Ruthless Saint: An Arranged Marriage Romance (DeSantis Mafia Book 1) Read online

  Ruthless Saint

  DeSantis Mafia Series, #1

  S. Massery

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2021 by S. Massery

  All rights reserved.

  Editing by Studio ENP

  Cover Design by Opulent Swag & Designs

  Cover Photo by Marx Edgar Chavez

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Blurb

  He wasn’t the one I was supposed to marry.

  He’s cold.

  Brutal.

  Calculating.

  To his family, I’m a strategic move in their war.

  To mine, an alliance offers protection against our enemies.

  Still, there’s something about him that calls to me.

  A dark edge threatens to revive me. His gaze steals my breath.

  Even if my heart thinks this could work, my brain knows better.

  We say “I do” with his brother’s blood on our clothes,

  and the bars of my gilded cage slam shut.

  Our wedding vows are forever – ’til death do us part.

  But with enemies closing in from all sides, death might be closer than we think.

  Contents

  Introduction & Warning

  Playlist

  Prologue

  1. Amelie

  2. Amelie

  3. Luca

  4. Amelie

  5. Amelie

  6. Luca

  7. Amelie

  8. Luca

  9. Amelie

  10. Amelie

  11. Luca

  12. Amelie

  13. Amelie

  14. Luca

  15. Amelie

  16. Luca

  17. Amelie

  18. Amelie

  19. Luca

  20. Amelie

  21. Amelie

  22. Luca

  23. Amelie

  24. Luca

  25. Amelie

  26. Luca

  27. Amelie

  28. Amelie

  29. Luca

  30. Amelie

  31. Amelie

  32. Luca

  33. Amelie

  34. Luca

  35. Amelie

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Also by S. Massery

  About the Author

  For Ari

  Introduction & Warning

  Hello dear reader!

  PLEASE NOTE: some things happen to our heroine that readers may find distressing, including sexual assault.

  We first meet Amelie Page in the Fallen Royals series (although it isn’t necessary to read those before this story). She was the classic mean girl at her high school, Emery-Rose Elite. And her hero is her perfect foil.

  I hope you enjoy Amelie’s journey now as she takes the spotlight!

  Playlist

  Messed Up — Little Hurt

  False God — Ryan Hurd

  Sweet Little Lies — bülow

  I’m So Mad At Him — Kesly Karter

  Gone — Blake Rose

  can’t look back — Machine Gun Kelly

  Spaces — Jaymes Young

  Four — The Wrecks

  Give In to Me — Garrett Hedlund & Leighton Meester

  Slow Dancing in a Burning Room — John Mayer

  Prologue

  Today started with a wedding.

  Mine, to be exact. I had the perfect dress, a lace veil that covered my face, something borrowed, and something blue. Pearls strangled my neck.

  I didn’t picture my life like this.

  And I know what you’re thinking. Blah, blah, Amelie. Everyone says that. That’s true to an extent. Everyone does complain that their lives are miserable and they have no control.

  They don’t know real helplessness.

  Your every move planned down to the minute.

  Where to be, when to speak, what to say.

  While dread held my body hostage, my family was eager. They had been awaiting this day for years. Our house was filled with never-ending talk about the alliances they were forging. The steps forward we were taking.

  Steps forward meant power. Respect.

  Power required money—of which we had plenty.

  It was the respect part that dear old Dad was always chasing after, and perhaps that’s why he never was able to fully grasp it.

  That, plus one other important factor—respect could seem a lot like fear.

  Therein laid the trap: his eldest daughter was a hostage. And not just that…

  A bargaining chip.

  There was the dress and the veil and the stupid sapphire earrings that made my lobes ache. The walk down the aisle, toward a man I had done my best to understand. The eldest DeSantis brother. The one with the most to lose—and the most to gain, depending on the outcome of our union. We’d been in orbit for a while, and today we were on a collision course.

  But my entire world rotated on its axis that day.

  My life was planned from my sixteenth birthday onward, like the second hand of a clock. Onward; drearily, relentlessly forward.

  But my wedding?

  Instead of a kiss on my lips, it ended with blood splattered across my veil.

  And that… well, that’s where our story begins.

  1

  Amelie

  I learned of my impending marriage on my sixteenth birthday. We were at our summer home in southern France. Most summers were spent lounging around, enjoying the warm air that felt distinctly different from the United States. The buzz of foreign language, of time moving slowly, of happy, tired families outside our door.

  But my birthday always tended to be a wickedly lavish celebration. Sometimes a friend would be flown out for the week, sometimes a whole plane full. Sixteen was supposed to be special. Sweet.

