Merciless Vows by Faith Summers

3

Aria

Flashes of light mingle with images racing through my mind.

I can’t pick them apart, and I’m not sure I want to. There’s an ominous feeling about the atmosphere. Like something dark and sinister is lurking in the shadows of my mind with an answer that might break me.

I don’t understand it or why I would feel like this.

It feels like I’ve been stuck in this void for hours trying to make my way back.

Make my way back to where, though?

Footsteps sound on the floor, and my eyes flutter, trying to open, but I’m still caught between that state of asleep and awake.

My mind feels disorientated. The last time I felt this way was when I first woke up from the coma that took six months off my life.

I see one face that suddenly stands out in the swirl of images as I become more alert. It’s him.

Lucca.

I can see his silver-gray eyes peering at me in the darkness.

“I’m not going to hurt you.”

I can hear his voice, but his lips aren’t moving. His voice pierces through the fog in my mind and reaches my memories that are locked away.

“Come here to me.”

My heartbeat picks up at the low timbre in his deep baritone voice as it rings through my mind, and my pulse quickens in succession when he lowers to kiss me.

As his lips touch mine, I open my eyes, taking in the too-bright light of the sun. It’s so sharp and intense I shut my eyes instantly from the impact, then try again—this time shielding my face from the glare with my hand.

However, my hands drop the moment I see the long French window and my father standing in front of it with his back turned to me.

On seeing him and taking in my surroundings, I know I’m not home in my room. The frightening thought makes me bolt upright.

That was a big mistake for two reasons. The first is that the sudden movement sends a jolt of mind-numbing pain lancing from my head and through my entire body.

The second reason is worse as the memories of what happened last night come rushing back along with the terror that makes me jump out of my skin and run far away. If only I could.

I take note that I’m alive, but I’m not sure I should be grateful for that just yet.

Lucca kidnapped me and brought me here. And Dad is here?

Why?

Dad turns to me before I can ask the question and the solemn look on his face is another tell I should be afraid.

“Dad,” I rasp in a hoarse quivering voice like I haven’t spoken in months.

“Hello, Aria.”

“Did he take you too?”

“No.” The reply is almost tentative, like he’s taking extra care.

“What’s happening? Where are we?”

He glances at the door, and I look too, noticing for the first time that it’s open

and there’s a man standing just outside with a machine gun.

I suck in a sharp breath at the sight of the gun and stand, bringing a trembling hand to my chest to keep my heart from leaping out.

Jesus Christ, what the hell is happening?

When my gaze snaps back to meet my father’s defeated one, I don’t know what to think.

“Dad, what is going on?”

He comes over to me and stops a breath away.

“I don’t have much time to explain,” he begins. “Something bad has happened, and you need to help me.”

“In what way?” I blurt, holding his gaze.

“The man who kidnapped you is demanding your hand in marriage for business purposes.”

My mouth falls open, and the thoughts swirling around in my mind freeze. All I can do is stare at him because I don’t think I heard him correctly.

“W…what? What do you mean? I can’t do that. Marriage, Dad? Me?”

“I know it doesn’t make sense, Aria. But I need you to do this for me. For us. Or else…”

“Or else what? Why is this happening, Dad?”

“I can’t go into that.”

“What do you mean? This is fucking crazy.” He hates it when I swear, but right now, I don’t care what he thinks. “Explain what is happening to me.”

“I’m agreeing to the marriage, Aria. And signing over my legal guardianship to him, so things are under his control now.”

A tendril of panic slams into my chest, and my blood curdles before it boils.

What is he saying to me?

Is he going to sign over my legal guardianship to Lucca?

“Dad, no… you can’t do that,” I stutter, clenching my hands into tight fists at my sides.

“Aria, I have to.”

“But that’s everything to do with my life! Everything, Dad. How could you think this is okay?”

“I know it’s not.”

“Then do something to stop it. You’re the Governor of California. Do something to stop it.”

“I can’t!” he barks.

“Why?”

He stares back at me but doesn’t answer.

My father is a powerful man. You have to be to be governor of the state. But for all that power he exudes on a day-to-day basis, right now, he looks weak.

That ominous feeling hits me again like a warning. The same warning that has amplified my fears for some time. Again, it’s telling me the same thing. That what I see everyday is sugar-coated. Things aren’t what they seem to be. I knew it from when I awoke from the coma, and memories were spoon-fed to me. Some I knew in my heart were true. Others felt like lies.

