She handed him the tumbler, flinching as his fingers brushed hers. His dark gaze turned incendiary. “We are marrying in front of hundreds of people in two days, Mina. What is behind this sudden display of nerves?”
She didn’t love him. She didn’t even like him. If the truth be known, she was afraid of him.
Dannazione! If only she could sell the ring her father had left her without marrying him. But the condition in her father’s will had been unbreakable. She had to be married to get her hands on the ring.
“It’s like I said.” She lifted her gaze to her fiancé’s. “It seems very fast and I—I wish I knew you better. I would feel more comfortable.”
He took a sip of the Cognac. “You did not go on and on about knowing me when your mother sold you off to the highest bidder. You were happy to snare Palermo’s most eligible bachelor. So don’t cry foul now, Mina. We will come to know each other.”
She lowered her gaze. He was right. It had been as much a business deal as if her mother had forked over an old-fashioned dowry for her except she had nothing and she was being traded for her looks and childbearing ability. Which, she thought hysterically, she didn’t even know if she had.
The thud of her fiancé’s glass hitting the coffee table brought her head up. “Perhaps you are nervous about us,” he suggested. “You’ve been playing the ice queen so long we haven’t had a chance to get properly acquainted.” His eyes glittered as he wrapped his fingers around her wrist and drew her to him. “Since we are very nearly married, I suggest we take some time to do that now.”
Her heart thumped in her chest. “My mother—”
“—is at the opera.” He brought his mouth down on hers. “You mentioned that earlier.”
He kissed her then, a hard, demanding press of his mouth that was about punishment, not pleasure. Her heart galloped faster at the secure hold he had on her wrist. He was tall and big and she could never get away unless he chose to let her.
He didn’t. His mouth continued to punish her, the hand he had on her waist moving down to cup her buttocks through the thin silk of her dress. He pulled her against him in an intimate hold she had never experienced before, his aroused body pressing against hers. It set off alarm bells in her head. “Silvio,” she gasped, twisting away from his mouth. “Not like this...”
His face contorted with rage. “It will be exactly as I want it, cara. Any way I want it.”
“Silvio—”
He brought the flat of his hand across her cheek so hard her head snapped to the side. Her ears rang with the force of it, her head spinning as a white-hot throb spread across her cheek.
“Refuse me again,” he bit out, “and you will discover the depths my anger can sink to. I will not hear one more word of your silly jitters, Mina. Nor will I tolerate you repeating any of them to anyone. You are going to be my wife in two days. Our union is the talk of this city. Get yourself together.”
The sound of keys in the door brought her head around. Her mother walked in, her gaze flicking from Mina to Silvio, then back again, eyes widening at the mark on Mina’s face. “I thought that was your car, Silvio.”
Silvio released her and stepped back. Sparing her mother a brief nod, he stalked past her to the door. “My driver will pick you up for the rehearsal dinner at six thirty tomorrow.”
The door slammed. Mina’s mother unwound her scarf from around her neck and walked slowly toward her, her gaze wary. “What was that?”
The moment she’d found out her fiancé was a violent man. Mina sank down on the sofa and buried her face in her hands.
“I can’t marry him.”
Her mother sat down beside her. “Let me see your face.”
She lifted her head, utterly sure when her mother saw the welt she would agree she couldn’t marry Silvio. Her mother sighed, went to the bar for ice, wrapped some in a towel and came back to sit down beside her, pressing it to her cheek. “What Sicilian man doesn’t have a temper?”
Mina froze, disbelief plummeting through her, followed by a deep rage that sent blood pumping to every inch of her skin. “Did Father ever hit you?”
Her mother’s lips pursed. “Your father was a different kind of man.”
Yes, he had been. Honorable and loving. He would no more have lifted a hand to his wife or daughter than he would have kicked a dog on a street corner, which, she was sure, Silvio Marchetti would do. She was also sure from what had just happened, her fiancé’s behavior would escalate when she was under his roof as his wife.
“I won’t do it. We can find someone else.”
Her mother shook her head, a resigned look on her face. “You have rejected every choice I’ve made for over a year now, Mina. You are marrying in front of half of Palermo in two days. Life is not all sunshine and rainbows. Sacrifices must be made and we need your sacrifice now. You know that.”
Her mother was okay with sacrificing her to a ruthless, violent man?
Dio mio. She’d always known she was heartless, but this... What kind of a monster was she?
Her mother’s gaze softened. “I suggest you find some peace with this. Men are men. You happen to be marrying a filthy rich one. Let that be your comfort.”
MINA’S WEDDING DAY dawned sunny and crisp, ushering in the first day of fall in true, glorious Palermo fashion.
Bright rays of sunshine stole through the curtains that swayed in her open bedroom windows, a light breeze kissing her shoulders with a jasmine-scented caress. Temperatures were supposed to skyrocket to an unseasonable warmth as the afternoon went on, making it the perfect day for the lavish outdoor reception she and Silvio would host at Villa Marchetti.
Soon it would be time to slip on the stunning dress hanging in her wardrobe and make her way by horse and carriage to the elegant Palermo cathedral to wed her wealthy, influential groom.
A fairy-tale day it should have been. But inside, Mina was filled with dread. She couldn’t seem to function, her every muscle and limb numb as the minutes passed, her stomach barely holding down the light breakfast she’d managed to consume. Today she would marry Silvio, a man she didn’t love, who had turned out to be a hot-tempered, violent man. Everything she’d suspected he could be and more. And nothing she had said or done to convince her mother she couldn’t do it had worked.
She stared in the mirror as her mother layered thick concealer over the bruise Silvio had left on her cheek, not a hint of emotion on Simona Mastrantino’s face to indicate she felt any degree of empathy for her daughter.
“Makeup is a woman’s magic.” Her mother swept another layer of the thick concealer over her cheek. “No one will see the bruise. But you must remember to tuck this in your purse for touch-ups later with the photographs.”
Mina absorbed this latest piece of advice from her mother dazedly, wondering if she could truly be this heartless. There was no question their relationship had always been strained, distant. Simona Mastrantino had made it clear from the very beginning she had no interest in being a mother—she had done it only to keep her husband happy. Off to the nannies Mina had gone while her mother lived a socialite’s glamorous life as the wife of the CEO of one of Italy’s most successful companies.
Mina had accepted this state of affairs with the innocent obliviousness of a child who knew no different. That Camilla, her nanny, and her beloved papà were her source of love and affection, her mother a beautiful, foreign creature