Page 179 of Made for Sinners

There were a hundred people watching—men in suits with blood under their nails, women in jewels sharp enough to cut. The heads of families. The underbosses. The wives who pulled strings behind closed doors. All of them sitting in perfect rows of white chairs, pretending this was just another wedding. Pretending their smiles weren’t barbed, their gazes heavy with calculation.

But when Dante said those words, when his voice dropped low and reverent like a prayer he didn’t deserve to speak, the world narrowed to just us.

Me.

Him.

And the promise he’d just carved into the air between us.

I swallowed hard. My fingers tightened around his, the diamond on my left hand catching the last of the sun as it dipped behind the hills. The vineyard glowed gold around us, the vines swaying gently in the breeze, the scent of lavender and earth thick in the air.

He looked at me like I was everything.

Like he’d already killed for me.

Like he’d do it again.

And I believed him.

“I vow,” I said, my voice steady despite the tremble in my chest, “to never let you forget who I am. To never let you forget who you married.”

A few chuckles rippled through the crowd.

Dante’s smirk was slow. Dangerous. Proud.

“I vow to challenge you. To fight you. To love you in every way that matters—and some that don’t.”

He arched a brow.

I smiled.

“I vow to be your partner. Your equal. Your weapon. Your peace.”

The officiant—some poor bastard who’d been vetted by three security teams and probably had a sniper trained on him from the trees—cleared his throat.

“Do you, Emilia Conti, take this man?—”

“I do,” I said before he could finish.

Dante’s smirk widened.

“And do you, Dante Conti, take this woman?—”

“I already have,” he said, eyes still locked on mine.

The officiant blinked. “I… pronounce you husband and wife. Again.”

Laughter. Applause. The soft swell of strings from the quartet tucked behind the rose arch.

But I didn’t hear any of it.

Because Dante pulled me to him, one hand at the small of my back, the other cradling my jaw, and kissed me like he’d waited his whole life for this moment.

Like he was claiming me all over again.

Like he was making sure the whole world knew I was his.

The reception was heldunder a canopy of fairy lights strung between the olive trees. Long tables draped in white linen stretched across the lawn, covered in candles and flowers and enough wine to drown a small country.

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