Page 16 of Heir of Darkness

“You’ll live,” she told him. “But I won’t if you force me into this marriage.”

“I’m not the only one who wants this contract,” he told her. “You’re forgetting about my father and yours.”

She sighed. “You can talk to them. Do something. If you cared about me, you would.”

“No.”

Luna’s face hardened. She snatched her hand away from him. “Then I don’t know how much more clearly I can tell you that I will never love you.”

Pain ripped through his face. He covered it up in the blink of an eye. “Never say never.”

She shook her head. “I can promise you I will never fall in love with you. No amount of contracts or rules you force against me will ever work. It would all be for the contract. All fake for the rest of your life.”

“Do you remember what was happening that night all those years ago?” Valerio hissed. “I did this to save you. You asked me to do this for you.”

“What are you talking about?” Luna asked, confused

“Think back to the night of the gala,” Valerio told her.

She forced her mind to return to that night, the one where she realized her life was over. It was a night she desperately tried to forget, but it was forever etched into her memory. A defining moment in her life that made her realize that there wasn’t a single decent man to be found out in the world. “I didn’t ask you to marry me. I told you I didn’t want to be married at all. I wanted out of any contract my father was going to put me in.”

She was sixteen, vulnerable, drunk, and beyond miserable. He used her moment of weakness to swoop in like a falcon.

“Do you know who your father was thinking of marrying you off to? Some fucking freak of a business partner older than himself,” he pointed out. “You would have been walking down the aisle at eighteen, probably on your second or third child at this point.”

Luna swallowed harshly. “My father wouldn’t do that to me.”

“You know he would because he almost did.”

She knew he was right. She wanted to believe her father was above doing something like that to her, but she wasn’t actually naive enough to think that was the reality.

“Is that what you want? A thank you?”

“I don’t want anything from you but a chance.”

“That boat sailed a long time ago.”

“Did it?” His permanent smirk came back. “There used to be rumors, you know. About your little crush on me. I remember catching your longing gazes at events and in passing.”

Her cheeks heated. She hated the dark look in his eyes, and hated the tingling in her stomach even more. Here she thought she had been completely lowkey about everything the whole time, only to have given him ammunition. “They call it a schoolgirl crush for a reason. I grew up and found out who you really were.”

“I think you’re lying.”

“I don’t care,” she bit back.

Valerio shook his head. “I watched you too, you know; it was when you turned away, a blush on your cheeks, that I took my time to study you. For years I observed and memorized the way your eyes narrow when you’re mad, or how when you’re surprised your mouth drops open, or how when you’re nervous you chew on the inside of your lip. You’ve been mine since the moment I laid my eyes on you, but I can play along. If you needto pretend you don’t care about me anymore so you can prove a point, then go ahead. But I won’t pretend. You’re mine, Luna. With this engagement intact or not.”

Luna’s lip wavered. She sucked in a deep breath, trying to calm the rapid beating of her heart. “There’s still one way to get rid of it.”

His lips turned up into a wicked smile. He leaned in closer, forcing their faces within inches of each other. The warmth of his hand covered hers until it was replaced with something cold and made of metal. Luna’s eyes widened; he’d placed a gun in her hand.

What the hell was wrong with him?

“I know you read the contract. You want to kill me? Do it. I’ll offer you the bullet, the gun. Hell, I’ll stand completely still, right in front of you so you don’t miss. Kill me if you can,” he told her, his rough voice kissing every inch of her exposed skin.

If she could just lift the gun in her hand and aim it at him, she could end this and be free.

But she couldn’t.

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