Page 9 of The Proposal

The only good time I’ll be getting tonight is a handjob in the shower, compliments of myself.

What a sad turn my life has taken. I’m only thirty-one, and my damn cock has already been put out to pasture.

I drain my glass in one gulp and place it on a nearby table. “Show me where your sister is.”

“I can’t.”

“Why?”

She winces. “Papa told me to leave them alone. When I faulted, he pulled his gun on me.”

I rear back. “He what?”

She casually lifts one shoulder. “He does it often. I’ve always been the hardest of the two of us to control. I’m what some may refer to as the black sheep in the family. Wild and feisty. Arabella is much more submissive, and Papa knows how protective she is of me and uses that to his advantage.”

“What a cunt,” I growl. “Tell me where they are.”

“Go through that door,” she replies, pointing across the ballroom. “Turn right when you exit and follow the corridor to the end.”

My feet are already moving. I warned that fucker at the wedding. I swear if he’s harmed one hair on her head, blood will be shed.

Chapter 3

Arabella

“Stefano,” I hear my husband roar from somewhere in the distance.

My husband!

I still can’t wrap my head around the fact that I’m married tohim, of all people. A carbon copy of my father, who is a man I hate.

On the surface, Dante appears flawless. Insanely handsome, with dark hair, piercing brown eyes, smooth olive skin, and features so sharp they could cut glass. He’s got charisma in spades and a disarming smile that could melt anyone. But beneath all that beauty is something far darker.

I’m eternally bound to a thug … a criminal.

The truth of it hits again like a tidal wave, and I’m so overwhelmed by it all that I bury my face in my hands and sob.

He’s everything I despise, embodying a life I’ve been running from for as long as I can remember.

Is this how my poor, sweet mother felt on her wedding day? Am I condemned to face the same fate as her? Her murder is a day I’ve tried so hard to forget, but the agonising shrill of her screams still haunts me.

“Leave us,” I hear Dante growl from just outside the door.

I’m impressed by howhe stands up to Papa. The way he threatened his life at the church if he manhandled me again was something else. I’ve seen countless men lose their lives for far less.

Nobody has ever stuck up for me like that before, which was very gallant of him, but his words also confirmed everything I feared … he’s more than capable of ending a life.

“Get her under control,” my father snaps, his voice as icy as his heart. “Or I will.”

“Leave her to me,” Dante replies, and his response sends a chill up my spine.

I should’ve let my father shoot me this morning when I refused to leave my bedroom. The car was waiting to escort us to the church, but the fear of the unknown paralysed me.It’s better, the devil, you know.I ended up being marched downstairs at gunpoint.

I’ve spent my entire life being forced into submission, and witnessing what he did to my mother was more than enough to break me. But there was something about today—the finality of it—that made me fight back, even if just a little. I was playing with fire … literally.

Deep down, I knew Papa was counting on this union between me and Dante. It’s probably the reason I’m still breathing.

It’s not just the idea of being married to a man I have no respect for. It’s the thought of moving to a foreign country where I don’t know a single person and being entirely at his mercy. But leaving my little sister behind is what terrifies me the most.

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