The promised bride

The rain

The rain hit her like a punishment.

Cold and heavy and absolutely merciless, soaking through her shirt within seconds, plastering her hair flat against her face. She ran down the front path and out onto the cobblestone road without stopping, without looking back, her shoes splashing through puddles that had already swallowed the uneven stones.

Her back screamed with every stride. Her cheek throbbed. She could taste blood from where the inside of her lip had caught on her teeth.

She ran anyway.

Past the old bakery with the green shutters. Past the fountain in the village square, overflowing and foaming in the downpour. Past the church where she had sat every Sunday for twenty years next to a family that had never once seen her as their own.

What did I do wrong? The thought tore through her head as her lungs began to burn. Somebody please tell me. What did I ever do to deserve this life?

She had given them everything. Every single thing she had. And still it wasn’t enough. Still she was something to be moved around and handed off and traded like an old piece of furniture they no longer had use for.

I should have left years ago, she thought bitterly, jumping over a river of rainwater rushing along the gutter. I should have walked out the day Carmela told me I was lucky they kept me. Lucky. As if surviving this house was something to be grateful for.

She looked back over her shoulder. The road behind her was empty, just rain and grey light and the blurry shapes of village rooftops disappearing into the mist. No Bruno. Not yet. But she knew him. She knew that once the anger cooled into something colder and more purposeful, he would come. He would find her. And he would drag her straight to Lorenzo Greco’s front door and hand her over like she was nothing.

I can’t let that happen.

She turned back forward and ran harder.

The street she turned into felt wrong the moment she entered it.

Too wide for this part of the village, almost like it belonged somewhere else entirely, broad and empty and swallowed up by the rain. The streetlamps threw pale yellow circles onto the wet cobblestones. No movement. No sound except the rain hammering down on everything. The kind of silence that didn’t feel like quiet. It felt like held breath.

Seraphina barely noticed.

She was still looking back over her shoulder, squinting through the curtain of rain, making sure the road behind her was still clear, her chest heaving, her soaked hair in her eyes, blood and rainwater mixing on her.

She ran straight into something solid like hitting a wall that didn’t move.

The impact knocked every bit of air from her lungs. She stumbled backward, arms flailing, and would have gone straight down onto the wet stones if a hand hadn’t shot out and caught her arm. One hand, firm and immediate, holding her upright like she weighed absolutely nothing.

Seraphina gasped and looked up.

He was tall. Unreasonably tall. Dark hair soaked flat against his forehead, sharp jaw dusted with stubble, and eyes so dark they were nearly black, looking down at her with absolutely nothing in them. No surprise. No irritation. No reaction at all. Just a cold, quiet stillness that felt far more dangerous than anger would have.

An AK47 rested on his shoulder.

Casual Like other men carried umbrellas.

Seraphina forgot how to breathe.

Her mouth opened. Not a single sound came out.

He looked down at her slowly at her split lip, her soaked clothes, the bruise swelling purple on her cheekbone and then his dark eyes moved back up to her face. Still nothing. Still that terrible unreadable calm.

Then from the alley to her left, figures stepped out of the shadows and into the rain.

Six men All armed,All looking at her with the flat, unhurried eyes of people who had long since stopped being surprised by anything.

Seraphina’s legs turned to

Her whole body went cold in a way that had absolutely nothing to do with the rain soaking through her clothes.