Page 101 of Vow

Siena closed the door, and he waited. It was less than a few seconds before shouting started to filter out from behind the door. Yells, and crying.

Jesus Christ.

Andino shot a look down the hallway, and figured, he needed to get that noise under control before someone came looking to see what in the hell was going on. None of them needed that kind of problem.

Not if this was to happen the right way, anyhow.

Instead of waiting for Siena to come back to the door like she told him to, Andino opened it and slipped inside. He closed the door behind him quickly, and spun around to face whatever hell was happening inside the space.

Across the room, he found Siena trying to console a sobbing, messy Ginevra. Her makeup was ruined, and her white wedding gown had been thrown to the floor—entirely forgotten, it seemed. Or unwanted.

Yes, unwanted seemed like the better word.

“I can’t, Siena,” Ginevra rasped, trying to pull away from her half-sister. “I can’t.”

“Come on,” Siena urged. “Just breathe. It worked last time, remember? Breathe.”

Andino could have let Siena handle the situation, because by the looks and sounds of it, this wasn’t the first time Ginevra had found herself in the midst of some kind of breakdown. The woman had been hiding it well, but today was the day, he supposed.

The end of the line.

There was no hiding it, now.

Andino crossed the room quickly, and kept a hold on the gift tucked under his arm at the same time. Siena caught sight of him coming their way, and her shoulders dropped before she took a wide step away from Ginevra. Andino didn’t think about taking the place she had left.

Ginevra was in such a state that she didn’t even realize Andino was in the room until it was too late. She laid eyes on him, let out a wail, and turned on her heel to dart for the bathroom just a few steps away. She was too late.

He had his arm wrapped around her waist before she could even try to run. She barely weighed a thing—maybe one-hundred-ten pounds soaking wet, he thought. Like this, she just seemed so fucking fragile, and not at all ready for the hell her brothers wanted to put her through.

He’d known that from the beginning, though.

“Stop,” he ordered, dropped her onto a couch. “Don’t you move.”

Ginevra pushed up from the couch with her hands raised, and ready to slap him. “I don’t want to marry you! You can’t make me!”

Andino chuckled. “Good. As much as I like an angry woman, you’re not the one for me, Ginny. Now shut the fuck up, and sit the hell down if you want to leave this church as a single woman.”

Her eyes widened—still full of tears, and red-rimmed. “W-what?”

“Sit.”

She did.

Andino took the box out from under his arm, and set it on her lap. “A gift for you. Consider it your wedding gift, even if this wedding never happens. You’re to use everything you find in it, and if you follow every direction inside to the letter … there is someone outside in a black Porsche. He’s doing me a favor. You get in that car, use what I’ve given you in this box, and you stay gone until I say otherwise. Do you understand me?”

Ginevra’s gaze drifted from the box in her lap, to Andino’s face. “I don’t … Why?”

“You’re not the one for me,” he murmured. “I’m sorry it went on this long. It shouldn’t have happened to begin with.”

She untied the bow, and opened the box. Andino didn’t need to look down to know what she would find inside—paperwork and a fake identity to get her across the Canadian border. Money, and untraceable credit cards attached to said identity. New clothes, and even a sizeable church hat that would give her just enough of a different appearance to get her out of this place.

“His name is Corrado,” Andino said. “And he was told to leave by twelve-thirty whether you were in his car, or not.”

Ginevra looked up again. “Corrado?”

“Corrado Guzzi. He’s a friend, and he owed me a favor. What time is it, Ginny?”

She didn’t know.