Dangerous:Made & Broken (A British Bad Boy Romance)(5)

Blaine must have led me through it, though, because when I finally  snapped out of it, it was in the middle of the reception. I was seated  at a table with a pretty, but untouched, dessert on my plate in a room  full of laughing people I mostly didn't know or had spent years hiding  from. Everyone was dressed up, there were flowers everywhere, and music  underlined the chattering and laughter.

It looked like the perfect wedding, I numbly realized. Picture perfect, in fact.

If only the guest list wasn't made up of some of the worst criminals in  the country and the bride hadn't been kidnapped and married off against  her will.

A hysterical giggle bubbled out of my chest, only to die in a wheeze.

"You doing okay there?"

I snapped my head around to the speaker, dimly recognizing one of the  redheaded groomsmen as he leaned over from a few seats away. The spaces  between us were vacated, and I realized the dinner was over and most  people must have left their seats for the bar, or perhaps to mingle-or  whatever people did at arranged business weddings. Including my groom.

His eyes were the same color as Blaine's, but light and cheerful rather than broody and angry.         

     



 

"No." The same frantic giggle escaped again, and I shook my head to make  it stop. "Not even remotely. But the flowers are nice, aren't they?"

The groomsman cocked his head, his eyes turning slightly less cheerful as they roamed over my face.

"I'm getting Blaine, hang on," he said before he got up from the table and walked off toward what looked like the bar.

Great. Seeing Blaine was about the last thing I wanted, but  extraordinarily poor problem-solving skills aside, at least the redhead  tried. It was the first time anyone had shown any consideration for my  well-being since I walked in the door to find my father in my flat, and  it was enough to shake me out of the shock that had kept me shielded  from the world.

It was odd, really. I had spent the entire week so terrified that my  mind had shut me away from everything that happened around me,  practically leaving me a living doll. I had gone through the motions  when my mother arrived to take measurements for my wedding dress and  while she and some distant cousins got me ready earlier this morning. I  hadn't even objected while the people I feared most in this world took  away my freedom and my choices to sell me off like a farm animal.

But when I finally snapped out of it again, in the middle of my own  wedding reception, fear wasn't the emotion that rushed through my body  and washed away the last tendrils of stupor.

No, it was a refreshing wave of anger.

I wasn't a bloody doll-and I damn well wasn't a trinket to be exchanged for power and influence!

"Why don't you two go up to the suite, eh? Everyone's had the chance to  see the happy couple now, so you may as well spend some time getting  acquainted in private."

I snapped my head in the direction of the speaker in time to see the  groomsman from before waggle his ginger eyebrows at me. Behind him,  Blaine stood, a glass of amber liquor in one hand and the other shoved  down one pocket. Even in a tux he managed to look devil-may-care.

"Sure, may as well get started on securing the proud Steel-Clery lineage. Or should I say Steel-Holler lineage, eh, wifey?"

I got up from my seat with a glare in Blaine's direction. "You should  say whatever you damn well please, because there's not going to be any  lineage-making here, I can tell you that much."

He whistled and took a swig from his glass. "Your daddy's gonna be ever so disappointed."

I repressed a shudder at the reminder of my father and brushed past the  two men, intent on getting out of there before I got any more reminders.  The one good thing to come out of this disaster of a day was that I  would never have to see him or the rest of my family ever again. The  worst had already happened, and they'd have no more use for me now that  they'd traded me in for better connections.

I blinked as a thought hit me while I waited in the elevator for Blaine  to exchange a few words with his groomsman before he joined me, glass  still in hand.

In an odd sense, I was free now. I would never again have to look over  my shoulder out of fear that my family would find me. They already had,  and now there was nothing more they could do to me. They had taken the  life I had fought so hard for from me, but in doing so, they had given  up their power over me as well. I didn't know much about Blaine, but I  did know that his family was the most powerful crime syndicate in  London-or else I wouldn't have been forced to marry him. Which meant  that not even my father, the most brutal and ruthless man in Belfast,  would have the power to ever touch me.

For better or worse, I was a Steel now.

