Shotgun Wedding: A Bad Boy Mafia Romance

by Natasha Tanner

  I slowly shake my head.

  She nods once, then faces the door like she's ready for the firing squad.

  "Then let's do this." Her small hand squeezes mine, holds me tight, and for the first time in what feels like years, I struggle to keep my face a calm, cool mask. Inside, I'm on fire. She trusts me. She wants me.

  Just like I want her.

  Even if I shouldn't have her, I'm a bastard. Literally. Maybe once upon a time I had enough goodness inside of me to let her go. But now—she's walking into the lion's den.

  I don't know if I can hold myself back from her, not anymore. Not when she puts her hand in mine, trusts me, would walk down the fucking aisle with me.

  I open the door and lead my little Kat past one of the byki, a bodyguard Viktor obviously hired because of his size, but not his stamina. We walk upstairs while the bull-like man is still wheezing at the bottom of the stairs.

  As we enter the hallway outside the church, I turn and look down at my little Kat's shell-shocked face. Part of me—I'd like to say the larger part, but that would be a fucking lie—wishes she'd have said no. She could have run. She might've had a chance at a normal life.

  Another part of me wonders: Could she have? Would you have let her go?

  I focus on her beautiful face, those green eyes with a layer of gold in the center, like she still has a piece of Ireland hidden inside her soul. Her face with those pink, pouting lips, those freckles that are finely dusted all over her cheekbones and button nose. The one large freckle right above her lip that I have, since I was seventeen, wanted to taste.

  How many nights had I tossed and turned, a horny fucking clueless kid, wondering where else she had freckles?

  And now, tonight, I could find out.

  I take her delicate face in my hands. Kat just looks at me, confused, her eyes glowing green in the setting sunlight. The stained glass behind her lights up like fire. Her eyebrows raise, little wings in flight, as I move close, closer.

  She takes a quick little breath as I lean in, like she thinks I might kiss her. I suddenly want to, more than anything. But this is business—and even if there's something still between us—I'm certainly not acting like I give a shit about her. Not in front of any of the psychos who work for Solonik.

  "Kat," I whisper. "You don't have to do this. So what if they kill your father? What's he ever done for you?"

  Tears well up in Kat's eyes. "So I say no, and they just let me walk?"

  I let her go, move back, shrug. "You say no, they take your business, they take your father." I give her a hard look. "And you don't walk. You run." I don't say out loud, I'll help you. They'll never find you. I'll go with you.

  Would I go with her?

  Kat hesitates, biting her lower lip. I watch that full bottom lip caught under her little white teeth. Yeah, who am I kidding, I'd go with her.

  "Gray, I—I can't let them kill my father. Even after everything he's done, even if they truly would met me go, I can't do that. That's not who I am."

  My heart swells at the same time my soul drops: she's so brave, so beautiful, so perfect. But I'm a murderous bastard. I shouldn't touch her, I shouldn't corrupt her.

  But I can't seem to stop myself from wanting her, now that she's standing before me. Now that I can smell the light, mint scent of her shampoo. Now that I can touch her delicate face, feel her hair brush like angel's wings over my calloused hands.

  Kat stops suddenly in the small church entryway. She's framed in front of the large, double doors leading into the church. Her auburn hair curls at the ends, and she looks so beautiful she could be a painting or statue hanging on the wall her.

  And she's mine. She's finally all fucking mine.

  Kat smiles up at me, and though I keep my face impassive, it is the best fucking feeling in the world. It's better than any high I've had; I realize I could get addicted to this feeling.

  She puts her light little hand on my arm, gives me a squeeze, and says, "Don't worry, Gray. I won't hold you to any vows. I know this wedding doesn't mean anything."

  She looks straight ahead as the doors open.

  "As soon as they forget about us, we can get a divorce." She gives me one more small, sad smile. "And then we'll both be free."

  5

  Kat

  I watch Grayson's face transform before me. It's like watching thunderclouds roll in across a calm sea.

