SWNOVELS Borrowed Bride: Chapter 19
Today is the day Leonardo Simone marries the love of my life. It doesn’t feel real, like some kind of cruel joke is being played on me and I’m waiting to wake up.
It’s been almost two years since I last laid eyes on Gianna, and not once has she left my thoughts. She lingers like a ghost, haunting my every step. Even after her scent faded from her pillows and her voice became nothing but a distant jingle in my mind, I kept loving her.
They say absence makes the heart grow fonder. But that doesn’t include finding out the woman you love is staying with your mortal enemy. For a few long months, I thought he had kidnapped her, so I did everything in my power to rescue her.
Then I heard the engagement announcement.
My world crumbled that day, and her memory turned to ash in my mind. Leonardo and I have been warring over territory for over a year with no end in sight. As far as I’m concerned, that engagement signed his death certificate.
Deep down, buried under all the hurt and the anger, my love for Gianna still lives on. There’s something about her going to him that I can’t settle with. It doesn’t feel like something she would do, and there’s a part of the puzzle I’m missing.
I’m sure of it.
“Marco?” Dante snaps me out of my turbulent thoughts and I lift my head from my desk to eye my father where he stands by the door.
“What?”
“We lost fourteen more men today,” he says, sighing deeply. The war has been tough on everyone, but it seems to affect my father especially. He tells me it’s because he’s watching men he nurtured die for something pointless, and then we usually argue. I want to kill Leo. I want to crush his family name into dust. In my father’s opinion, I’m draining the family because I can’t let go of a woman who doesn’t care for me.
Part of me knows this is the truth. The rest of me won’t believe it until I hear it from Gianna herself.
“Send flowers,” I say, then I return to the plans on my desk. While Leonardo gets married, I plan on burning down every warehouse with even a remote connection to the Simone family.
“Half of them don’t have family to send flowers to,” Dante says. He walks forward, scanning the plans on the desk. Then he snatches up a photograph of Gianna from near my elbow. The picture is of her in front of a window at Simone estate, and if that place wasn’t some kind of fortress, then I would have taken her back already.
“How many more,” my father says with a bite of disgust as he tosses the picture back down. “How many more will die before you concede to Leonardo’s demands and bring an end to this war?”
“You would have me give up?” I glare up at him. “And spit on all the respect holding up our family name?”
“If you keep going this way, there will be no family name left,” Dante says. “Marco, please. You have to pull us back from this path before it’s too late. No one is worth this much carnage.”
“Do you think fucking Leonardo has people telling him to bow to my demands?” I snarl, standing so abruptly that the chair tips back against the wall. “No. He has men who burn down the schools our children attend, flood the market with contaminated drugs, and pay the cops enough that half our men end up locked up on bogus charges. He doesn’t back down, so why should I?”
“You are both fighting different battles,” Dante mutters. “Why can’t you see that?”
“You know what I see?” I prod him firmly in the chest. “I see a coward who wants to turn tail and give up everything we have ever worked for.”
“Am I a coward?” His bushy brows knit together. “Your path is destroying my legacy.”
His legacy? “I am your legacy.”
I push past him, unable to stomach another round-robin argument, and leave the room. I stride through the mansion, intent on seeking out my sister but on the way there, I run into Tara.
She is the only other person who has a chance to understand my turmoil over Gianna.
“Sir.” She greets me with a tight smile and holds out a small piece of card. It’s no bigger than a business card. “This arrived for you.”
I take it and eye the gold swirls across the surface, then I glance at Tara. “You know what day it is?”
She meets my eyes and nods. “Yes, sir.”
“Have you … heard from her?”
Tara shakes her head, then speaks softly, “I would tell you if I had.”
We part, and I resume striding through the estate. I don’t stop until I find myself in my sister’s greenhouse.
She greets me with a paper-thin cough and a wide smile. “Marco,” she says, taking one of my hands between both of hers. “I have been waiting for you.”
“Tell me Emilia, tell me I’m not throwing this entire family into the fire.” I drop into the seat across from her and place my other hand over the tops of hers. “Tell me I’m doing the right thing.”
Emilia tilts her head. “I can’t tell you that because I don’t know what the right thing is.”
“Father thinks I’m blinded by rage, that I’m obsessed with only killing Leonardo.”
“Are you?” she asks, running her pale eyes over my face.
“Maybe.”
“But for Gianna, you will do anything.”
“Yes. She left because she was scared. And I understand that. This world—my world, it’s intense. She’s a flower and I’m the frost.”
Emilia snorts and turns her attention to her tea. “You are a terrible poet.”
“You know what I mean.” I sigh deeply and fish the card Tara gave me from my pocket. “She wanted out of this and he dragged her back. And I don’t know what game he’s playing with this wedding, but I know I need to save her.”
“Brother, have you considered that she doesn’t want saving?” Emilia asks softly. “A lot can change in eighteen months.”
Her words spear to my core, but she is the only one who can say them without facing my anger. With no answer to give, I open the card and my blood runs cold.
I lean forward and my mouth falls open in shock. “It’s from her.”
“What?” Emilia’s cup clatters back into her saucer. “Gianna?”
I tilt the card so Emilia can read it alongside me.
Marco,
I know you know what’s happening with Leo and I. But I need to know the truth. Come and meet me, but only if you are prepared to tell me everything.
Gianna
Below her signature is the best kept secret in the world—the address of where Leo and Gianna are getting married.
“The truth,” Emilia repeats, taking the card from me. “What does she mean by that?”
“I have no idea,” I reply hoarsely, and my heart skips a beat in my chest. As my stomach twists into anxious knots, my mind races. Is this a trick? Or is it really from her? Do I go alone and end up facing death, or do I turn up with an army only to find her?
