by Liz K. Lorde
Table of Contents
Forbidden Vows
Also By Liz K. Lorde
Dedication
Description
Table of Contents Instructions
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Take A Sneak Peek Of...Our Crazy Little Thing Called Love
Forbidden Vows
By Liz K. Lorde
Copyright 2018 by Liz K. Lorde
All rights reserved
This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons is entirely coincidental. This work intended for adults only.
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Also By Liz K. Lorde
Triple Threat
Pricked
Hotstreak
Our Crazy Little Thing Called Love
Gabriel
Hunter
Revved up Hearts
Revved up Soul
Dedication
To Jonathan
Description
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Liz K. Lorde
Chapter 1
Cas
The phone rings loudly and wakes me out of a sound sleep.
“Mmph. Hello?” I answer groggily.
“Prince Caspian! He lives! You’re gonna love my ass when you hear this bit of news!”
The voice on the other end of the line belongs to Nico, my younger brother and my right-hand man. He’s way too perky, and it’s way too early in the morning for my liking.
“I hate morning people, Nico,” I grumble. “This information better be worth waking me up for.”
“Look, man. I’m coming over! Can I come over?” His voice is unusually hyper.
“I—” I begin.
“Awesome! See you in a minute then!”
Click.
I put the phone down, thinking I won’t see hide nor hair from Nico until well past 1p.m.
I close my eyes and try to return to sleep when I suddenly hear a banging on my front door. It sounds like the hounds of fucking hell.
“Fucking Nico,” I grumble, kicking the covers off me and stomping towards the door.
The day has clearly begun, and I’m not exactly in the best mood about it.
I swing the door open, scowling as I do so.
Nico is at the door with a cup of hot coffee in each hand, a shit-eating grin on his face, and his blue eyes flickering with mischief and mayhem.
“Brother of mine!” he says, over-exaggerating the “mine” and blowing air kisses towards me.
“Fuck you,” I say, grabbing the hot coffee and stomping back into the loft. “What brings you here terrorizing me this morning, Nico?”
He tosses an envelope on my bed. “Get your suit, Cas. We’ve got a wedding to go to.”
“We do?” I ask, sipping my coffee. “No shit. Who’s getting married?”
“Have a look for yourself, bud,” he says, sticking his head in my refrigerator. “Why do you never have anything to eat in here, Cas? Jesus Christ.”
I ignore his comment, sit on my bed, and open the envelope.
The invitation is cream colored, made from the finest parchment, with gold leaf lettering. On one side of the invitation are the letters “YA” and on the other side are the letters “AR.”
Who the hell? I think to myself.
I open the bi-fold of the invitation.
“Mr. and Mrs. Boris Rachmanoff request the honor of your presence at the wedding of their daughter, Ana, to Yuri Andreievich, son of Mr. and Mrs. Vladimir Andreievich…” I read out loud.
It hits me.
No. No fucking way.
“Nico!” I bellow loudly, my voice reverberating through the loft. “Are you fucking kidding me with this?”
Nico appears in the doorway with a Granny Smith apple in his hand, munching loudly.
“Finally found something to eat in here, asshole,” he says between chomps.
“Nico, shut the fuck up and answer me,” I growl, waving the invitation in his face. “Is this a fucking joke?”
Nico grabs the invitation with his free hand, looks at it absently, flips it over, and hands it back to me.
“Nope. You see me laughing here, Cas?” he says nonchalantly.
“Goddammit,” I say, tossing the invitation across the room. “I’ve been looking for her for three years—three goddamn years. And now she turns up, and she’s ready to marry this Russian mook? Like I never existed?”
Nico raises an eyebrow at me.
“You know as well as I do that these marriages are a matter of contract, Cas, and not a matter of love,” he says, still nonchalant. “Doesn’t matter if she loves this ‘mook,’ as you call him, or not. She’s a girl, and in our world, girls are currency to be used in transactions.”
He looks at the invitation again.
“Yuri Andreievich, eh? He’s really come a long way from just being a bag man in the Rachmanoff crime family.”
I suck my teeth in exasperation. “Excellent insight, Nico. Thank you. When is this wedding gonna take place?”
Nico purses his lips until they form a thin line across his face. “Huh. Look at that. They’re getting married today. In a 6p.m. sunset ceremony, no less. Pulling out every stop for this—”
I growl, scream loudly, and flip my dining room table over, sending the marble crashing to the ground and into a million pieces.
“And when the fuck were you going to volunteer this information, Nico?!”
