, and that some small, disbelieving part of her chest had reacted to his ar

ms closing around her not with fresh terror, but with something dangerously close to relief.