Page 20 of Ruthless Vow
“What?” Her voice has gone small. Confused.
“Why would you. Cassia, what have you done?”
“I married him, Mamma. Dante Santoro. It’s done.”
A wounded-animal noise tears through the receiver. Not a gasp, not a sob. Worse than both. It drives straight through my sternum.
“No.No, you didn’t. You couldn’t. Cassia, your sister was supposed to.”
“Elena ran.” My voice comes out flatter than I intended. “Someone had to fix it.”
“But not you.” She’s crying now, I can hear it, the wet hitches in her breathing. “Not my baby, not you, you weren’t supposed to.”
Weren’t supposed to what? Be worthy of trading?
My stomach drops. I press my teeth together until my jaw aches.
“Where’s Papa?”
A shuffling sound. Muffled voices.
Then my father’s breathing on the line, heavy and unsteady.
“Cassia.”
“Papa.”
Nothing. Just that breathing, that awful silence where words should be. I wait for him to say anything. To tell me I made a mistake, to demand I come home, to rage against the man who just took his daughter in a clinical ceremony with tobacco-stained witnesses.
He says nothing.
The silence stretches. My chest aches with it.
Fight for me. Just once. Just this once.
He doesn’t.
Dante appears above my shoulder. I didn’t hear him move.
“Give me the phone.”
I should argue. Should insist on finishing this conversation, on saying goodbye, on giving my parents whatever closure they need.
Instead I hand it over.
His fingers brush mine during the transfer. Electric. Brief. Gone.
“Umberto.” His voice is cold, controlled, every inch the Don. “Your debt is paid. Your daughter is my wife.”
I can’t hear my father’s response. Can only see Dante’s face, impassive, giving nothing away.
“We’ll discuss terms for future contact at a later date. Goodbye.”
He hangs up. Sets the phone down on the desk with a soft click.
Three sentences. That’s all my old life was worth. Three sentences and a dial tone and my father’s wordless surrender of the daughter who’d just saved him.
My body is hollow. My hands hang loose at my sides, fingers slack, and I can’t remember how to close them. My chest is still, my breathing mechanical.