“Emilia,” I say tightly, forcing the words through the lump in my throat. “What do I do?”
“Marco.” She clutches at my wrist. “One way or another, this war has to end. You know where she is, so you go to her and you listen to her. And whatever she tells you? You use that to bring this bloodshed to an end so I can have my brother back.”
Her encouragement chases back the chill creeping through my veins and I nod. I can’t force Gianna to come back to me, and I would never hurt her. But this might be my one chance to hear the truth from her own lips.
The reason she left. The reason she chose Leo.
I have to go.
I turn up to the church alone, parking across the street and observing the people who pour through the doors. Every single person wears a pin with the Simone crest, and most are armed. Some are obvious as they guard the perimeter, and others are more subtle, with bulges in their suits and handbags just large enough to hold a powerful handgun.
But the address is correct. Which means Gianna is there and she wants to talk, or I’ve been lured to watch the love of my life marry my enemy right in front of me.
Both are painful concepts.
Suddenly, cars screech around the corner and flood the street, pulling up at all angles on either side of the road. Leonardo’s men leap into action, but they don’t stand a chance against the men who climb out of the new cars brandishing assault rifles.
A handful are gunned down within a matter of seconds, and it’s so fast that I barely have time to register what’s happening.
I’m out of my car in seconds, gun in hand and I’m sprinting toward the church until I spot someone I recognize, and my feet stumble on the sidewalk.
“Dad?! The fuck are you doing here?” I crash into my father a second later, and he grabs me by the collar of my shirt.
“Me?” he yells. “You are the fool that came here alone!”
“I can do this!” I yell back as gunfire erupts inside the church. “You didn’t have to turn this into carnage!”
“I may not agree,” Dante snarls. “But I won’t let my son walk into enemy territory armed only with a fucking pistol. Count yourself lucky I had you followed!”
As the cacophony of bullets floods the air, my heart punches up into my throat at the thought of any of those stray bullets hitting the wrong person.
Namely, Gianna.
“This wasn’t supposed to be a fight!” I yell, wrenching myself free of my father.
I charge into the church and I’m immediately met with carnage. Those people who were there purely as guests lay strewn across the pews and the aisles, nothing more than bodies in the way. My men tear through the sea of Leonardo’s men, using the element of surprise to their advantage, but it’s not long until Leo’s men begin fighting back.
I have no idea where Gianna could be, so my target is the back of the church where she might be hiding in one of these rooms. The church floods with men, and soon, there are far too many to decipher who is who. Guns are abandoned as the fight turns to close quarters and gunshots are replaced by the slick, wet sounds of knives and blades cutting into flesh.
Men drown in their own blood, dropping like flies, and I fight through the sea of them fueled by rage and panic. All it takes is one bullet and my life is over.
Without Gianna, I am nothing.
I punch, bite, and claw my way through anyone who tries to stop me, losing my father in the crowd. I am a man obsessed and no one stands a chance.
By the time I stumble through into the back rooms, my shirt is torn and blood soaks into me as if I’ve just swam through a pool of the stuff. My knuckles ache, my jaw throbs, and several lacerations litter my body but I made it.
The first door I stumble through is empty, but the second is like a breath of fresh air.
I charge into the room and a squeal rises from the woman there.
Gianna.
She stands before me in a pristine, floor-length white wedding dress, with her long hair scooped up into curls on top of her head. She has one hand over her mouth as she stares at me with wide eyes lined with black and glitter. Ruby-red lips peek out from between her fingers and for a moment, she looks terrified.
“Marco?” she says, and her voice punches through me harder than any of those earlier blows ever could.
It’s been so long since I’ve seen her, or heard her, that I almost fall to my knees.
“Gianna,” I murmur her name like a prayer and a sensation like static rises behind my eyes. It’s her, it’s really her.
And she looks stunning.
“What—what’s happening?” she gasps. “What have you done?!”
“Me?” I wipe away blood that flows from a deep cut in my lower lip. “I didn’t do this.”
“People weren’t supposed to get hurt,” she whispers, and tears well in her big doe eyes. “I thought you would come round the back and we would talk!”
“This was my father. He thought I was in danger and he—” I wave one hand. I don’t know how long we have, and I don’t want to waste it talking about him. “Gianna, what did you mean in your note?”
“What did I mean?” she asks, pressing her other hand to the jeweled bodice of her dress. “I wanted to talk. I thought that was clear,” she whispers.
“About what? About why you left me?” I straighten up and hurt swells like a gigantic balloon in my aching chest. “Why you abandoned me? Why you broke my heart, and why the fuck you are marrying Leo?”
“I can explain!” Gianna steps forward, but her explanation has to wait as the door behind me crashes open and she flinches back with a cry. I spin around, expecting to see Leo but instead, it’s my father who stumbles through the door, gasping. Blood soaks his shirt and his skin is pale.
“Dad!” I fly forward, catching him before he can hit the floor and I drag him toward the nearest chair.
“It’s chaos,” Dante gasps. “I’m sorry, Marco.”
“It’s okay, fuck. Gianna.” I look up at her and she remains frozen in place. “Can you watch him? I have to end this. I will be back, I promise.”
Gianna nods hurriedly and as much as it tears my soul in two to do so, I leave Gianna with my father and sprint back to the fight.
The carnage is never-ending, but we gain the upper hand through sheer numbers. My father brought an entire army.
I fight alongside my men until Leo’s numbers start to trickle down. Once I am sure victory is secured, I trudge to the back room with a doctor in tow for my father.
Only when I open the door, my heart crumbles to ash.
The room is empty.
Gianna and my father are gone.