Chapter 3: A Dangerous Weapon

Chapter 3: A Dangerous Weapon

**Tony’s POV**

 

It was getting irritating for me, sitting there, watching her cry at the altar.

What was she crying about, really? The fact her so-called husband-to-be had stepped on my toe and I am here to kill him?

Or was she just that good of an actress, thinking I would buy into this circus of lace and tears and leave thinking that Michael actually stood her up?

How much longer was she planning to drag this charade out?

I drew a slow breath, let it anchor in my chest, counting it out as I forced the irritation down. I knew real grief. I’d seen it raw, unfiltered.

I had seen women collapse at the edge of open graves, clawing at coffins until their fingers split. I had heard real screams when people are in grief, when I torture people, when the family of the dead come knocking in my door asking for mercy not knowing I had already killed their traitorous relative.

This was clearly performance.

Michael thinks he is smart, he thinks he can pull up this cheap stunt to make me go away?

“Why would they go this far,” I muttered, but my voice was sharp enough for the ears of the two who never left my side.

Vivian, my assistant, and Victor, my consigliere.

“Why go to this far, just to die in the end?”

I could feel their agreement in the silence, in the weight of their stares fixed on the Bride’s bowed head.

My patience wasn’t a resource I handed out freely.

My life was at stake, I couldn’t afford a vendetta in my Mafia Family.

I needed Michael alive to clear it, and then I would kill him.

I walked towards her and my shadow swallowed her where she knelt. Still, she did not look up.

 

I bent slightly, my voice cutting the air clean in two.

  “Enough with your scheme.”

Her sobbing faltered, just for a breath, a fraction but she didn’t raise her head.

 

  “Where is Michael?”

 

She didn’t give me even the twitch of acknowledgment. She folded further into herself, as if she could disappear into the lace.

 

Patience snapped inside me, fast and final. I seized her shoulders, fingers biting through the delicate fabric, dragging her chin upward.

 

  “Look at me,” I hissed.

 

In a split second, her hand cracked across my face, heat bloomed instantly across my cheek.

This bitch fucking slapped me and is glaring at me like she would do it again if I do not take my hands off her shoulders.

 

Vivian’s voice fractured the silence with a gasp high and scandalized, like a woman witnessing sacrilege. I didn’t need to look at her to feel her outrage simmering.

Victor surged forward, his bulk a wall of barely checked violence. His fists curled, his growl rumbling. “Boss…”

 

“Stop.”

I lifted a hand. He froze mid-step.

 

I kept my gaze locked on her.

I should have felt angry to desire her head instantly, but I was just intrigued by the audacity.

She doesn’t know who I am? Michael didn’t give her the update before involving her in his mess?

 

She had a raw, reckless, suicidal spirit. The kind that could get her killed, and yet… something in me recognized it and admired it, even.

 

Slowly, I released my hands on her shoulder and she collapsed back into herself, folding like paper, sobs ripping out of her again, louder now like she didn't just slap me.

 

I straightened, adjusted the cuff of my suit with careful precision, and spoke without looking away from her.

  “Let her continue pretending, she will soon blow her cover and when she is ready,…” My voice curled, low and sure, every syllable a promise. “…she’ll tell me where the fuck Michael is.”

 ***

***HOURS LATER***

 

“Boss, this is madness,” Victor growled, his voice rough from a night without proper rest, acting vigilante for an acting broken bride.

 

He had been pacing for hours, with his fists opening and closing like he wanted something to hit. “We’re wasting time, Don. We should torture her already!”

 

“I want to be patient for once,” I muttered, not taking my eyes off her.

 

Vivian exhaled a long, slow sigh, the kind that dripped with annoyance. She hadn’t moved much all night, lounging in the pew like a queen waiting for her court to amuse her. Her nails clicked against the wood, sharp little stabs in the silence. “She’s really pathetic. You would think she was auditioning for a telenovela.”

 

Yeah, for her to stay out here in the cold all night, was a record breaking acting skill.

 

I didn’t blink an eye watching this mysterious lady that has chosen to walk hand in hand with Michael to defile me. I do not know what her addition to his betrayal is, but it’s obvious she is doing whatever it takes to protect him.

 

Morning came and the light crept across the altar until it bathed her as she crumpled there on the steps. She hadn’t shifted in hours. The veil was tangled in her hair, her shoulders slack, her sobs long since dissolved into shallow, restless breaths.

 

Victor woke up swearing under his breath and complaining his body ached from sleeping on the hard chairs, muttering in Italian.

 

Vivian smirked at his agitation, clearly enjoying his lack of control.

 

Meanwhile, I watched her like a hawk circling prey that hadn’t decided whether it wanted to live or die. I didn’t know why, but I wanted to see how far she’d drag this out. How long she could cling to the act before reality chewed her up.

