#Chapter 5: Happy Wedding！

Mateo's POV

Blood ran down the back of my hand and dripped onto the stone floor.

"Don!" Enzo surged forward. Behind him, chairs scraped and a gun came out of its holster.

“Stay where you are.”

They stopped.

I looked down at my sleeve. A scratch. The bullet had grazed my forearm, torn through the sleeve and left a shallow groove in the skin beneath. I watched the thin red line widen and drip.

I hadn't bled from another person's hand in — how long? Seven years? Eight? Since I'd claimed the Accardi seat, no one had managed to touch me. Men who'd built their reputations on killing begged on their knees rather than face what I'd do to them. Some swallowed their own bullets before I could reach them.

And today, a girl who'd never held a gun put a hole through my sleeve.

I looked at her.

She was shaking so hard the wedding dress trembled around her.

She couldn't even aim. She'd squeezed her eyes shut before she pulled the trigger. A prayer on her lips and her whole body flinching before the recoil hit.

And she still fired.

What an unexpected and… lovely surprise.

I'd come here as a detour. One hour ago I'd put a knife through a traitor's throat in a warehouse two blocks south. The blood on my suit was his. I needed a drink, a shower, and something underneath me to burn off the edge that always followed a kill. Thomas Caruso's debt had been collecting dust in my ledger for months — a daughter, eighteen today, reportedly beautiful. Why not collect.

That was the plan. A transaction. Something to use and forget by morning.

But this —

Across from me, Evangeline opened her eyes.

She looked at my chest first. Then my arm. Her mouth parted, but nothing came out.

The gun slipped from her fingers.

I caught it before it hit the floor.

That small movement made her flinch harder than the shot had.

— Yet this timid little thing had looked me in the eye, stolen my own gun, and tried to put a hole in my chest. In a church. On her birthday. In a wedding dress.

I had spent years climbing through mountains of corpses to get where I stood. The thrill had gone out of it a long time ago. Nothing surprised me. Nothing quickened my pulse. I'd started to wonder if the part of me that felt anything had died somewhere between my second and third kill.

Then this little lamb pointed a gun at the devil and pulled the trigger.

What beautiful eyes. Wide and wet and furious, staring me down even as her hands shook. I was hard. Instantly, embarrassingly hard, and I didn't care who noticed.

"You have more 'talent' than I expected," I said. My voice came out lower than I intended.

I reached out and touched her face. My thumb left a streak of red across her cheekbone — my blood, painting her. It looked good on her. It softened the bridal white into something more honest. A bride of the Accardi family should have blood on her somewhere.

She flinched but didn't pull away. Her eyes were wide and wet, locked on mine. She was breathing in shallow little gasps that lifted the lace at her neckline, and her lower lip kept trembling in a way that made me want to bite it.

Not the way women in my world were beautiful — sculpted, starving, practiced. She didn't know what she looked like right now. That was the dangerous part.

"You missed." I smiled, stepped over the gun, and pulled my bride into my arms with barely restrained eagerness."Now you're mine."

Her lips parted. The protest was right there behind her teeth. But the adrenaline had drained out of her all at once, the way it does with people who aren't used to violence. Her face had gone white. Her knees looked like they might give out.

I caught her face in both hands. Her skin was hot under my palms. A tear ran over my thumb.

I kissed her.

Not gently. I kissed her the way I'd wanted to since I walked through those church doors — deep and slow and thorough. I tasted salt from her tears and something sweeter underneath. She gasped against my mouth, and her hands came up to push against my chest.

Weak. The same hands that had held a gun to my heart five seconds ago, now flat against my chest, barely a suggestion. Almost cute.

She wasn't really pushing. She was holding on.

I pulled back just enough to see her face. Flushed. Lips swollen. The cross necklace rose and fell against her collarbone with each ragged breath.

Behind us, the broken wedding march had stopped. The church was dead silent except for the sound of my bride trying to remember how to breathe.

"Happy wedding, my sweetie."