Page 16 of I am Dressed in Sin (Death by Daybreak MC 2)
Grey lifts his glass and then flashes me a warning look. Play along, Gidge, please. Somehow, someway, over the last two months I’ve allowed him to start calling me Gidge. Even if he isn’t speaking aloud, I can hear it, can see it in the tightening of his skin around his fog gray eyes.
“To my son, whose return is a blessing from God. And to Gidget.” The Don turns to look at me, cocking his head slightly to one side, his smooth-shaven face just creased enough to give him character, but without doing a damn thing to detract from his looks. Calculated, engineered perfection.
He is truly and utterly terrifying.
“May your birthday be a time of reflection and celebration.”
“To Grey and Gidget,” Giulia purrs, tapping her glass against her son’s.
Because I’m a barbarian among the genteel, I reach out and snatch a wine bottle by the neck, clacking it up against Grey’s glass before chugging hungrily and slamming it back on the table. I smile at the Don with red-stained teeth. Like a bear with bloodied fangs. Like a Daybreaker.
“I’d like to add to that,” Grey says, rising to his feet and casting me another look. This time, it’s part admonishment for my stunt and part apology. For what, I have no idea, but his expression scares the shit out of me. Grey is my only ally. Not just here, but in the whole world. He’s literally the only person I have left. If he betrays me … well, I wish I were someone who gave into defeat that easily. If he betrays me, it’ll hurt, and it’ll suck, but I’ll fight through. Because that’s what I do. It’s what I was born to do.
A servant steps forward to move Grey’s chair back, and he turns to me, dropping down to one knee in front of me.
I feel the blood drain from my face, my red-stained grin fading into a deeply etched frown.
No.
“Gidget Kesselring,” Grey begins, sliding a black velvet box from his pocket that isn’t unlike the ones that held the necklace, rings, and bracelet I’m wearing now. “You showed such bravery during my rescue, returning me back to my home and family. It is surely God’s wish that our companionship be taken to the next level.” He cracks the box to reveal a diamond ring. It’s probably worth … well, shit, I’m a biker’s daughter, not a jeweler, but it’s likely worth a half-mil at least.
Grey meets my eyes, and in his, I see it again: a warning.
Refuse, and we both die.
“Would you do me the honor of becoming my bride?”
The room is so silent then, you could hear a pin drop.
My mind begins to buck and kick, rebelling against what I know I have to do.
It’s then that I think about them. My father’s officers. The four men I’ve slept with. The ones that watch me like something they desperately want but won’t let themselves have. Maybe I imagined it? Maybe I was nothing but a piece of ass to them anyway?
Then I think about how disappointed Crown was when he saw me at the clubhouse that night, how vehemently Grainger tells me he hates me, how sad Sin was in the cemetery during the funeral, how Beast told me if Cat gave his blessing, it’d be a battle royale that he wouldn’t lose.
I make myself smile with closed lips, even as I bite my tongue and bleed.
Because that’s how you survive against all the odds: you pretend, and you lie, and you swallow back the blood and bile until you get a chance to make your move.
“Yes, Grey,” I tell him, and his smile gets a little more real. If he truly does like me, then I feel sorry for him. I’m pretty sure I’m cursed. “Yes, I’d love to marry you.”
He slides the ring on my finger as the room erupts into polite applause. Nobody’s surprised by my answer. They were all expecting it. This is a play to them, a careful dance of actors with scripts to follow. One wrong move and you’re off the set—permanently.
Grey lifts up from his crouch, leaning forward and pressing his lips to my ear in the pretense of a kiss.
“Make it look real,” he breathes, and then he pulls back and kisses my mouth.
I think about Sin, and I think about Beast, I think about Grainger and Crown, and I kiss him with all of that wicked hot wrongness and perverted passion, that dirty chrome and leather, that aching want and need for something I can never have.
I didn’t want them to cage me.
I’ve just traded a chrome cage for a gilded one.
My arms wrap around Grey’s neck, but with my eyes closed, with my mind wandering, it isn’t him I’m kissing, but a blood-drenched outlaw in a leather cut.
