Page 25 of Merciless Vow
Elias blanched, his gaze flickering toward my father. "Me?"
"I need you to find the shell companies they're using to pivot their remaining assets. If we can freeze those accounts while the enforcers hit their physical perimeter, we’ll bankrupt them by sunrise."
"I —okay. I can do that." Elias rose from his chair.
"I'll come too." Addie was on her feet, the red silk of her dress shimmering like a warning in the candlelight.
"Sit down."
"If you’re going after their offshore pivots, you can use me. I worked in corporate and can?—"
"No," I said, the word final and absolute. "Stay inside. Do not leave the property until I return."
She looked at me, her emerald eyes wide and searching. I didn't have time for an argument. I reached out, threading my fingers through the hair at the nape of her neck. I pulled her into a hard, brief kiss. It wasn't the ceremony’s slow burn; it was a brand, a reminder of the claim I’d just staked.
Addie didn't melt. She snapped.
Her teeth sank into my bottom lip. The skin broke. The hot, metallic bloom of my own blood flooded my mouth. I pulledback just an inch, my thumb wiping a crimson smear across my chin.
I didn't growl. I grinned. "I’ll make you pay for that when I get back, sweet Addie."
"Then I hope you're as good at debt collection as you think you are. Because if the Ironwoods keep an offshore sweep in a tax-haven sub-folder, like the ones I spent three years auditing, you might miss the secondary encryption. Then you won't just be bleeding from your lip, you’ll be bleeding out of your brokerage accounts while yourbrawnis busy barking at the wrong door."
The insult stung worse than the bite. It was a beautiful, calculated jab at the one thing I prized above my strength: my intellect.
She was so fucking cute.
I laughed, a sharp bark of genuine amusement, even as my blood continued to stain my chin. Letting my wife go, I headed for the door, falling in line with my brothers like shadows of a coming storm. I left my bride standing in the center of the hall, a splash of red against the dark wood, her eyes burning with a fury I knew I’d have to answer for—or reward—before the night was through.
I knew I could fuck her into submission. There was no doubt of that. Afterwards, maybe I'd show her my spreadsheets when I was done with her between the sheets.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
ADDIE
At least I didn't have to do the dishes on my wedding day.
Mei Ling was a blur of soft-spoken authority, directing the servants to clear the uneaten feast with a flick of her hand. She moved through the Great Hall like a conductor, her quiet commands turning the chaos of the interrupted dinner into an efficient cleaning machine. Silverware clattered into velvet-lined bins. The half-eaten venison was whisked away before the steam stopped rising from the plates. It was a strange, haunting domesticity; the way the house simply reset itself the moment the men left to shed blood.
"Go on, Addie." My new mother-in-law nudged me with a knowing smile. "Get some rest while the house is quiet. If my boy is anything like his father, you won't be getting much sleep once he returns tonight."
She gave me a conspiratorial wink that left me flushed and speechless. Then she was gone, spinning back to the cleaningstaff to direct them about wine storage. I stood there alone in the center of the receding feast, her words echoing in the sudden, heavy silence of the hall.
Ivar had slunk off to do homework, his youthful grumbling a sharp contrast to the stillness the older Blackwood men had left in their wake. There was nothing for me to do.
I made my way back toward Vidar’s wing—my wing now, I supposed—with the red silk of my dress whispering against the floorboards. Was this the blueprint for the rest of my life? A sequence of repeating after a man, being fed choice morsels by hand—and god, the worst part was how much I’d actually liked that—and playing the part of a glorified dinner companion simply because I’d been born with the wrong anatomy for the "War Room"?
I stopped in the hallway, my gaze landing on Vidar’s heavy oak door. I felt like a servant who only came out to clean up. No. Worse. I felt like a doll who was being put back on the shelf after being played with.
I wanted a leverage point in a house built on secrets and blood loyalties. They talked about trust as if it was a holy relic. I'd never been a religious woman. Trust was just a lack of information.
My heart hammered like a trapped hummingbird against my ribs as I reached for Vidar's doorknob. I tried the handle. It wasn't locked.
I peeked inside. My body braced for consequence. I half-expected Vidar to step out of the shadows as if he’d been waiting for this, or for some unseen security system to scream its warning.
Nothing happened.
The room held its silence. The absence of sound pressed in on me, suffocating, as if I’d crossed a line I couldn’t see but could already feel tightening around my throat.
