CHAPTER 2

THE CORRIDOR

Elian freezes where he stands. His whole body has gone cold, shaking in a way he can't stop, and some part of him is genuinely waiting for the ground to open up and take him, because that would be easier than what's happening instead.

Salvatore already knows about Matteo. He's known since the first hour the wedding started falling apart, though nobody in this house has any idea of that yet, and he has no plans to say so. He isn't losing a groom today. He's getting the one he actually wanted, the boy who once saved him on a schoolyard and grew, without ever meaning to, into the only person Salvatore decided he would marry. None of that reaches his face. He keeps it buried under something colder, something that looks, to everyone watching, like a man reacting to bad luck instead of a man watching a promise finally come true.

What are you still waiting for?" His father's voice, clipped, already moving past the moment like it costs him nothing. "Go in and get dressed. Mr. Salvatore can't wait forever."

Elian takes a step toward the stairs on legs that barely hold him.

"Wait a moment." Salvatore's voice stops him cold. "As your groom, and given how much running you've been doing today, I'd like to accompany him to his room myself. Just to make sure he actually gets ready this time."

His eyes stay on Elian the whole time he says it.

"Oh, Mr. Salvatore, of course." Corrado's voice comes out too fast, too eager, the panic underneath it barely dressed up at all. He's already blaming Elian for every second of this, already terrified of what a man like Salvatore might do to this family over an afternoon this badly mishandled. "That should speed things along nicely. Go on, Elian."

Near the wall, his mother stands silent, her arms crossed tight, her face pulled into something closer to anger than fear. She isn't looking at Salvatore at all. She's looking at her son like she'd like to shake him, like she can't understand what he thought running would accomplish when he already knew exactly what this family was standing to lose.

Nobody stops what happens next.

Elian starts up the stairs. Salvatore follows, quiet, and by the second flight Elian understands this was never really about speeding anything along. He keeps his eyes forward anyway, because looking back feels like giving him something he hasn't earned yet.

The corridor outside his room is empty when Salvatore's hand closes around his arm and turns him around.

"Stop." Just that, low, and Elian stops.

"Do you have any idea how deep you've buried yourself today?" Salvatore's voice doesn't rise. It doesn't need to. "I made a promise to myself that I would find the men who stole from me and I would kill them slowly, and take my time doing it. I made a second promise that whoever this family tried to hand me as a husband was going to regret it. And somehow, out of an entire city, you're the one person standing here wearing both of those promises at once." A humorless breath. "You're already dead, Elian. You just haven't found out yet what that's going to look like. Get in there. Get dressed. Do it fast. I want this marriage finished so I can start teaching you exactly what begging me for mercy sounds like, because I promise you, I have none left to give you."

Elian can't make himself answer. His heart is going so hard he can hear it in his own ears, and when he tries to step back, his shoulders hit the wall instead, Salvatore's hand already there to keep him from going anywhere at all.

"Just so we're clear." Salvatore steps in, close enough that there's no air left between them, one hand flat against Elian's chest, pinning him without any real effort at all. "It's only the two of us in this hallway right now. Which means when I'm talking, I'm talking to you. Nobody walks away from me mid-sentence. Understood?"

Elian's breath comes short and fast under that hand, and he hates, more than anything, how aware he suddenly is of exactly how close their bodies are standing.

"You're already trembling," Salvatore says, quieter now, something rougher underneath the words. "Good. Stay that afraid of me. Because I am about to walk you straight into hell, and I want you to remember, every single step of the way, that you're the one who volunteered for it the moment you decided to run."

He doesn't move. Not yet. He simply holds Elian there against the wall, close enough that Elian can't tell anymore whether the pounding in his chest is fear or something far more dangerous wearing fear's exact shape, and waits, in absolutely no hurry at all, for Elian to be the one who breaks the silence first.

Elian doesn't. He can't. And after a long moment Salvatore releases him, though instead of stepping back, he grabs Elian's hand and pulls him the last few steps down the corridor himself.