  If I hadn't grown up with him, I don't think I would have been able to tell the difference from before I told him we could get a divorce, to after. On the surface, he looked the same: tall, gorgeous, deadly.

  But the small things: the way his jaw suddenly tensed, the oh-so-slight tension vibrating through his body, the way his eyes moved from feeling like the sky at dawn to a storm on the horizon.

  He moved a foot away from me, but it felt like he was suddenly on the other side of the Grand Canyon.

  Was it my imagination? No, I could feel the change. In the air, in his emotions, even in my own body. But why would he be upset? He couldn't possibly want to marry me, could he? That made no fucking sense. If he wanted to be with me, then why the hell had he left seven years ago and never looked back?

  The sacristy door opens suddenly and Father Anthony appears, looking nervously left and right, then appearing visibly relieved that Solonik isn't in the hall.

  "You are ready now?" the priest asks quietly. Father Anthony's been getting quieter and quieter, even since Solonik dragged him out of his bed, threw three hundred in the offertory plate, then waved a gun around in the vestibule. I'd been hoping he would call the cops, but apparently even a church wasn't a safe haven from Viktor Solonik.

  "The men are waiting inside to witness the…holy union." Father's voice trails off.

  I barely have time to nod when the interior doors to the church itself fly open, and there they are: my father and Viktor Solonik. I feel ill suddenly. My father looks jubilant, like he's solved world hunger and cured cancer, not sold his daughter off to a stranger.

  "Katie! Baby!" Dad weaves as he walks, and I wonder if he's drunk, or high, or both. How could I have missed that he was so messed up, for so many years?

  I know my smile is stiff as my dad embraces me. He smells like he always has; a little bit of the beer and grease from the bar, a little bit of body odor, overshadowed by the clean-smelling softener the laundromat uses. He looks like he has for so many years, ever since my mom died: his dark hair is slicked back in a way that was probably popular if you lived on a Miami Vice film set, his smile wide but his eyes sad. He looks and smells and acts like he always has, but my heart breaks as he folds me in his arms: he feels different.

  He doesn't feel like my dad anymore. He feels like a man who's betrayed me, who never loved me.

  I pull away before I start to cry, but force a smile on my face. I'm terrified and confused and probably in shock, but I'm not going to let these bastards see me cry.

  I barely feel it as my father takes my hand and places it on his arm. I don't even realize what he's doing until I feel a heat and a forceful movement at my side—it's Gray, striding toward my father, with a murderous look on his face.

  Gray grabs my father and pulls him away from me, my father flying a foot to the side like he's a rag doll.

  "What the fuck do you think you're doing?" Gray growls at my father.

  I stare at Gray, open-mouthed and confused, and I realize my father has the same look on his face, though there's a healthy amount of fear there, beneath his sallow skin.

  "Walking my daughter down the aisle?" dad says, his words only slightly slurring.

  "The fuck you are." Gray turns and takes my hand, placing it firmly back on his arm. I'm getting whiplash, both from his mood swings and the bodies he's tossing all over the place.

  He looks down at me, his hair and five o'clock shadow glowing golden in the light from the stained glass windows. His eyes are in shadows, and he looks like a towering knight from a storybook.

  But he's definitely not a white k
night.

  And I'm not sure he's here to save me, or…what?

  Gray's eyes are hard as he studies my face. "Kat, I meant what I said. This piece of shit isn't worth saving."

  I shake my head. I can't let my father die, no matter what he's done.

  But also: I can't be responsible for someone hurting my father.

  Gray wouldn't be…the killer. Would he?

  "Katie, girl, what are you guys talking about?" For the first time, my dad starts to get that desperate look I'm used to seeing on him lately. He's probably only fifteen years older than Gray, but he's lived hard. He's forty-five going on sixty.

  "You are getting married, right, Katie girl?"

  "Daddy, I can't believe you did this to me," I say. I turn away from both men and face the aisle. The long, carpeted runner leading toward it is blood-red.