“You didn’t ask!” he screams back. “What the fuck, I’ve gotta tell you everything, Cas? You can’t read?”
I don’t even bother to give him a response—or a crack across the jaw—because I’m scrambling the web, looking for a flight to New York City.
“You know what? Fuck it,” I say out loud, flipping through my phone contacts and stopping when I see the private jet service.
I dial the number.
“Yeah, Mickey? It’s Cas,” I say. “The fuck you mean, ‘Cas who?’ Do you know any other Caspian Andreas? I need a goddamn plane to New York City. When? How about now, Mickey? What’s that? Thirty minutes? Okay, fine. See you then.”
I put
the phone down and look at Nico. “I can leave you alone with the family business, can’t I, Nico?”
Nico scoffs. “This isn’t the first time you’ve left me alone with the business, Cas.”
“I know, Nico,” I say, a little more softly this time, as I begin changing my clothes and freshening up. “But ever since daddy got shot by Boris, you know I’m in charge around here. And I have to make sure that my consigliere is on point, always.”
Nico sighs. “I get it, Cas. But I haven’t let you down yet. Why would I let you down now?”
“You wouldn’t,” I reply, fully dressed and ready to go.
Nico looks me up and down. “That’s how you’re going?”
I look at myself. “All black everything, and all Ferragamo everything. Why not?”
“All in black, though? For a wedding?” Nico asks.
I smirk. “Nico, my brother, there’s gonna be a funeral before there’s a wedding in New York City. Consider me dressed for the occasion.”
Nico’s eyes widen as I flip through my contacts once more and call for a blacktop car to take me to the air field.
“Aren’t you going to bring a change of clothes? You barely even washed your ass.”
I roll my eyes and shake my head. “They’re going to know it’s me coming, one way or another.”
I look out the window of my loft and, within five minutes, the blacktop shows up.
The sun was still trying to peek its way through the mountains.
“Alright,” I say, opening the front door. “Be good, Nico. You know what to do.”
I don’t give him a chance to answer before I slam the door and bolt down the stairs.
Chapter 2
Ana
There’s always that one thing that happens to you—which ensures you are not the same person you were before it happened.
For me, that thing was watching Caspian Andreas, the love of my life, get sprayed with bullets in a seedy 24-hour chapel on the Vegas Strip.
It happened three years ago, and yet, it plays in my mind as though it happened three hours—no, three minutes—ago.
Ever since then, I’ve been going through life as if in a dream, praying for the day that I finally die and go to heaven, so I can see my CasBear—as I used to call him—again.
For now, though, I’m adjusting the cathedral veil on my head and preparing for my wedding. I’m in a private changing room near the catacombs of the Holy Fathers Russian Orthodox church.
Various family members are coming in and out of the vestry, like a demented cuckoo clock, to wish me the best of luck in both English and Russian.
“Bozh'yeblagosloveniyena vas, Ana,” says one tetka—aunt, in Russian terms.
“God’s blessings be on you, Ana,” says another great-aunt or cousin.
It doesn’t even faze me.
Because I’m not the same.
I’ll never be the same.
When your last clear memory of Las Vegas is seeing the love of your life laying in a pool of his own blood, gunned down unceremoniously by a bunch of Russian thugs with AR-15’s—you become…hard.
And speaking of Russian thugs, in walks the one who gunned him down now—the same one I will have the “privilege” of marrying in a few hours.
He smirks when he sees me. “Beautiful,” he says, his thick accent reverberating throughout the vestry.
I snarl at him. “You know it’s bad luck to see the bride before the wedding, Yuri.” I almost spit out his name.
He laughs and paws at my breasts, which are barely concealed through the lace-white illusion atop my Pnina Tornai gown that’s drenched in Swarovski crystals. “Bride, schmide,” he jokes, pawing at me. “These are mine either way.”
With one forceful shove, I push him away, sending him flying across the room. “You’ll get whatever you want when we’re husband and wife,” I bark at him, “but until I walk down that aisle, you get nothing, Yuri. You hear me? Nothing!”He laughs and runs his fingers through his hair. “This kitten has claws,” he remarks slyly.
“You know what, Yuri,” I say, pointing to the door. “Get the fuck out!”
“You’d curse in a church, Ana?” He makes the sign of the cross. “May God forgive you.”
“Get out!” I screech, tossing a bottle of perfume at him.
He runs out the door and slams it behind him, causing the perfume to smash against the door jamb and break into a million pieces.
The whole room now smells of Chanel No. 5.
“Terrific,” I grumble. “Another $340 down the drain.”