And my family could never hurt me again.

Blaine made a sound of protest when I grabbed the glass out of his hand  and downed the remaining liquor in one swig. Whiskey. It burned my  throat, but I relished the fire. When it hit my-empty-stomach, a  pleasant wave of euphoria mixed with my already present anger into a  weirdly exhilarating combination of …  of power. For the first time in a  very long time, I felt strong.

No one was ever going to push me around or make me cower. Yes, the worst  had happened, but I was still standing, still alive. And I was free.

"So you lie to your patients about your name. What kind of a quack are you, anyway?"

Well, sort of free. I gave Blaine an irritated look. "My name's Mira Holler, and it will always be Mira Holler."

"Well, it'll be Mira Steel from today," he said, shrugging as the  elevator doors slid open and revealed the penthouse floor of the hotel  we were at. I hadn't had the presence of mind to notice its name on our  way here.

Blaine led the way to the only set of doors on the floor, found the key card in his tux pocket, and let us in.         

     



 

I trailed after him, having nowhere else to go, and paused at the look  of the suite once the door closed behind me. Everything was glass, gold,  and white, with fresh flowers adorning all surfaces. Along the far  wall, massive windows displayed a striking view of London and the  Thames, the curtain of night interrupted by the multitude of lights from  the city.

Blaine didn't give the luxurious surroundings so much as a second look.  He went straight for the mini bar and filled two glasses with liquor and  ice. He held one out to me while taking a long draw from his own glass.

I walked over to him and snatched the offered glass out of his hand. The  burn of whiskey on my tongue was oddly comforting, and I drank deeply.  Too deeply, for someone my size who up until today drank maybe once in a  blue moon, but I didn't care much at that point. Getting hideously  drunk seemed like a perfectly reasonable response to everything that'd  happened.

"You're not going to like being married to me." Blaine leaned back  against the bar and looked at me with something akin to a challenge in  his stormy eyes.

I snorted. "No shit."

"It's not too late to get an annulment."

A jolt of excitement shot through me. "You'd do that?"

"Me? Fuck no." He downed the rest of his drink and poured himself  another, eying me over his shoulder as he did. "If that'd been an option  I'd have just said no to this whole bloody arrangement to begin with."

I stared at him, the anger making itself known again with a heated rush  of blood to my cheeks and chest. "You think I would have gone through  with this if I'd had a choice? This may come as a shock to you, Mr.  Steel, but you're not exactly Prince Charming. I would quite literally  rather marry the homeless guy who reeks of moldy cheese and asks me to  suck his cock every time I pass him on my way to work than I would you,  but here we are!"

Blaine snorted, emptying half his glass of whiskey in one swig. "Here we  are indeed, Mrs. Steel. Guess you'll just have to get used to sucking  my cock instead, huh?"

I blinked. Twice. He was obviously as unhappy about this forced marriage  as I was, yet he still found the energy to be a grade-A prick.

"You're a pig," I hissed. "Don't for one second think I'll put up with  any of your crap just because I'm forced to live with you."

"You'll put up with exactly what I say you will." He was angry too, his  eyes flashing darkly at me. "I'm your husband now, whether you like it  or not, so you better get used to doing as you're told."

The same urge to slap him as I'd experienced in our disaster of a  therapy session made my palms itch, but despite my-partly  alcohol-fueled-bravery, I wasn't dumb enough to test my luck. Instead, I  grabbed the bottle of whiskey from the bar next to him and stomped  toward the white-and-gold painted door I presumed led to the bedroom.

"I'm going to bed," I announced, before I slammed the door behind me with a satisfyingly dramatic bang.



 *





Chapter 5

Mira



To my great relief, someone had filled the bedroom wardrobe with  clothing, and upon closer inspection, it turned out that half of it was  mine. Perhaps I should have felt violated that someone had gone through  my personal belongings without my knowledge or consent to bring it here,  but it seemed so insignificant compared to everything else my family  had done that I was just grateful I could get out of the uncomfortable  wedding dress my mother had picked out and into something soft and  familiar.