The Marriage Debt (Dark Mafia Romance) (Debts & Vengeance Book 1)

Age 14

I look at the bunny chewing off something that’s on its foot. It seems stuck, and I don’t want it to suffer, so I get up close really gently to try to help it. There’s wire stuck around its little paws. No wonder it’s so agitated.

“What have you got there?”

Luca’s voice makes me shriek and fall on my butt. “Oh my God, don’t scare me like that!”

When I look up, the bunny is gone. Of course it ran off the second it heard my shriek. Dammit.

Luca snorts. “Chicken.”

Enraged he’d scare me like that, I punch his foot. He cries out in pain. “Fuck! Why’d you have to do that?!”

“That’s what you get for scaring me,” I retort, but my eyes immediately widen the second I notice where the bunny went. “Look at what you did!”

It’s right there, in the water up ahead.

Shit.

“What is it?” Luca asks, peering into the water like he doesn’t realize what he just did.

Asshole.

“A bunny. It got stuck, and I almost had it pulled out until you scared it away,” I hiss.

What do I do now?

I can’t just let it die in the water.

“A bunny?” he scoffs. “That’s why you’re behind the fence? Because of some bunny?”

How dare he? I get up and put my hands against my side. “It’s not just a bunny. And it deserves help.”

He shrugs it off like it means nothing. “Bunnies can swim.”

“Not when their paws might be broken,” I reply, watching the bunny try to claw its way up a branch. “And if you’re not going to help me, back off and leave me alone.”

I return my attention to the bunny, but Luca is not walking away even when I hoped he would. I try to reach for the bunny, but it’s no use. I can’t get close enough without ruining my dress. My mother will kill me if I get it wet at this fancy party.

Suddenly, Luca pushes me aside and pokes the bunny with a stick.

“Hey!” I try to push him.

Right then, the bunny falls into the water.

My heart beats in my throat, and I hold my breath.

Luca holds the stick like a dam to stop the bunny from washing away.

“Don’t hurt it!” I yell at him, but he shoves me away. “Asshole.”

He quickly flicks the bunny to the edge, out of the water. It’s soaked and crying, and he holds it close while looking at its paw. He rips off the wire and doesn’t stop looking while brushing down its fur like he’s searching for something.

“There. It’s fine,” he says.

My eyes fill with tears as he turns to face me. Maybe he isn’t such an asshole after all. “Thank you.”

His face suddenly turns sour. “I didn’t do it for you.”

Whatever. I take it back. He is an asshole.

Still, I can’t stop the grin from spreading. “Fine. As long as the bunny is safe.”

I try to take the bunny from him, but he steps away.

Goddammit. Of course this is all just another way to taunt me. “Luca … C’mon. Let me have it.”

A vicious smirk spreads on his lips. “No.”

Rage bubbles up to the surface. “I found it first.”

He only clutches the bunny closer. “And I saved it.”

What?

After all my effort, he now tries to make this about him?

He’s only using this against me.

“Luca …” I growl. “Give. Me. The. Bunny.”

“No.” He picks up the stick again and holds it out to me like he wants to strike me with it. “Finders keepers. It’s my bunny now.”

My jaw drops as nothing short of pure rage fills my body. “Luca!”

The stupid grin on his face is the one thing that always stops me from turning a blind eye. “Come and get it.”

Present

I’m flabbergasted at the sight of two soft, wobbly ears sticking out above a cottony pillow.

Is that … a bunny?

Without thinking, I hop toward it and grab it as it’s just about to open its eyes. The scraggy, old-looking bunny isn’t skittish at all, but meek as I hold it in my arms and look at it.

It doesn’t look like any random bunny Luca picked up from a store.

It looks exactly like the bunny I remember from years ago.

The one that I tried to help get out of the water while Luca snatched it away from me.

I immediately check its paw, and sure enough, there’s the scar from the wire.

That same bunny is still here, living in this closet filled with toys and a playhouse all for him.

All this time … Luca took care of it. Fed it. Played with it. Gave it love and affection.

While I thought he only took it to torment me and eventually had … killed it.

I cuddle the bunny close and take in its smell. It reminds me of all those years ago, back when we were stupid kids doing stupid things. If only I knew back then what I know now …

What kind of a man was hiding behind the monster he’d so viciously crafted.

I turn around to face Luca. He stands there with his hands in his pockets, watching me unravel.

My lips quiver. “Why?”

His voice is just as unwavering as his gaze. “You know why.”

I shake my head.

It can’t be true. It just can’t.

He can’t have done this for me.

“But you said you didn’t save this bunny for me,” I say, my voice getting more unhinged with each word that slips off my lips.

