Page 77 of Wicked Sinner
The way she says "interesting" makes it clear she means something else entirely. I force a smile. "Likewise."
"I have to say, your wedding was quite the surprise," Isabella continues, her tone light but with an undercurrent of something sharp. "So sudden. None of us saw it coming.”
“It was unexpected for us, too,” Caesar says smoothly, his hand touching the small of my back in a possessive gesture. I see Isabella’s eyes flick to it, her mouth pressing into a thin line. “But it was impossible for me to ignore how I felt for Bridget.”
Isabella’s face remains a perfect, polite mask, but I see her jaw tighten, see the hint of anger in her eyes. She glances at my stomach, and I force myself to stay calm and keep my own expression neutral. I have no idea if Caesar has talked about the baby or not, but I don’t want to spring the news on this woman. Especially since, for us to know I’m pregnant, we had to have been together before he started courting her.
That’s a mess I don’t want to touch with a ten-foot pole.
"If you'll excuse us," Caesar says, already steering me away. "I want to introduce Bridget to some other people."
As we walk away, I can feel Isabella's eyes boring into my back. "She seems lovely," I mutter.
Caesar's mouth quirks up at the corner. "She's… persistent."
The next hour is a blur of introductions and small talk. I meet Konstantin Abramov, the man who Caesar said leads the criminal families here in Miami and who is disapproving of our marriage, and his wife, Valentina, a gorgeous woman with ink-black hair and a piercing gaze, who makes me feel a little afraid just looking at her. “She used to be an assassin,” Caesar murmurs as we move away from them, and I have to force myself not to look back at her, startled. Although—the way I felt looking at her makes sense, then.
“An assassin?” I squeak under my breath as we walk further away, and Caesar looks down at me, something unreadable in his face.
He nods. “Yes,” he says quietly. “That information you found about my father being killed? Those mysterious circumstances? That was Valentina.” His mouth thins slightly. “Konstantin didn’t try to hide it from me, when I came home.”
My eyes widen, and I can’t help looking in the direction that Valentina went, now. “What?” I whisper. “How can you—you’re just going to… have dinner with her? After…”
Caesar’s mouth twitches. “It’s difficult to explain, Bridget. But my father isn’t someone I mourn.”
Caesar introduces me to Tristan O’Malley next, who is there with his wife, Simone, a beautiful brunette. She’s cool and reserved, and Tristan is pleasant enough, but I can feel the tension between him and Caesar. They don’t like each other, that much is plain, and Tristan looks at me with an assessing expression on his face that I don’t like.
I see a pretty brunette looking at Caesar from across the room, and I wonder if she’s another of the potential brides, but I don’t ask. I’m not sure I want to know. Every woman I’ve metso far is beautiful, utterly poised and gorgeous, and perfect, and I feel like the ugly duckling. Not because I think I’m actually ugly—I know I’m not—but because I feel so out of place.
No one here would want to shake hands with me if I wasn’t married to Caesar. They wouldn’t even do business with me. I’m not good enough to work on their fucking cars, let alone marry one of them. And I can feel it, in every interaction, that they’re all just too fucking fake to look in my eyes and tell me what they think of our marriage.
It almost makes me wish it were real, just so I could tell them to go fuck themselves without it being hypocrisy.
By the time we're seated for dinner, my head is spinning from trying to keep track of names and faces and the complex web of relationships between these people. I'm seated between Caesar and an older man who spends the entire first course explaining his yacht to me in excruciating detail.
Isabella is seated directly across from me, next to her father. I can feel her eyes on me throughout the meal, as I force myself to pick at my food. It’s delicious—a first course of Caesar salad and pumpkin bisque, followed by a perfectly cooked filet, roasted green beans and squash, and a rice pilaf, but it’s hard for me to eat a bite with the gorgeous blonde staring daggers into me the whole time.
“Of course, if you’re not born to this life, it can be quite an adjustment." Isabella’s voice cuts through my thoughts, and I realize that I missed whatever the first part of the conversation was—but there’s no doubt that it’s directed at me.
"I'm sure Bridget is adjusting beautifully," Valentina Abramov interjects smoothly, though there's something in her tone that suggests she's not entirely convinced.
"Oh, I'm sure she is," Isabella agrees. "Though I imagine it must be overwhelming. The expectations, the responsibilities, the constant scrutiny. Not everyone is cut out for it."
I feel Caesar tense beside me, his hand finding mine under the table and squeezing gently. It's meant to be reassuring, but all I can think about is how right Isabella is. I'm not cut out for this. I'm a mechanic from a little town outside Miami, not some mafia princess bred for this life.
"Bridget is perfectly capable of handling whatever is thrown at her," Caesar says, his voice carrying a warning that makes Isabella's smile falter slightly. I feel my pulse leap traitorously at the sound of it, at the idea of him standing up for me.
He’s a temptation wrapped in a bespoke suit tonight, and the fact that he’s defending me makes it all too easy to forget that he’s why I’m here in the first place.
"I'm sure she is," she replies tartly, but her eyes remain cold.
The conversation moves on to other topics, but I can barely focus. The walls feel like they're closing in, and the luxurious meal tastes like sawdust in my mouth. I need air. I need space. I need to get away from Isabella's cutting remarks and all of the eyes on me.
"Excuse me," I murmur, standing abruptly. "I need to find the ladies’ room.”
I don't wait for a response, just make my way through the ballroom and up the grand staircase to the second floor. Most of the guests are downstairs, so it's blissfully quiet up here. I find a balcony overlooking the gardens and step outside, taking a deep breath of the cool, flower-and-salt-scented night air.
The sounds of the party drift up from below—laughter, conversation, the clink of glasses. It all feels so far away, like I'm watching someone else's life through a window. Idon’tbelong here, and I never will. Caesar was a fool to marry me instead of someone like Isabella, whether he likes her or not.
