Chapter 2
The sheer audacity of the man standing in front of her almost made Giulietta laugh. She looked at Preston's fair, rosy face, currently flushed with the thrill of his own perceived dominance. He truly believed he was the predator in the room. He had mistaken her elegant, refined beauty for fragility.
"You brought a weapon into my bridal suite to teach me a lesson?" Giulietta asked, her tone flat, dangerously calm.
"It's a motivational tool," Preston mocked, his voice dropping into a harsh, patronizing whisper. He stepped so close that she could smell the expensive scotch on his breath. He raised the metal club higher, angling it toward her delicate collarbone. "This is how my father taught my mother to obey. It’s highly effective for establishing a proper hierarchy in the household."
The fear that a normal bride might have felt in this moment was entirely absent from Giulietta’s chest. Instead, a cold, familiar fire ignited in her veins. She was a Marconi. Her family did not yield to spoiled heirs wielding sporting equipment; they buried them.
Giulietta’s expression hardened into a mask of pure, intimidating ice. She did not flinch away from the metal club. Instead, she raised her left hand, her movements deliberate and utterly calm.
"What are you doing?" Preston demanded, his brow furrowing in confusion. "Put your hands down and listen to me."
"I am listening, Preston," Giulietta said softly.
With her right hand, she grasped the heavy, multi-carat diamond engagement ring on her left ring finger. With a smooth, effortless pull, she slid the ring off. She held it for a fraction of a second, feeling the cold weight of the metal, before setting it down on the glass surface of the vanity. The diamond made a sharp, definitive clink.
"You think taking off the ring changes anything?" Preston laughed, gripping the club tighter. "The ink on the merger is dry. You belong to the Hale family now."
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Giulietta turned her piercing, lethal gaze entirely onto him. Her fair skin seemed to turn to porcelain, cold and unyielding.
"If this is how your father taught his household," Giulietta said, her voice dropping into an ice-cold, deadly register that echoed the ruthless Mafia bosses of her lineage, "then he raised the wrong son."
