His Forbidden Scarlett

Bound by fate

Christian's POV

The pack meeting had run long, and I still had the ache of it in my jaw from clenching it too many times to count. Romano, my second-in-command, liked to hear himself talk when he thought he was winning an argument, and tonight he'd thought he was winning several. I wasn't myself, wasn't interested in anything. Not the pack, not Romano's good ideas, only Scarlett.

My beautiful Scarlett wearing that beautiful silky nightdress, in my mansion. Mine.

I shrugged off my jacket the second I walked into my study, tossing it over the back of a chair, and dropped into the seat behind my desk like the weight of the day had finally caught up to my spine. A soft knock came at the door before one of the maids slipped in, setting a bottle of whiskey and two glasses down at my elbow without a word, curtsied and slipped back out just as quietly.

Nino let himself in right behind her, uninvited, the way he always did, already reaching for the bottle before I'd even touched it.

"So." He poured two glasses, sliding one across the desk toward me, and dropped into the chair across from mine. He pulled a cigarette from his jacket, lit it without asking, and exhaled slow toward the ceiling. "You're finally off the market."

"I was never on the market." I picked up the glass, not drinking yet, just turning it slowly in my hand.

"No." Nino grinned around the cigarette, all teeth. I glared at him. "You've always been the market, Christian. Every family's daughters have been sniffing around you since you took the title. Selene is a lucky duck."

I didn't answer that. I drank instead, the whiskey burning down my throat, something to focus on besides the tightness building behind my ribs.

Nino watched me over the rim of his own glass, and the grin slowly faded into something more serious and careful, the way it always did when he was done fooling around and actually meant what he was about to say next.

"Does she know?" he asked, his left brow furrowing.

"Does who know what." My brows crashed together and my eyes narrowed at him.

"Don't do that." He tapped ash into the tray at his elbow, his eyes steady on my face. "Scarlett. Does she know what you are?"

My hand tightened slightly around my glass. "She's seen enough to have questions."

"That's not what I asked."

I pushed back from the desk and stood, needing to move, needing somewhere for the restlessness in my chest to go. I crossed to the window, my reflection ghosting faintly in the dark glass over the treeline beyond it.

"No." The word came out flatter than I meant it to. "She doesn't know."

And hopefully I would keep it that way. If she hated the lie about me so much, then she'd never want the truth. Regardless, she was mine.

"Does she know why she's really here?" Nino's voice followed me across the room, relentless. "That this isn't just some mafia grudge you're settling?"

I didn't answer that one either. I braced both hands against the window frame, my shoulders drawn tight, and my silence apparently said enough, because I heard him exhale slow behind me.

"Christian." He said my name like a warning now. "She's your stepsister. Do you understand how that sounds, said out loud, by anyone who isn't you? It's wrong. It's — Antonio would lose his s**t if he found out how far this actually goes. How much it means. Everyone would."

Something hot flashed behind my eyes, and I turned from the window fast enough that Nino's hand twitched toward his glass like he half expected it thrown at him.

"The pack is mine." My voice came out low, dangerous, nothing like the easy tone I'd used with him a minute ago. "It's not Antonio's. Not Selene's. Mine. I don't answer to what anyone likes, and I don't need you reminding me what's wrong, Nino. I've known exactly how wrong this is since I was eighteen years old."

"Then why—"

"Because I don't care." I paced back toward the desk, my hand raking through my hair once before falling back to my side, my jaw working hard enough to ache. "I stopped caring the night I found out what she was to me and it didn't change one single thing about how badly I wanted her. "

Nino held up both hands, not backing down, just giving the words room to land. "You answer to Antonio for the marriage, though. That deal is the only reason you're still standing here with a title instead of a knife in your back or a bloody city. Does that still stand, or are you planning to f*ck that up too?"

"The deal with Selene stands." I planted both hands flat on the desk, leaning into them, my head hanging for a moment before I forced it back up. "I'll marry her if it keeps the peace with Antonio. That was never in question."

"And Scarlett?"

"I am never letting her go." The words came out low, rough, more honest than I meant to give him. My hand found the edge of the desk and gripped it until my knuckles went pale, the wood creaking faintly under the pressure. "Four years away from her nearly killed me, Nino. I'm not doing that again. Not for Antonio. Not for the pack. Not for anyone."

Nino didn't say anything for a long moment. He just watched me, the cigarette burning down between his fingers, forgotten, ash threatening to drop onto the rug. His eyes tracked the tight set of my shoulders, the way my hand hadn't left the edge of the desk, and something in his expression shifted into a kind of quiet, careful pity I hated seeing on him more than anger. He was my best friend and my brother, but I would not be pitied by anyone.

"There are a lot of things she doesn't know and apparently, you seem to have forgotten too.”

I didn't answer. I straightened, dragging both hands down my face, and paced once toward the fireplace before turning back to face him, my hands deep in my pockets.

"Say what you actually came in here to say, Nino."

He stubbed out the cigarette slowly, deliberately, buying himself a second before he looked up at me again, and when he did, there was nothing teasing left in his face at all.

"What happens," he said slowly, "when she finds out what this actually is? What happens when she realizes she was never given a choice in any of this — that some part of her has been pulled toward you since the day fate decided it, whether she wanted it or not?"

My hand went still against the mantel.

"What happens, Christian," Nino said, leaning forward now, his voice dropping into something almost gentle, which somehow made it worse, "when she figures out that everything she's felt for you might not even be hers?"

The glass in my other hand cracked.

I looked down at it slowly, at the thin fracture running through the crystal, at the whiskey pooling faintly against my palm, and I didn't remember gripping it that hard.

“No answer. Yeah, that's what I thought.”