The Blood Vow

Chapter 5

“Bring the priest here.”

Dante’s words rang out in the cathedral as though he were a sword. His gaze never left mine as his two tactical guards pulled the trembling priest out from behind the altar, made of marble.

“Mr. De Luca, sir,” the old man began nervously, his gaze flicking between Julian’s body and the spot of blood on the front of my white gown. “This is inappropriate. The sacraments—the marriage license—”

“Recite the vows,” Dante instructed in a soft voice. He did not raise his voice, but there was such authority in his words that the priest’s knees buckled. “Now.”

Mother sobbed softly, but uncle restrained her, his jaw set with hard bitterness. The Rossi soldiers were frozen in place, outgunned and powerless as Dante’s men continued to keep their guns pointed at their chests.

The priest wiped the sweat from his forehead with shaking hands and cracked open his Bible. He shook so badly that the pages were rustling.

“D-Do you, Dante De Luca,” the priest said, “take Serafina Moretti to be your lawfully wedded wife, to have and to hold, in sickness and in health…”

“I don’t want any damn theater,” Dante said softly. He moved his hand and took mine in his, holding it tightly between his warm, steady fingers. “Get to the union.”

The priest gulped. “In accordance with the authority vested in me… I hereby declare you husband and wife. Now, you may seal the union.”

Dante did not waste any time. He took out the platinum ring from his pocket and slipped it onto my left ring finger. The cold metal weighed heavily on my finger like an iron chain.

He did not bend down to kiss me on the lips. Instead, he lifted my hand to his mouth, his dark eyes staring into mine as his lips touched the back of my fingers, directly above the dried blood on my skin.

“You belong to me now, Fina,” he whispered into my ear, his breath warm against my skin. “And nobody ever touches what is mine.”

A terrible heat began burning within me. I despised him for locking me in, despised him for making me do what I had to do, but looking into those dark, intense eyes, I was overcome by an overwhelming feeling of safety. He was a monster, but right then and there, he was my monster.

“Estate is clear,” came a harsh voice from Dante’s comms unit. “Infiltrators neutralized. The brother is safe.”

I breathed out a breath that I didn’t even know I’d been holding, relaxing slightly in my posture. Leo was alive. My family was safe.

“We are leaving,” said Dante, letting go of my hand and moving towards the grand doors of the cathedral. He gestured to his first guard. “Take the Morettis to the secondary safehouse. Rossi, take your dead heir and leave. Any act of vengeance against the Moretti family will be met with the full force of the De Luca empire.”

The face of old man Rossi contorted with venom, but he knew that he should not test the Mafia King on such terrain. He signaled to his men to bring back the body of Julian.

Dante put an arm around my waist and held me tightly to his side as we moved away from the altar. My stiff dress, drenched in crimson blood, brushed against his well-tailored suit. I faltered in my steps, weakened by the rush of adrenaline, but Dante’s strong hold kept me upright.

We left the pews behind us, the broken glass, and the dark cathedral, moving out into the bright sunlight.

A shiny black SUV, which was bullet-proof, was parked at the foot of the stone staircase, guarded by heavily armed De Luca men. Dante opened the back door of the car and made me enter while he entered right next to me. The thick door closed with a bang, shutting us in total silence.

The car started moving and moved quickly from the church with an armed escort.

I rested my head on the leather seat and looked at the platinum ring on my finger. The blood on my face was itching as it dried, a constant reminder of the hell I had just been through.

“Why?” I asked, looking at the man who was sitting right next to me.

Dante remained cool, unbuttoning his suit jacket and relaxing against the leather like he hadn’t just commandeered a high-class wedding with a gun to his head.

“Why what?” he asked.

“Why kill Julian at the altar?” I asked, my hands balling into fists in my lap. “If you wanted an alliance with my family, you could have bribed my uncle. You could have made him a deal. Why execute him right in front of over two hundred witnesses?”

Dante’s head turned, his eyes narrowing as he stared at me through dark lenses.

“I didn’t kill him,” he said simply.

I gave a sharp, incredulous laugh. “Sure. And your tactical teams conveniently happened to be posted outside the church roof purely on a fluke?”

“My tactical teams were there because I had been following a hit squad sent against the cathedral for the past three hours,” Dante replied in a chilling tone. “The person behind this attack was going to make sure that there would be a public execution. He wanted the Morettis and the Rossis to kill each other.”

I frowned. “But who shot Julian? The sniper had a good vantage point. He killed the groom in order to frame my father.”

“No,” Dante whispered, drawing nearer to me until I felt his menacing presence in its entirety. He touched my face and used his bare fingers to clean away the blood on my cheek. “The sniper did not set up your father by killing Julian.”

My heart pounded violently. “What do you mean?”

“The angle that the sniper was shooting from was two inches off because my shooter grazed him in his arm from the other roof just before he shot.”

The air in the car froze. My mouth became dry.

“Two inches?” I croaked, feeling my breath hitch in my throat. “If the bullet moved two inches… then Julian wasn’t the intended victim.”

“Julian was the collateral damage,” Dante stated, those deep eyes boring into mine as he delivered the statement with utter conviction. “The person who hired the assassin did not want the groom dead, Fina.”

It felt like my insides had dropped into an icy void. “Then… who was the bullet intended for?”

Dante looked at me steadily and said the one word that shattered my whole world.

“You.”