  Instead of a friend flying in from Rose Hill, New York… it was a man and his sons who crossed the border from Italy.

  Jameson DeSantis had grown close to my father. It seemed that they were only staying in Sanremo for a vacation and nothing more. A summer ancestral home, a bit like ours, if we hadn’t purchased ours four years prior. He walked into the courtyard like he owned the place, kissed my mother on the cheek, and took my hand. His lips skated across my knuckles, and revulsion was my first gut instinct. Then annoyance.

  His sons—three of them, all in a row—had appraised me.

  I think they found newly sixteen-year-old me lacking.

  I found them lacking, as well, of any sort of manners and charm. They were wild boys, honed to a fine edge like a chef’s knife. The sharpness of them would’ve scared me if I had known any better. But there was an absence of everything that would’ve made them appealing. All except one.

  Wilder DeSantis came forward and mirrored his father’s actions, kissing my knuckles. His breath seemed to sink under my skin and into my blood.

  “You’re my future wife,” he said.

  I didn’t know what he meant, but I soon found out. The door of my cage slammed closed, and I hadn’t even noticed the bars being constructed.

  “Amelie,” my mother calls now, jarring me from my thoughts. “Here.”
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br />   I take the sapphire earrings and test their weight in my palm, then slide them on. Everything is expensive. Everything is lavish. They’ve wasted no expense on their eldest daughter. The stones are heavy in my ears, the pain a dull ache. I can deal with it for a minute, then an hour, then an evening.

  That’s how you swallow a sword: one inch at a time.

  “Your dress,” Mom urges.

  My sister sits in the corner, scrolling through her phone. We’re in the DeSantis skyscraper in Manhattan, too high up for escape. I think that’s part of it—they like their women trapped.

  If I had the urge to flee, I wouldn’t make it two floors before someone caught me.

  My father is a few floors below us, probably at the bar on the seventeenth. He’s much more celebratory than us. Mom seems solemn.

  “You’re strong,” she whispers, holding my shoulders for a moment. “You can do this.”

  But why?

  That question has been answered in a variety of different ways over the years, but nothing hits home like the truth will. It’s the only reason I keep asking: I’m desperate for someone to be honest with me. I know it has to do with our business in Manhattan, my parents’ late-night arguments. It’s been going on for years, so much so that it’s become normal.

  What they did to put us in this position—that’s the mystery.

  She helps me navigate into the dress, then turns me to close the buttons. It takes precious time, and I have to press my palms against the wall to avoid being shoved around. The dress is tight, like a corset, and it flares out at my hips.

  It gives me curves I wish didn’t exist.

  “Mom,” I say softly. “Why is this happening?”

  She pauses, then finishes the buttons. “You like Wilder.”

  “I like Wilder the same way I like pizza,” I retort. “It’s nice, I’d give it up if it was the one thing I could eat for the rest of my life.”

  My sister snorts. “Great analogy.”

  “Lucy,” Mom hisses.

  I straighten. “Just another hour or two, Lux. Then you’ll never have to see me again.”

  “Don’t call her that,” Mom says.

  Different names for different occasions—but calling Lucy Lux might be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. She’s the rebellious child. The one who gets away with murder while I am strapped with responsibility.

  Lucy stands, stashing her phone in her dress pocket. “It’s okay, Ames. Mom’s just on the verge of losing her only daughter.”

  Hurt flashes across Mom’s face, and she turns to my sister. “You are still my daughter.”

  Lucy shrugs. “News to me.”

  Someone knocks on the door, interrupting whatever response my mother had. Mom opens it a crack, then pushes it wider. All that’s missing is my veil, but it’s clutched in Lucy’s hand. A young DeSantis boy stands in the hall, flushed bright pink. He’s got to be no older than eight or nine.

  “They’re ready,” he says.

  Mom nods. “We are, as well. Come, Amelie. It’s time.”

  Lucy puts the veil in my hair, pinning it into place with two pearl-studded clips. “I’m going to get a tattoo of your face on my arm after this,” she whispers. “So I’ll never forget you.”

  I roll my eyes. “I’m not dying.”

  Her expression drops. “You may as well be.”

  I may as well be. Yes, that’s true.

  Mom shepherds us into the elevator, then a car. I imagine all the things Wilder and I will have to talk about. We barely had a chance to converse at the rehearsal dinner last night, and then he was whisked away by his brothers.

  But we have the rest of our lives to talk… and do other things.