 

Then, finally, dawn touched her face.

 

“The broken bride is awake” Vivian muttered.

 

Her fingers twitched first, then her head lifted just slightly.

 

Her movement was sluggish, as though her body had forgotten it belonged to her. She unfolded herself with effort.

 

It was pitiful, I almost thought it was not one of the acting schemes.

 

She rose, stiff and trembling, clutching the torn remnants of lace and sorrow. With the veil slipping down her face like a shroud, she drifted down the aisle in slow, measured steps, as though guided by some unseen force.

She passed through us as if we were ghosts.

 

Her car door groaned as it opened. She slid inside, movements mechanical, like muscle memory had taken over where willpower had died.

 

“Boss?” Victor muttered, jaw tight.

 

I lifted a hand. “We would follow her.”

 

He gave a sharp nod, and we went after her, in our ride.

 

I sank into the back seat, eyes fixed on the taillights vanishing into the mist. Vivian slid in beside me, as she fixed her make up with the mirror behind the driver’s seat, “She’s very determined,” she purred.

 

“I hate her,” Victor said flatly.

 

We trailed her through the winding streets into ragged cliffs.

 

I wondered why she was going to the cliff.

 

The ocean roared beneath, an endless growl against the rocks, but her car didn’t falter, she went straight to the edge, cutting across the mist.

 

For a second, we all thought she was doing to drive off the cliff, suicidal.

 

But she abruptly stopped the car just at the extreme end and killed the engine.

 

“Okay, this is getting interesting” Vivian said as she dropped down her lipstick that she had been applying tirelessly.

 

In a few minutes, she stepped out and started undressing herself.

 

The white lace slipped from her shoulders, cascading down in a puddle of ruined fabric at her feet. She shredded away the costume of a bride who never was.

 

What remained clung to her was a sinful sight. She was on ivory lingerie, revealing her cleavages and butt cheeks.

 

“She is mad!” Victor was almost screaming.

 

Morning light caught on her bare skin, kissed the curve of her hips, and traced the length of her legs. She stood there against the cliff’s edge, stripped of everything but fury.

 

I didn’t see madness or weakness, I saw vengeance. She was clearly angry, and we probably have wasted our time following this woman, this was beyond acting.

 

Michael must have stood her up in that aisle.

 

Vivian hissed, definitely disgusted by the sight of a fellow woman’s curves, it was jealousy.

 

 Victor let out a long, low whistle, his hand dragging over his mouth, he was clearly enticed by the shape of her body.

 

 I tried to fight my brain as it kept being deceptive towards me at the sight of her endowed body.

 

 For a flicker of a moment, my vengeance on Michael vanished from my mind, it all blurred, drowned under the surge that ripped through me.

 

Now, all I felt was desire. I yearned for that body. Fuck! When last did I lay with a woman that I am so turned on by this fiancé of my betrayer?

 

I felt the kind of hunger that could make a man reckless.

 

Her body, carved against the rising sun, was temptation sculpted in lace. She was bootilicious, yes…but it wasn’t just her curves. It was the way she wore her rage, the way she stood at the edge of the world as if daring it to take her down with the car.

 

I couldn’t afford distraction. Not with my life and family hanging by a thread and Michael’s betrayal tightening it.

 

She was done staring at pace over the cliff then, she the wedding gown with slow precision, cradling it in her arms. She laid it carefully across the driver’s seat, smoothing the fabric like a mother tucking in her child.

 

She turned on the engine of the car, I don’t know how she was able to step on the accelerator, but she sent the car driving off.

 

The wheels tipped and gravity hooked its claws.

 

The car slid forward, nose dipping, then tumbled into the void. Steel groaned, glass burst, a chorus of destruction that built with every roll down the jagged face of the cliff.

 

A thunderclap of violence as the vehicle slammed into the rocks below. Flames exploded outward, orange and red devouring steel, black smoke clawing at the sky. The blast rattled the ground beneath us, the heat licking up the cliff side.

 

Victor barked out a laugh, but there was no humor in it, just disbelief. “She’s a psychopath.”

 

 

 

Vivian crossed her arms, her nose wrinkling. “More like suicidal with flair.” Her voice was sharp, brittle, carrying that edge she saved for moments she felt ignored.

 

My eyes stayed locked on the bride as she stood in her lingerie, staring down at the inferno like she’d buried her groom in it and built herself a throne on the ashes.

 

I wondered if I had just found someone as dangerous as me.

I saw rage in her, the kind of fury that could be sharpened, aimed, turned into a weapon.

 

My weapon.

 

I knew one thing, she was no acting grieving bride.

She was dangerously pissed.