His stance grows rigid. “Sometimes, I lie.”

Sometimes, I lie.

The words strike me like the lightning that struck the night Liam died.

He’s said that before.

Way back when … the night he snuck into my room to claim my first kiss.

My first orgasm.

My first everything.

And threatened me not to tell anyone.

I always thought it was all a lie to get into my pants, to claim me before anyone else, because Luca was vicious, and I couldn’t picture him as anything other than that same vicious monster.

But I was wrong.

So wrong.

Tears well up in my eyes as my whole body trembles. “You said that too when you climbed through my window. When you—”

“Stole your first kiss,” he says, stepping closer.

I shake my head. “All those things you said that night were lies.”

“Were they, bunny?”

Bunny.

The name he calls me … All because of this little creature he saved for me.

Suddenly, I become hyperaware of every speck of rain hitting the windows around us. Because the sound is the only thing keeping me here in the present instead of digging inside my memories to unlock the truth hidden beneath his lies.

But I can’t escape the one thing that threads the past and present together.

Luca.

With his dark, wavy hair, those penetrative, hooded eyes, and that killer body of his … It’s even more impossible than ever to look away.

“No,” I say, but the word is barely audible as my throat feels clamped up.

It can’t be true. It just can’t …

“Yes,” he says, approaching me slowly. “It’s all true, even if I tried to deny it, over and over.”

He can’t be …

“I’ve been in love with you since we first met.”

I step back, but I can barely keep my footing as I stumble against the pen. I quickly put the bunny down and step out of the pen as my body veers farther and farther away from Luca and the danger surrounding him.

Never before have I been as frightened as I am now.

Not because of how badly he could hurt me.

But because of how much truth there is to what he says.

To what I feel inside my heart when I look at him.

When he kisses me.

But it doesn’t make any sense. “You bullied me. Hated me.”

He walks closer and closer, cornering me into the wall of this closet. “For years, I watched you look up to my own damn brother with those lovestruck eyes.”

I try to move back, but there’s no escaping him.

Not this time.

“I tried to chase you away, tried to make you hate me, so it’d be easier to let go.” He plants a flat hand against the wall behind me. “I even invited random girls over so I could forget about you.”

“That blonde with the big tits you booty-called…” I mutter, remembering the time he brought her home the night he was supposed to entertain my sister and me.

“I didn’t fuck her,” he answers, tilting his head as he looks into my eyes. “I couldn’t stop thinking about you.”

I can barely breathe.

“I tried everything. And you know what it did? Only make me hunger for more even though I knew what I could do to you if I got my hands on you.” He grabs a strand of my hair and twirls it around his finger. “I hated myself for it.”

He … hated himself?

All the little wheels in my head are spinning as I dig in my memories, trying to find the clues. All the times he yelled, fought, stormed away enraged. It was all right there in front of me, all along. But I refused to see because I was so focused on him toying with me that I didn’t see the bigger picture. The reason behind all the lies and torment.

Luca’s face and those kissable lips are right in front of mine, and I’m unable to look away.

“Do you know what it does to a man to watch the only woman he wants lust after another?” he asks, his veiny hand tightening into a fist.

“I … I …” I don’t even know what to say.

I instinctively touch my lips.

“I was the first,” he says, his voice gravelly, raw, and filled with emotions. “The first to kiss those lips.”

“But you told me not to tell anyone,” I murmur.

His jaw tenses. “Because I knew you were supposed to marry him.”

I always thought it was a fairy tale I’d spun up in my head, that Luca actually wanted me, because all he ever showed me was hatred and disgust, and it blinded me from the truth.

The one truth I ignored for so long … from the day I drove away from him in my car after he caught me kissing his brother.

“Why do you think I climbed in through your window in the fucking rain?” he says.

I suck in a breath, but my throat feels like it’s completely shut.

Rain splashes up against the windows just like it did that night.

That night he took everything from me.

All the puzzle pieces click into place.

My lips part, and the words nearly float out, “You … were jealous of him.”

He grabs my face and holds my cheek like I’m a precious jewel. “You made me want something I couldn’t fucking have, and I knew it. And when I took it anyway, you fucking hated me for it.”

My heart beats in my throat as he’s so close I can feel his breath on my skin.

His voice filled with so much anger as he says, “I never should’ve told you Liam was supposed to marry you.”

Thunder strikes, making me jolt up and down.

“All this time, I thought you were punishing me for his death,” I say, my lip quivering.

“I thought so too,” he replies.

“But that isn’t true, is it?”

He shakes his head. A simple move that barely scratches the surface of just how much my world has caved underneath my feet.