  Maybe we’ll even fall in love.

  “You’ve got this,” Lucy whispers.

  She takes my hand. Mom rides in the front with the driver, and our car pulls out of the garage in a line of others.

  “I wish your friends could be here for you,” she adds.

  I close my eyes and concentrate on the warm French summers. The mosaic tile above the kitchen sink, the smell of rain. Happy things.

  Not a wedding in the small chapel just outside the city, closer to Rose Hill than Manhattan. Not what will happen after.

  2

  Amelie

  What no one tells you about war is that it’s discussed beforehand. Prior to the first shot being fired, there are meetings. Drinks. Political bullshit.

  There are plans and promises.

  Handshakes and smiles.

  Meanwhile, each side plots to stab each other in the back.

  “We had a deal,” my father yells. He’s livid, the embodiment of fire. Red face, explosive movements. All he needed was a bit of oxygen to get going, and now he rages.

  Jameson DeSantis stands with his hands in his pockets, not at all rising to my father’s level of pissed. He’s one of those quietly scary men, anyway. Dad’s all shouting and steam pouring out of his ears. When he’s upset, the whole world knows it.

  Jameson is the viper.

  “I didn’t say the deal was off,” Jameson replies. He finally moves, but it’s toward me.

  I start when his hand comes out of his pocket, extending a handkerchief. I take it and curl it into my fist.

  “Your son—”

  “Michael,” my mom snaps at her husband. She hovers behind him. “That’s enough.”

  Dad blinks, the steam essentially sucked out of him. It leaves him deflated.

  “Let’s discuss this downstairs,” Jameson offers. “Give your daughter a moment. Our guests are currently being transported to our estate, and we should join them.”

  As soon as the three of them are gone, I stand. The handkerchief is cool in my fingers, and I’m half-tempted to use it. Too bad a DeSantis gift always has strings attached. This one might not cost me much, but I cannot let myself slacken. Or worse, get used to their kindness.

  The room I’m in has two wide windows, the gauzy curtains closed against the sun. There’s a bathroom attached. We were to be married outside, by a cluster of giant trees, but the heat drove us into the chapel. And now I’m in the building next door, on the second floor.

  I would’ve used this room to take photos with Wilder. It’s set up as such, with soft light and open spaces. They would’ve arranged the train of my dress just so. And yet now, when I think about what might’ve been, my imagination has stained us all red.

  I hardly remember the trip up here, but someone carried me. A hand cupped the back of my head, pressing it to their chest. I do remember the scratch of their boutonniere against my cheek, but I was nearly out of it.

  Still… my mind can’t erase the gunshot. How different it sounded from what I expected. How much louder it seemed.

  Abruptly, I wheel around and take in the rest of the room.

  Now that I’m alone, the silence creeps in, pulling along what happened only minutes ago.

  One minute there was a crack, and the next, my chest and face were coated in warm liquid. The wet veil stuck to my skin.

  My eyes closed. I’m not ashamed to admit the reflex.

  Something hit my front, and I snapped my eyes open. My hands came up automatically, grabbing on to firm shoulders I had never touched before. For all of our engagement, I’d never laid a hand on Wilder. It didn’t seem right, even when he asked if he could kiss me.

  He held my hands half a dozen times. He did kiss me, just once. But how is it that I can only have two points of contact with the man I’m marrying? The man I was marrying. We didn’t finish. We didn’t trade vows.

  My almost-husband slid to the floor and took me with him. There was no way I was going to hold him up, not alone, but my grip didn’t loosen. We crumpled to the floor together.

  It took too many seconds to realize he was bleeding.

  That no one had let off a firework in the middle of the church.

  Something—someone—crashed into me from the side, knocking me away from my fiancé. Another crack.r />
  Screaming.

  My head bounced off the marble steps, and everything went gray.

  Not black, really, although I wish I had lost consciousness. I wish I could forget the way I zeroed in on Wilder’s pale face.

  He was losing blood.

  I jerk, shaking free the memory, and cross to the bathroom.

  The dress is off-white. Not exactly cream. Not starched white, like fallen snow. Off-white. Just a shade to the left, closer to mud.

  My only thought when I agreed to wear it was that the endless row of buttons might delay my future husband from consummating our wedding night.

  It isn’t that I never pictured sex with Wilder. I did. Sometimes it was all I could think about. But I didn’t want that choice taken away from me. The expectation was to finalize our marriage through that type of union—something Mom often reminded me.

  I’m not a virgin, but that doesn’t mean my choice mattered any less. And so… the buttons.