  "Did what?" Peter sputters. "Take care of you your entire life? And now you're thinking of backing out? You ungrateful little shit—"

  I barely have time to register his words, much less cry over them, when Gray leaves me side. He takes one giant step over to my dad, leaning down to get in his face.

  "This is the last time you get to speak like that to her, ever again."

  Dad leans back, but he's still full of hot air. "You don't talk to me like that! You're just some glorified henchman and—and—fuck you!"

  "Oh Daddy," I moan. Can't he say the six-foot-five man in front of him is already on edge? Did no one else see how tense Gray was, beneath the surface? Could no one else feel the rage swirling from underneath the granite expression, the frozen stance?

  "From this day forward, you don’t even speak to her again. You think you could get out from under Solonik by selling your flesh and blood to the mafia? Well, we'll see how long you last out there, on your own. This girl was the best thing you ever did in your life, and now you fucking lost her. You sold her for shit, and that's all you'll have left."

  Gray steps back, breathing heavily. I watch him, mesmerized by his smooth, hard movements. The grace he carries himself with, despite having the body of a brute. The hard silver flash of his eyes.

  "You sold her, and I bought her. Now she's mine. Mine. And you should know something about me." He leans in one more time, so close Gray's and my father's noses almost touch. "I always protect what's mine."

  I shiver. I shouldn't like that. I should be fucking enraged, myself, for Gray claiming me. For leaving me, then coming back and claiming me without my permission? Because one man sells me to a bunch of other men?

  I shouldn't like, and I'd never admit it, but I do.

  But only because Gray said it. I realize, would I have married just anyone? Would I still be standing here if it was a man, a brigadier, named Markov—and not Grayson?

  Gray stands up, rears back, and punches my dad square on the nose. My father goes down like a bag of bricks, hitting his head on the floor. Hard. It bounces once, before it leans gently to the side. My dad would look like he was sleeping, if it wasn't for the blood gushing out of his nose.

  I'm frozen. I should be more upset about my dad getting stone-cold knocked out. I should be on my knees, trying to help him up, wake him up, stop the bleeding.

  I should be more afraid of Gray. Shouldn't I?

  "You ready?" Gray says, walking calmly back to me and taking my hand again. He tucks it under his arm like we're at a cotillion, not a shotgun (or, handgun? Semi-automatic? What the hell kind of guns did the mafia use?) wedding. "He doesn't deserve to walk you down the aisle."

  "And you do?" I mutter, taking a step forward.

  Gray presses my hand tight against his arm, stopping me.

  "We're in this fucking thing together," he growls. And then the stranger next to me—the one who's somehow replaced my former best friend and secret love—grips me tight and walks me down the aisle.

  6

  Kat

  The walk to the altar takes forever. And goes by in a second.

  I can't seem to catch my breath, or keep up with Grayson. He barrels down the aisle, rushing me down the red carpet but never once looking over at me.

  When we arrive at the altar, the priest motions me to step up next to him. I stand to Father's right, and Grayson takes his place across from me, crossing his arms like he's waiting for his taxes to be done, not to get married.

  Solonik and two of his henchmen are in the third row.

  My father doesn't even bother to come in. Of course, maybe he's still passed-out on the floor.

  "Dearly beloved," the priest intones, then winces at his own words. At the obvious lie.

  "Just get to the vows," Gray bites out. He looks so tall, so powerful, so angry.

  Solonik says something in Russian, and the two henchmen laugh. I feel myself blushing, even though I have no idea what the rough words mean. Whatever they've said, it sounds crass. Gray doesn't move a muscle.

  For the first time since literally falling into his arms, I realize he's wearing a suit.

  A nice suit.

  He dressed for this. How long has he known we've been arranged to be married? How long has he been in town?

  Did he ever really leave?

  I remember our last night together. I'd snuck out and we'd walked all night, out under a low harvest moon, the red brick buildings on the Brooklyn side streets glowing under the yellow streetlights. Gray had spent hours we with me, he'd put his arm around my shoulders and whispered jokes in my ear. With him touching me, even just laying his heavy, warm arm across my neck, the entire world had glowed and pulsed.