I turn back to the mirror and absentmindedly adjust my veil again.
I’m not the same girl I was. I’m just not the same.
Yuri pokes his head back into the room.
“I almost forgot, my milaya,” he says, opening my hand and placing a ring inside it. I recognize it immediately.
This is Cas’ ring.
“This is what will be on your finger in just a few hours,” he says with a devilish smirk on his face.
He runs out before I can scream at him, cackling like a warlock as he slams the door.
“I hate this son-of-a-bitch,” I grumble to no one in particular.
Yes, I know I’m nothing more than currency in Russian mob dealings—I’m a girl, after all, and I can’t be seen holding guns or taking numbers.
Yes, I know this is what my father wants. But I also know, I would sooner die than be married for more than a few minutes to that man.
To say I don’t love him is the understatement of the millennium; I actively, openly loathe him. But there’s no need to worry, because I have a plan.
I fish around in my purse and find what I’m looking for—a pink butterfly knife. I practice opening it with one flick of my wrist. It’s amazing, I say to myself as it unfolds with a slight whoosh.
I’m fully armed in 60 seconds or less.
I stick it in my bouquet, filled with long-stemmed roses and sunflowers, looking inconspicuous against the red-and-yellow.
Red, for blood.
This isn’t something I necessarily want to do—I’ve never taken a life before, after all.
But this is something that I have to do.
I am not chattel.
I am not property.
I am not currency.
I’m Ana Rachmanoff, and I’m lost without my CasBear. If it comes down to dying or marrying this Russian asshole, then I’ll take dying with no hesitation.
I lay out the plan, once more, in my head: I’ll walk down the aisle, with Daddy on my side, just like in the rehearsal.
The priest will give a blessing.
Mass will start.
We will turn to each other and begin our vows.
Yuri, of course—will be asked first if he takes me—Ana, to be his lawfully wedded wife; to have and to hold from this day forward, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, forsaking all others for as long as we both shall live.
I’ve been through this before, I say to myself as I run down the vows.
And he, of course, will say “I do,” because he can’t wait to get some of this pussy.
And that’s all he can think about, and we all know he’ll only stay married to me until I turn 40, where—like he always says—he’ll trade in “a 40 for two twenties,” ha haha, so funny!
And he really thinks it’s funny. Jerk.
And then, it will be my turn.
The priest will ask me if I take him—Yuri, to be my lawfully wedded husband; to have and to hold from this day forward, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, forsaking all others for as long as we both shall live.
And I will say, “I do.”
And I will draw the knife and slit his throat.
And then I will take my own life. Because I know that once I slit Yuri’s throat, no one will let me leave the church alive.
It’s better to die on my own terms than theirs anyway.
I smile, content on my plan, and stand up. “Let
’s do this, Ana,” I say to myself.
I turn around.
And see a ghost.
For a minute, I think I’m going to pass out.
He walks towards me and confirms he’s real.
“Hello, Ana Baby,” Cas says, taking my hand.
Chapter 3
Cas
“…it can’t be,” Ana barely whispers. She looks like she’s seen a ghost.
I guess she has.
“Ana, it’s me,” I say as I close the door behind me. “Don’t…don’t be afraid.”
I take one step towards her.
Two.
Ana holds out a hand to stop me. Her pale, beautiful eyes are wide as she tries to take me in.
How could it be that she has grown even more beautiful in the three years that we’ve been apart?
“Cas?” Ana ventures, uncertain.
I flash her a smile.
“The one and only. Your one and only.” I glance at a bouquet of flowers that has fallen on its side, revealing a knife, of all things. I raise an eyebrow. “I do hope you don’t plan to finish what your fiancé started three years ago.”
Ana gives me a look—it’s dry and sarcastic and so achingly familiar it makes my heart throb. She reaches behind her to pick up the knife, twirling it between her hands with practiced precision.
If I’m being honest, it’s incredibly hot.
Not that I tell her that. Not now.
But it makes me think about something else I’d rather have her hands on.
“The knife is for said fiancé, actually,” Ana replies, pulling me out of my head. She looks at me expectantly, waiting to see how I react.
I just stare at her, mouth agape.
“Ana, baby,” I say softly. “You don’t mean you were going to—”
“Yes.”
“So you don’t love hi—”
“Of course not!”
I laugh at Ana’s vehemence, relief running through every fiber of my being.
“That’s good. That’s great,” I say as I take another few steps towards her. Ana puts the knife down behind her, and I take the opportunity to drink in her whole appearance.
