My Ruthless Husband Discovered My Secret On Our Wedding Night — And What He Did Next Shook Me To My Core
Part 1
The contract was signed in blood and champagne.
Matteo expected a transaction.
He expected a seasoned syndicate daughter who knew how to fake a sigh and cash a check.
Instead, he got me.
Standing in the sterile hotel penthouse, drowning in forty pounds of heavy white silk, I was shaking.
It wasn’t the calculated tremble of a practiced player.
It was bone-deep terror.
When his hand brushed my bare shoulder, I flinched.
The realization hit him like a crowbar to the ribs.
He snapped.
The heavy oak door of the penthouse clicked shut.
The sound echoed like a gunshot in the cavernous room.
Matteo dropped the brass key card onto the marble foyer table.
It clattered with a sharp, abrasive noise.
I stood three feet away from him, shrinking into the fabric of my dress.
He didn’t look at me immediately.
His jaw ached from six hours of forced smiles.
The muscles in his neck pulled taut like a piano wire.
He loosened his silk tie.
He ripped it from his collar with a brutal yank and tossed it over the back of a velvet armchair.
The air in the suite smelled like floor wax and ozone.
There was an inescapable scent of white lilies.
The hotel had filled the room with them.
It was a romantic gesture from management for the newlyweds.
Matteo looked like he wanted to drag the vases into the hall and smash them.
You can take your shoes off, he instructed.
His voice scraped raw by cigars and endless toasts.
I stood near the floor-to-ceiling windows.
I stared out at the blurred sodium-orange lights of the city.
The wedding dress was a monstrosity of Venetian lace and tulle.
It caught the dim light, looking less like a garment and more like a cage.
It was designed to show the wealth of my father’s syndicate.
It was proof that I was a valuable asset handed over to seal a territory dispute.
I hadn’t spoken since we left the reception hall.
Slowly, I reached down and unbuckled the straps of my white heels.
I stepped out of them.
They lay discarded on the thick carpet like dead white birds.
I shrank an inch in height.
I felt impossibly small against the backdrop of the sprawling dark city.
Matteo walked over to the mini-bar.
The clink of ice tongs against crystal was the only sound in the room.
He poured two fingers of amber scotch.
He didn’t offer me any.
He took a long swallow of the liquor.
The bedroom is through there, he gestured with the heavy glass.
I’ll give you ten minutes to get out of that thing.
I didn’t move.
My bare, powdered shoulders rose and fell in a shallow, erratic rhythm.
The air in the room felt suddenly thick.
I watched a single drop of condensation roll down the side of his glass.
Sofia.
He said my name flatly.
It wasn’t a request.
I turned to face him.
The heavy bridal makeup stood out starkly against my drained skin.
My dark hair was pinned up in an elaborate, painful-looking structure of curls.
I looked at him with entirely too wide eyes.
There was no defiance in them.
There was no calculated seduction.
Just a frantic, cornered energy.
The zipper, I whispered.
My voice was thin, raspy.
I can’t reach it.
Matteo exhaled harshly through his nose.
He set the glass down on the credenza.
Turn around.
He crossed the room, the carpet swallowing his footsteps.
As he stepped behind me, I braced myself.
He smelled of expensive tobacco and impending violence.
His knuckles brushed the skin of my spine.
I jolted.
He paused, his hands hovering in the air.
Stand still, he muttered.
He found the hidden metal tab of the zipper.
He tugged it downward.
The teeth parted with a harsh tearing sound.
As the rigid bodice loosened, I let out a breath I had been holding for hours.
The dress didn’t fall.
It was too heavy, structured with boning and wire.
Push it down, he instructed, stepping back.
He didn’t want to touch me more than necessary.
This was a duty.
The families required a consummation to finalize the treaty.
By tomorrow morning, the sheets needed to be messed.
The marriage had to be legally binding in the eyes of the old men who ran our lives.
I wriggled my shoulders, pushing the heavy fabric down.
It pooled at my feet in a shimmering puddle.
I stepped out of it, leaving the cage behind.
Matteo’s breath caught in his throat.
It was a sharp, involuntary hitch.
I wasn’t wearing imported French lace lingerie.
There were no garters, no sheer silk designed to provoke.
I was wearing plain white cotton underwear.
It was utilitarian, the kind of garments a schoolgirl wore.
My skin was covered in a fine layer of goosebumps.
My ribs visibly rose and fell under the harsh overhead light.
I crossed my arms over my chest, shivering.
The room was comfortably warm.
Matteo stared at the harsh lines of my collarbones.
He looked at the bruised-looking skin under my eyes.
A cold, ugly feeling seemed to coil in his gut.
Go to the bed, he ordered, his voice dropping an octave.
I nodded once, a jerky, robotic motion.