"Where's your room?"

Elian points, hand shaking, at the door closest to them. Salvatore drags him to it and tries the handle. Locked.

"It's locked. Open it. Now."

Elian releases the wrist gone stiff in Salvatore's grip only when Salvatore lets him, fumbles the key out of his pocket, and gets the door open. Salvatore follows him inside and slams it shut behind them.

"Your room looks like a teenager's." Salvatore glances once around the space, unimpressed. "Doesn't matter. Start taking off your clothes. Be fast about it, whatever you're doing. I have an important meeting to attend after this wedding, so don't make me late, or it'll only add to your punishment."

He settles back against the wall beside the door, arms crossed, legs crossed at the ankle, entirely at ease in a room that isn't his, and watches.

Elian wishes, for just a moment, that Salvatore would at least look away long enough for him to undress. He doesn't. His eyes stay on Elian, unmoving.

"Can't I at least have some privacy."

Salvatore pushes off the wall instead of answering, crosses the room, and bends close to Elian's ear.

"I'm your husband now. Which means you don't have to hide anything from me. Not even your body, because it's mine, and in a few hours it'll be mine forever, to do with however I want." His voice drops lower. "Looking at you, you're not even really what I usually go for, so don't flatter yourself. And these lips of yours don't deserve mine, because if I ever did put my mouth on them, you wouldn't survive the pressure of it."

His fingers trail slow along the side of Elian's neck as he says it, unhurried, deliberate, and Elian's whole body goes tight under the touch, his heart slamming so hard he can't tell anymore what he's feeling, only that it's loud, and it isn't only fear.

Salvatore's phone rings before either of them can move again.

He straightens, steps back, and pulls it from his pocket, already turning half away. "Get dressed. Quickly." He nods once at Elian, already lifting the phone to his ear as he crosses toward the window. "Let me go take this call."

Elian stands frozen for a moment, Salvatore's back to him now, low urgent words already spilling into the phone in a tone entirely different from the one he'd just used on Elian, and it takes him a full breath to remember how to move his own hands.

The moment the door clicks shut, Elian's legs give out.

He doesn't fall so much as sink, his back sliding down the wall until he's sitting on the floor, breathing in and out too fast, both hands braced against the boards like they're the only thing keeping the room from tipping sideways. For one second, alone, with the door closed and Salvatore's voice already fading into the corridor, he almost believes he can breathe properly again.

The door opens before he gets the chance.

"You idiot." His mother, already inside, already pulled the door shut behind her. "Do you see what you've put us through? Get up. Get dressed. Quickly, before Salvatore changes his mind."

Elian looks up at her from the floor. "That would be the best thing that's happened to me all day. At least I'd be free of whatever hell you people are handing me over to."

The slap lands before he even sees her hand move.

"And you think you'd be safe." Her voice shakes with something closer to fury than grief. "As long as you carry this family's name, he will hunt you down wherever you run, and he will destroy all of us doing it."

Elian's hand stays pressed to his cheek. "Why is no one talking about Matteo? He's the one who started this. Somehow I'm the one being blamed for all of it." His voice cracks. "Maybe I should just end it myself instead."

He reaches for the shears left out from the tailor's last fitting, still sitting on the dresser, and closes his hand around the suit instead, dragging it toward the blades.

"Go ahead, then." His mother's voice doesn't soften. If anything it sharpens, colder than he's ever heard it. "You fool. You've never once been useful to this family, not for a single day of your life, and even now, at the very last moment you could actually matter, you're still finding a way to refuse it. I regret the day I gave birth to you. You exist for nothing."

She shoves him back and wrenches the suit out of his hands before the shears can close on it, already turning for the door to call for the staff.

The door opens under her hand before she reaches it.

Salvatore is standing on the other side of it.

His eyes don't go to Elian first. They go to the suit balled up in his mother's fists, half torn loose at the seam, and then, slower, to the man who should be wearing it, still sitting on the floor with a red mark blooming across one cheek.