I’ve heard things. Whispers of things, and what I don’t know, my cousin, Sienna, has filled in, within reason. Always within reason because I know, she holds back, maybe out of fear.

I think this is a first-hand situation that confirms what I suspected all along.

Nothing is right in my life, and this is just one more thing.

“Lucca is one of your enemies, isn’t he?” I blurt, and his jaw clenches.

“You know his name?”

“I do,” I reply, and the words feel like a joke for the omen of what’s to come. “I remembered him from before last night.”

His eyes widen at the declaration, and his gaze intensifies. “What did you remember about him?”

From the wild look in his eyes, I almost think I shouldn’t have told him, but what more harm can I do to myself?

“Not much, just that I met him before the accident. It felt like maybe it was at college. I don’t know. I just remembered him telling me his name.” I don’t know what the fuck that was about, and I can tell from my father’s expression that Lucca isn’t someone I should know about.

“What else do you remember?” He takes hold of my shoulders and stares into my eyes.

“Nothing.”

“Listen to me, Aria, it’s important that you don’t talk about your memories with anyone besides Dr. Pelchant and me. I will try to fix this. But, right now, I need you to cooperate.”

“Cooperate?” I hate when he uses that fucking word to me. He’s always saying it in my therapy sessions or in general when he thinks I’m being difficult. I back out of his grasp and glare at him. “Is that what you think this is? A mere case where I need to be a good girl andcooperate? How dare you do this to me?”

“Aria, stop it.”

“Stop defending myself and allow you to rule my life the way you do?” My voice shakes, and I hate the bastard tears that spill from my eyes. I can’t stop them, can’t do anything to even try. “Dad, I lost my mother and my memories. I can’t even remember you. How can you expect me to do this?

Everything was already such a big mess. How could it have gotten worse?

How?

“You have to do it. Everything we have hangs in the balance of this happening.”

“What do you mean? Tell me why this is happening.”

“I told you I’m not going into that.”

Obviously, he did something, and this must be payback or blackmail.

“This is happening because of some shit you did. I –”

“This conversation is over,” he cuts me off and backs away.

“I’m not doing it,” I spit.

“Yes, you are. I’m no longer asking. I’m telling you. This is one thing you will not fight me on. Things are out of my hands, so you need to do as you’re told. We’ll talk as soon as we can.”

My lips part as a gamut of emotions assails me. I don’t know how he thinks I’m just supposed to accept the lame as fuck explanation of the nothingness he’s told me.

But panic rises within me when he walks away, and I can’t believe this is it.

He’s going to leave me here.

My father is going to leave me here to this doom, and I’m more vulnerable than I’ve ever been.

I watch him walk through the door, hear his footsteps echo on the floor, then the same panic rising within me makes me move.

Casting aside my fear of the guards with the guns at the door, I run after my father calling for him, my voice filled with the anguish brewing in my soul.

But Dad keeps going. He’s down the stairs now, and the guards are coming after me.

“Dad,” I wail. “Don’t leave me here, please.”

Desperation makes me cast aside the fact that I’m humiliating myself and crying out for my father the way a child would. And that’s just the thing; losing all that I know and am has knocked me back to exactly that. To a helpless, powerless state of being where I need him.

He walks through the main door, and I run faster, as fast as I can, still calling for him.

I run out to the porch, where there is a mixture of guards. My father's guards are the faces I recognize.

“Dad!” I shout louder this time.

That makes him stop and whirl around to face me. But that’s not all he does.

His large hand flies up and strikes me across my face so hard I scream and fall to the ground. Before I can recover, he reaches for me in one deft move securing his hands to my neck as he lifts me off the ground.

I cough and sputter, crying harder from the shock of his sudden cruelty. He yanks me up to him so we’re eye to eye and the feral rage I witness burning within his eyes frightens me.

“Aria, you fucking listen to me.” He hisses in my face, and I shake so hard my body jerks. “You will do this. I won’t lose everything over your defiance.”

As he stares at me, this feels familiar, his reaction and this moment.

This feels like the real him I’m used to. Not the man who seemed to be nice to my face for one reason or another since the accident. In the clutches of his arms, I know the truth that we’ve had this type of confrontation before. This isn’t the first time.

“You stupid little bitch,” he growls, tightening his grip so hard around my neck I see stars. “I told you, I’d fix this if I can.”