I walked toward the double doors.
The bedroom was swallowed in shadows.
It was illuminated only by the ambient glow of the city.
The bed was massive, a sprawling expanse of pristine white linens.
It looked more like an altar than a place to sleep.
I sat on the edge of the mattress.
I didn’t pull the covers up.
I just sat there, my hands gripping the edge of the bed so tightly my knuckles were white.
The silence was heavy.
It was broken only by the hum of the air vents.
A distant siren wailed miles below.
Matteo followed me in.
He unbuttoned his shirt, shedding the expensive wool.
He tossed it onto a bench.
He was a man built by violence.
His torso was mapped with faded scars.
They were souvenirs from a life I was now permanently tethered to.
I stared at the ridge of a knife scar on his ribs.
My eyes tracked the jagged line with a morbid fascination.
He sat down beside me.
The mattress dipped under his weight.
I immediately shifted my weight in the opposite direction.
Relax.
It sounded like an order, not a comfort.
He didn’t know how to comfort.
He reached out and cupped my jaw.
My skin was ice cold.
I clamped my eyes shut.
My eyelashes trembled furiously against my cheeks.
I was bracing for impact.
He leaned in and pressed his mouth to mine.
It was like kissing a statue.
My lips were pressed tightly together, unyielding.
I sat rigid, enduring him.
He slid his hand to the back of my neck.
He tried to tilt my head back, trying to force some kind of reaction.
His thumb brushed the erratic hammering pulse at my throat.
It was racing so fast it felt like a bird trapped under glass.
He pulled back.
Look at me.
His voice was a low rumble in the quiet room.
I opened my eyes.
They were wet, tears pooling in the corners.
Annoyance flared in his features.
He shifted his knee, bumping against my thigh.
He slid his hand down my side, resting his palm flat against my stomach.
My muscles seized beneath his touch.
He pushed me gently backward.
I let him maneuver me flat on the mattress.
I stared up at the ceiling like a patient waiting for a surgeon’s knife.
Matteo bracketed my body with his arms.
He slid his hand lower, brushing past my hip.
I let out a sharp, choked gasp.
I clamped my legs together in a violent, involuntary reflex.
My hands flew down, grabbing his wrist with surprising strength.
My nails dug into his skin.
Don’t.
The word choked out of me like a sob.
Matteo froze.
He looked at my hands, white-knuckled around his wrist.
He looked up at my face.
The primal panic of the absolute unknown was written clearly across my features.
The math clicked into place in his mind.
The plain cotton underwear.
The extreme physical rigidity.
The fact that my father had kept me locked away at an estate in the distant estate.
Sofia, his voice was suddenly hollow.
How old are you?
I swallowed hard.
Tears spilled over my temples and soaked into the pillowcase.
Twenty.
And before me?
He trailed off, unable to finish the sentence.
I shook my head, a frantic side-to-side motion on the pillow.
No one.
Never.
Just please get it over with.
The words hit him with the force of a physical blow.
Get it over with.
Like a beating.
Like a punishment.
Matteo ripped his hand out of my grasp.
He pushed himself off the bed.
He stumbled backward, his calves hitting the edge of a heavy oak dresser.
He stared at me lying there, curled slightly inward.
He was twenty-eight.
He had killed men, ordered the destruction of warehouses, manipulated the law.
He was a monster.
But he was a monster with a code.
He didn’t take from those who had nothing to give.
My father had sold him a virgin, a sacrifice handed over to a butcher to settle a debt.
A wave of sudden blinding rage washed over him.
He turned and slammed his fist into the top of the oak dresser.
The wood didn’t yield.
The skin over his knuckles split.
I flinched violently at the sound.
I let out a small squeak and pulled my knees up to my chest.
Don’t move, he snarled.
He paced to the window.
He ran a hand through his hair, gripping the strands tight enough to hurt.
He wanted to drag my father out of whatever safe house he was hiding in and beat him unconscious.
He looked back at the bed.
I was trembling so hard the mattress vibrated.
Blood dripped from his knuckles.
One drop.
Two.
They hit the thick beige carpet with a dull, heavy silence.
They left dark, irreversible stains.
He watched the second drop fall.
He walked into the en suite bathroom.
He pushed the heavy glass door open with his shoulder.
The fluorescent lights flickered on.
He leaned over the marble sink.
He shoved his hand under the faucet, cranking the cold water all the way up.
The freezing stream hit his split skin.
The pink swirl of water spiraled down the stainless steel drain.
He grabbed a thick white hand towel from the rack.
He wrapped it tightly around his fist.
Then, he walked over to his leather duffel bag.
He unzipped the main compartment.
He bypassed the stacks of cash.
And then, he reached for the cold steel folding knife.
