The Mafia Princess’s New Groom Chapter 14
We were still wrapped up in our own little world when the old butler knocked on the study door.
I was at the easel, barefoot, one of Dominic’s paint-stained shirts hanging off my shoulders.
The afternoon light came through the windows warm and lazy.
“Boss.” The old butler stood in the doorway, hands clasped.
He looked like a man who’d rather be anywhere else.
“Vincent has been kneeling on the shore for three days. No food. No water. He can barely hold his head up anymore.”
He paused.
“I think he’s hoping to see you.”
I didn’t look up.
I kept painting, dragging a loaded brush across the canvas, happily turning Dominic’s careful peony into something that looked a lot more like a crow.
“Let him kneel.” I rinsed the brush and set it down. “He hasn’t earned the right to anything else.”
I picked up a rag and wiped the paint from my fingers.
Took my time with it.
“And, don’t bring him up again. I don’t want to hear his name in this house. He’s done.”
The old butler nodded.
He knew better than to push.
He turned to leave and nearly walked straight into Dominic in the doorway.
“Alfred, what’s going on?” Dominic glanced past him at me, then back. “If it’s family business, bring it to me. I’ll handle it.”
I crossed the room and slipped my arm through Dominic’s.
Smiled up at him.
“It’s nothing. Nobody that matters.”
Dominic studied my face for a second. Whatever he saw there, he let it go.
He kissed the top of my head, and we went back to our afternoon like the conversation never happened.
I was still drunk on that happiness when the news hit.
Six days later.
Vincent was dead.
The old butler told me in the hallway, quick and quiet, like ripping off a bandage.
Three days of kneeling in the sun with no food and no water had done most of the work.
His body gave out sometime before dawn.
By the time anyone found him, the vultures had already been at him.
What the birds left behind, the fire ants picked clean.
There was nothing left to bury.
I didn’t say anything for a long time.
Then I walked out to the balcony and stood there, hands on the railing, staring at the horizon.
The ocean stretched out flat and endless, meeting the sky in one long, clean line.
The breeze came in off the water, sharp with salt.
And I remembered.
A hilltop.
Years ago.
A sky so full of stars it looked fake.
A skinny kid who’d grown into a man kneeling in front of me, taking my hands in his, his voice steady and sure.
‘Isabella, if I ever betray you, let me burn in hell for eternity.. Let me die the worst death there is.’
I remembered how I believed him.
How completely, how stupidly, how recklessly I believed every single word.
I closed my eyes. Let the wind pull at my hair.
He got what he asked for.
Maybe that’s the only thing a faithless man ever really earns.