“Well then, Miss Wiltshire, it seems that you have two options. One, you become my wife and live a fairly decent life where you will have protection and security, or two, you die. The choice is yours.”
Choice?
I don’t have a fucking choice! Is he crazy? Of course he is. He’s Nate Knowles, crime lord and total nut job. I was an idiot to get into bed with him in the first place, so to speak.
“Be my wife or die, the choices are laid bare, nothing hidden,” he says, and I can’t help the sarcastic laugh that leaves me.
“Nothing hidden?” I muse. “You don’t expect me to believe that bullshit, do you?”
“Again with the vulgar words,” he says as he stands, buttons up his suit jacket and walks around to my side of the desk until he is stood beside where I sit. He turns my chair to face him, leans down and places his hands on either side of my chair, closing me in, encasing me as his delicious scent invades my senses. And as he leans down, his lips become level with mine, and I can’t help but notice how full they are. My heart races, my blood pumps, and my pussy tingles, because clearly, she wants what is right in front of me, even as my head fights against everything this man represents. Death, violence, crime… it’s so far from my world… and I need to stop looking at his body because I could easily let myself loose on this man. I bet he fucks hard and… For God’s sake, stop it, Kat.
I quickly move my gaze back up, but when I connect my eyes with his, I fear it was a mistake. His eyes are hungry, I can see it. He sees me as a fucking toy that he can destroy, but he doesn’t really know me and I’m not going to let some crime lord believe that he is going to kill my spirit. I’m determined, just like him, and if I have to become his wife in order to survive, then so be it.
If I gain his trust, I can ruin him, just like he’s trying to do to me.
“You have twenty-four hours to make your choice,” he says in a deep, low voice before pushing away from me and making his way to my office door.
“Wait,” I call out as his hand pauses on the door handle. He slowly turns as I make my way over to him, until I am standing in front of him, looking up, admiring how bloody handsome he is. If only he wasn’t an asshole that likes to fuck with people’s lives.
I think of my bar and how I’ve worked my ass off for years for it all to come to nothing.
I think about how Clark has totally screwed me over and how he just ran away because he’s a goddamn coward.
I think of my shitty apartment where I’ve been scrabbling to meet the rental payment every month because Clark never helped me do shit.
I think about how stupid I was to stay with Clark and how it’s led me to this moment.
Marry a crime lord or die.
Dear God, you couldn’t make this shit up.
And as I realise that I am going to have to kiss goodbye to my current life and adopt a new one, I open my mouth and speak before I have a chance to change my mind.
“I don’t need twenty-four hours,” I say, determination coursing through me. “I’m in.”
Chapter Three
Present Day
Nate
Kat Wiltshire. A woman that any man would be lucky to have. A woman that I am marrying in mere moments. Except, I’m not lucky, I’m not her soulmate, but she is mine, and I will do everything I can to fucking break her and make her see that I am the only person she will ever need. Seems drastic, but she’s fucking stubborn, and I look forward to smashing those damn walls she’s built around her. Walls that should never have been put up in the first place, but then, we all make shitty decisions at times and I guess her ex was one of hers. Fucking Clark. I mean, even the name is a shitty one, let alone the decision to spend your life with a total and utter fucking leech of nature.
She doesn’t know the half of what that douche bag did, and I have no plans to tell her, unless she pushes me of course, which I expect in my attempts to break her.
Yeah, I sound like a dick, and I’m okay with that. Because in order to save her, I have to break her first, but she isn’t going to know that.
In fact, she is going to think I’m her worst fucking nightmare.
As I wait for my bride-to-be to walk down the aisle, I cast my mind back to the moment I first laid eyes on her…
“Boss, you have a visitor,” Stefan––my right-hand man––says as he comes into my office with a suspicious smirk on his face.
I throw down the pen I was writing with and sit back in my seat. “And who is it?”
“Oh, I’m not making any introductions for this one,” he says before he disappears, and I refrain from calling him back because he’s just walked off and is about to let fuck knows who in here without giving me any details on who the hell it is.
I’ll be having fucking words with him later. This is not how we do shit. I like to know who thinks they can walk into my territory and think they have a free pass to come into my office––which on this occasion, I guess they do, because of Stefan. Fuck’s sake.