  I was seventeen, and had never been kissed, and desperately wanted him to kiss me. To do anything and everything with me…

  But he was twenty-two, and although he spent hours with me that night, he never made a move. He obviously didn't see me as anything other than a kid sister.

  He'd said he had to leave, that he'd gotten a job offer he couldn't turn down.

  He'd told me to hold on, and that he'd come back. His father and my father were both cruel in the same ways (they never met a child-sized punching bag they didn't like), even though they were wildly different. His father was a terrifying ogre of a man; I'd never heard him speak anything but the most heavily Russian-accented curse words mostly aimed at Gray. It was rumored that his father was a mafia man, and although Gray had never confirmed it, he had never denied it.

  Gray had hugged me for the longest time as the sun was rising. He'd whispered something in Russian, in my ear. Then he'd kissed my forehead, his gray eyes burning into me, his arms warm around me.

  And that was…it.

  He'd left for the mysterious job, promising to call me soon, and I'd never heard from him again. His cell phone had been disconnected. His father had moved away from our street to parts unknown. Gray had become a ghost.

  The priest clears his throat and widens his eyes at me.

  I glance at Gray's face, but his features are so still they could be carved from granite. His golden hair is on fire in the stained-glass window's light, the stubble on his chin a riot of reds and oranges and ambers. His wickedly full lips are tense, and his jaw tight—the only tells that he's getting married against his will.

  "Katherine and Grayson, have you come here freely and without reservation, to give yourselves to each other in marriage?"

  I can feel the heat building in my cheeks. Father knows I'm here under duress. And Gray can't want to marry me.

  Gray doesn't even look at me, not for one second. "Yeah," he tells the priest. His voice is low and rough. The only sign he's stressed is the slight Russian accent that tinges his words. I remember after one particularly bad beating when he was younger—he'd tried to tell me what happened, but his words had been so heavily accented I could barely understand him.

  "Katherine, do you come here freely?" the priest asks again. He's looking at me like, Now's your chance. Speak up! Get out of here!

  But…my father. I glance back at the church; Solonik is watching me. He grins at my discomfort, and I notice his
canine teeth are unusually pointed. He's like a vampire, thriving off my misery.

  "Do you come here of your own free will?" the priest repeats.

  I think of my father. I can't hate him. I can't stop loving him.

  I can't kill him.

  And—in the midst of all of this craziness—why is standing next to Gray the one place that makes me feel calm and protected?

  I am so fucked. I'm such an idiot. I can't actually think this man is the same as the person I loved so long ago.

  I can't actually go through with this. Can I?

  "Yes," I exhale. Why is it so easy to say that word? Why does it feel like not only the only choice—but the right choice?

  The priest sighs and continues. "Will you love and honor each other as husband and wife for the rest of your lives?"

  I can't keep my eyebrows from rising. No, of course not. Gray doesn't give a shit about me.

  "Yes," Gray says, his voice is low and steady, his eyes trained on the wall behind me. Wasn't he ashamed to be lying in a house of God?

  "Yes," I whisper. I'm lying too, right?

  He's mafia, some logical part of my brain—that was surprisingly still working—points out. He's probably hurt people. Do you think he worries about a little white lie?

  Oh God. Had Gray hurt people?

  I remember my father, knocked-out cold in the entryway.

  The priest clears his throat, again. "Do we have a problem, child?"

  I startle and glance back at Viktor Solonik in the pews. If Gray wasn't watching me, Viktor definitely was.

  "N-no," I say. "I mean, yes. Yes. To whatever you just asked."

  "Will you accept children lovingly from God and bring them up according to the Law of Love and Compassion?" the priest repeats.

  "What!" I almost shout. Now Gray is looking at me. And frowning. He crosses his arms. His big, huge, rock-hard arms. I glance back at Viktor, who looks pissed.

  "Sure," I say, mimicking Gray's pose and crossing my arms, though I then cross my fingers that are hidden by my side. "Why not?"