Page 22 of Ashes
I was well aware that hasty decisions never led toanything good. I’d never made a decision unless I analyzed every angle of a situation as well as its probable results.
But for the first time in my life, I let impulse take over.
I letsomeone elsedictate my next move.
But Sienna Bruni was infuriating and all I wanted to do was infuriate her even more.
Guess I’m a married man now.
CHAPTER 5
SIENNA
I was married.
And I didn’t even know his last name.
I watched my newhusbandas he pulled out of the parking garage. He had one hand on the steering wheel, the other on the gearshift as he shifted and flew through the city’s streets.
This,he, was my new reality.
Everything in me screamed to fight it, but I couldn’t bring myself to let my younger sisters get caught in the crossfire of my father’s poor judgment.
I’d made the decision long ago that I didn’t want to take part in the world my father had thrust us into when I saw what it did to others. But that didn’t change the fact that it still relied on alliances that stemmed from three things—money, power, or like in this case, marriage.
But alliances always came at a cost.
I knew I was the only thing standing between my family and their safety when I’d agreed to this, so I went into today with one task to accomplish.
Get married to Mateo Barrera.
But I hadn’t expectedthis. My father had used me as a pawn to fix the consequences of his own selfish mistakes.
Again.
I felt blindsided.
Betrayed.
Was I ever his daughter or just an object to barter with for protection?
I shook myself out of my thoughts and after burying my surging resentment deep inside as I always did, I took a closer look at the man sitting next to me.
There was no denying how infuriatingly beautiful he was. I was starting to resent it, to resent how dominating his presence was, how it flooded the space around us until it was the only thing I could think of.
But unlike last night, Jamal felt completely closed off. I noticed the tightness in his grip over the steering wheel, the tic in his jaw, and the slight pinch between his brows.
Annoyance clawed at my chest from his suddenly cold demeanor.Iwas the one forced into this, not the other way around.
I flicked my gaze back to look outside, only to realize that we were driving out of the city. “Where are we going?” I asked, breaking the tense silence suffocating the air.
He slid a brief glance in my direction before focusing his attention back on the road. “Home.”
The foreign word made my stomach churn. Although I’d lived in a house with my family all my life, it never felt like a home. It never felt like a safe place for me to just be. Instead, as each year passed, it became a place where something was always expected of me.
A place where I only existed when it was beneficial to them.
“You don’t say,” I snarked, wanting to rid myself of the growing sorrow. “And where is that?”