Another bolt of lightning lights the sky, filling the room with a flash of brightness, illuminating the sparkle in his eyes and the dark shadows that followed him for so long.

“You kissed him.”

That’s it.

That’s the reason behind all the lies.

And even when I knew, deep down, it was true … I lied to myself and told myself it wasn’t.

Because if it was … I couldn’t face myself knowing what it meant.

How deep his obsession with me really went.

And just how much his affection really affected me.

I called him my monster … but he just wanted to win.

Even if it meant chasing away the one he truly wanted … me.

So when my parents decided to marry me to Liam, it was an easy way out for me. A way to pretend nothing ever happened between Luca and me. To make sure that it was the right choice, that Liam was really what I wanted, what I needed, what I … craved.

“… I needed to know,” I say.

Luca’s hand slides down my cheek, his thumb grazing my lip, pulling it down agonizingly slow. “How it felt to destroy me too.”

Tears well up in my eyes. “I didn’t mean to.”

His fingers slide down to my chin, and he tips it up so he can stare me down with those beautifully haunted eyes of his. “Did he kiss you the way you wanted?” He leans in and presses his lips onto mine so softly that I almost melt into a puddle. “Did he make your heart pounce and your pussy throb?” Another slow and deep kiss makes me close my eyes, ready for more. “Did he kiss you the way I would have kissed you?”

Suddenly, he pulls away and leaves me bereft with inescapable emotions swirling through my body. Not the kind that makes you moan, but the kind that makes you sigh.

Something I only ever felt with … Luca.

After he looks at me over his shoulder with a tempting gaze, he walks out of the closet, leaving me in here with a pounding heart while staring down at a small bunny nibbling on some food.

All this time, I thought I was going insane, that what I felt when he first kissed me was just my raging hormones betraying me, and he took advantage of that.

But I was wrong.

So wrong.

I fought so hard not to feel anything to fit in, to make my parents proud, that I ignored everything that took me off the path that led me to Liam. And it hurt the only guy who ever cared enough about me and what I wanted.

I hurt Luca so much he wanted nothing more than to hurt me as much as I had hurt him.

I stumble through the closet and head out into the living room, where he’s peering out the window, looking down onto the rainy street below like he’s admiring the dark empire that he’ll soon inherit. But there is nothing but frustration in his eyes.

He’s got all he ever wanted. Money. Power. All the sex he could ever want just with one snap of the finger.

But it’s never going to be enough until … my heart is his.

I swallow, flushing away my pride, my honor, my dignity … so I can finally focus on the one thing that truly matters, the one thing that’s kept us fighting all this time.

Us.

“When I kissed Liam, I felt nothing.”

He looks up at me, the anguish still filling his dark-stained eyes as his heart bleeds into mine.

“But when you kiss me … I feel everything I’m not supposed to feel.”

He turns, his muscles straining against his black suit as he loosens a button at the top of his shirt, and it’s then that I realize I’ve never actually seen what’s underneath. And the thought of finding out titillates me more than I ever thought it would.

And as he looks me dead in the eye, he says, “Tell me what I want to hear.”

“Show me what it means. Please.” My voice is hoarse with emotions. “Kiss me.”

He pulls off his jacket, the fabric straining against his thick muscles. His eyes don’t stop gazing straight into mine as he drops it to the floor. One by one, he unfastens the buttons of his shirt until that too is peeled away, revealing all the rippling muscles and tattoo-covered skin underneath, and to say that I’m not prepared for the holy hotness is an understatement.

I expected a lot of things from Luca De Vos, but to add this kind of ripped body to that thick, bulging cock in his pants is just too much.

“It was easy to play with you when you hated me.”

A smirk forms on his lips as his tongue dips out to lick them, the bulge in his pants only growing harder and harder. Is it because of me? Because of the way I look at him?

“But when you don’t? That’s when things get real.”

I gulp down the lump in my throat.

“I’m going to ask you again … Are you sure? Because I am not going to fucking hold back if you choose this. I don’t love gently. My love is hard and rough and all things unholy,” he says, his voice raw. Goose bumps scatter across my skin just from hearing him talk.

I nod, clutching my hands into fists, equal parts terrified and curious of what might happen.

But I need to know what this could be.

If Luca could be more than just my evil husband.

If I feel more for him than the lust I’ve been experiencing for so long.

And if this could be more than just revenge and hatred between us …

Maybe we could be fucking good together, just like he said.

But am I really ready?

His eyes lower, like a tiger ready to pounce. “Use. Your. Words.”

I swallow away the last drop of fear. “Make my heart yours.”