Page 12 of Savage Proposal

Fuck. I turned the lock with a softclickand faced my brother. “Give it to me,” I said.

Cristian’s jaw was tight. His eyes, identical to my own, pierced through me. “What in the fuck are you doing?”

I didn’t have an answer, not really. “Her father owes me north of a million dollars; she’s working it off for him.”

His face was flat. “You know that’s not what I meant.”

“That’s all it is,” I insisted.

“Bullshit.”

I chuckled, shaking my head. “Didn’t know that seminarians were allowed to use such language, Cris.”

“Fuck you, Enzo,” he spat back. “This is serious. You found Sienna’s doppelgänger.”

Every part of me stiffened with rage. “You don’t get to say her name.”

Cristian crossed his arms over his chest. “No one can talk about her,” he said, “but you can bring her twin into the house.” He shook his head. “What are you doing,fratellone?”

I ground my teeth together. “I didn’t believe Damian when he told me that she looked so much like Sienna,” I said, biting out the words. “When I saw her?—”

“You couldn’t leave her alone.”

He wasn’t wrong. There was no way I could have walked away from Isabella when she wore my wife’s face. “It’s only for a year. Then she goes back to her life.”

Cristian’s brow wrinkled. “There’s no way she’s going to work off more than a million dollars of debt in a year.”

“I made her a deal.” At my younger brother’s flat look, I added, “I agreed that she only had to give up a year of her life to me if she became my surrogate.”

Cristian stared at me, as if he was waiting for me to tell him that I was kidding. When I didn’t, his face twisted in his anger. “You’re sick.”

Maybe I was, but it didn’t change anything. The deal had been made. “You said it yourself: she could be Sienna’s twin.”

“But she’snotSienna,” Cristian said. “You know that.”

“Of course she’s not,” I spat. “I’m not delusional. I want the minor families off my back about an heir, and she can give me a child that looks like Sienna. It will be very clinical.”

Liar. I was such a fucking liar, and Cristian looked at me like he knew it.

“Does she know about Sienna?”

I scoffed. “Why would she?”

“You need to tell her. You can’t let her go through with this without telling her the real reason.”

“The reason shouldn’t matter to her,” I insisted. “All she needs to know is that she’s free after a year.”Assuming she gives me what I want.

“This isn’t healthy,” Cristian said. “You’ve never dealt with Sienna’s death, and now you’ve got the uncanny valley version of her living in your fucking house.”

I snarled at the quip. “Of courseI dealt with her death. I broke her murderer’s face with my bare hands.”

My brother didn’t look impressed. “Yeah,” he said instead, “and then you shut the door on anything that belonged to her and forbid anyone from saying her name.”

I looked away from him, clenching my hands. “I don’t need to be reminded of my failure.” No matter how many heads rolled while I searched for who paid my formervicecapoto murder my wife, I never got a name. Just thinking about it made my gut smolder with an anger that could burn me alive from the inside out.

With an almighty, unhappy sigh, Cristian sank into one of the chairs by the window and motioned for me to sit by him. It was where he liked to take my confession. I had already shared enough, telling him about Isabella’s impending pregnancy, but I had been making confession for more than half of my life. I wouldn’t stop now. My poor mother would roll over in her grave if I did.

I sat and made the sign of the cross. “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,” I murmured to myself.

---