The sound of a gunshot cuts into the moment, and I barely manage to turn my head to see Lucca standing at the door with his gun aimed at Dad.

Like last night he’s in full black, and the same menacing expression fills his face. It intensifies the longer he stares at Dad.

Lucca’s guards move in behind him with their guns raised too.

When he gets ready to fire again, one of Dad’s guards steps forward with his gun ready. It’s one of the new ones. Lucca shoots him in the head before he can do anything else. I can’t even scream at the gory sight before me as blood splatters everywhere and splashes in my face.

“It’s not wise to make promises you won’t be able to keep,” Lucca seethes. “Let her go, Raphael or the rest of your men are dead.”

Enraged, Dad releases me, and I cough when my airways open.

I stagger backward, dazed and confused, looking from Lucca to my father. At this moment, I don’t know who is more cruel.

My father, or this monster I’m supposed to marry.

The gruesome sight of my father’s guard on the ground with his body still convulsing should give me my answer, but when I look at my father, the darkness I see emanating from him refutes that.

“Look at you full of power,” Dad taunts. “I remember you being scum until the Pakhan took favor on you.”

“You can leave now, Raphael,” Lucca replies. “And if you touch her like that again, I’ll kill you. Rest assured, I will end you.”

Dad gives him a narrowed look, and his lips thin with displeasure. He gives me one last glance before he walks away, leaving me.

I watch him get into his car and the guards in theirs, and they leave.

It’s only when the cars drive away, and I can’t see them anymore, that I force myself to meet Lucca’s cold gray eyes that are already looking at me.

I didn’t want him to see me crying, but that is the least of my worries.

“Clean that up,” he orders his guards and cocks his head to the dead body on the ground in front of me. The two closest guards to him obey. He then puts his gun away and straightens with his gaze trained on me. “Come here to me.”

Those words. If not for the hard look on his face, I’d think I was still dreaming, still in that state of sleep and awake where he seemed like something else to me.

Not this monster. Yet it’s him. As I look into those soulless eyes, I know that he was something else to me—something I placed outside of everything and everyone.

I just can’t remember, but I feel it.

“Aria, did you hear me?”

I can hear him talking just fine, but I can’t move or speak.

I don’t know if it’s fear or shock that has me rooted to the ground, but I can’t move, and I’m trembling.

He comes closer, so close I can smell that musky cologne again, but unlike last night it makes me feel sick, and I’m numb from what just happened.

I don’t even protest when he scoops me up and picks me up like I’m weightless.

All I do is avoid those eyes.

He carries me back upstairs and sets me on the bed. When he reaches out to touch my face, probably at the bruise I can feel on my cheek, I turn my face away.

Some sense of awareness comes back to me, and I don’t want him touching me. I don’t want him near me.

“There’s a bruise on your cheek.”

“Don’t touch me, ever,” I admonish.

“Looks like you’ve gotten over the shock.” He straightens up and regards me evenly.

“You bastard,” I rasp, and his expression shifts back to that of menace.

“Yes, that’s the first thing you’ll learn about me.” His lips arch, and he runs a hand over his beard.

“I don’t want to learn anything more about you.”

“I think it’s best we catch up later, Printsessa.”

“Don’t call me that,” I snap.

He chuckles. “Fiery and feisty. You haven’t changed one bit. I always liked it.”

The infuriation that courses through me at his taunting words only exacerbates my rage.

“Fuck you,” I cry.

“Oh, I will most definitely be fucking you.” Desire lights up his eyes, and I hate the flush of arousal that heats my core when I think of him taking me in such a way.

“You will not touch me.”

“We’ll see about that, Printsessa.” It sounds like a promise. “Don’t worry. I’ll make sure you enjoy it.”

Victory lights up his eyes at my silent acknowledgment of my loss. I swallow hard and try to steady my breathing so that I can hold it together.

“There’s a bathroom in the corner; go wash the blood off your face. I’ll send someone up with an ice pack for the bruise.”

I’m grateful when he turns and leaves. The guards close the door, closing me in.

The tears come in full force seconds later, and I sink to the floor on my knees.

I’m scared. I’m so damn scared. I won’t even bother to pretend I’m not. But I am, and I don’t know what to do.

Lucca was right about what he said last night. No one can save me from him.

I already thought I was in hell under my father’s rule, but that was just the beginning.

I should have run away when I had the chance.

Now I don’t know what will become of me.