Curtis I was getting married. Would anyone ever believe that? It seemed like my bride didn’t believe it either. She looked nothing like everyone described brides. They were supposed to be looking like the most beautiful version of themselves, smiling and unable to hold back their happy tears. My bride only looked like a third of that. She was breathtaking. I knew I was poking at a wounded bear when I chose the feathery, fluffy gown that was deliberately the exact opposite of what she had described to Siren, but I didn’t think she would look so beautiful in it. Her hair was in an up-do with a long veil hanging off her floral diamond clip. Aside from that, she wore no jewelry and certainly no ounce of makeup. I knew that was her attempt at trying to defy the norm of weddings, telling me she would not put in any extra effort for a wedding she didn’t want. Not that it changed much, she still looked so beautiful that I couldn’t tear my eyes off her. Which is exactly why I caught her e

Curtis Angelica recoiled at a speed that was nearly comical. She scurried quite fast for a woman who was so curious about me. “Thank you for sharing yoru food with me,” she quickly stated. I imagined her cheeks flushed as she spoke before she tried to make her escape. I grabbed her hand before she could get past me. I was just as shocked as she was. I didn’t want to spend an extra minute next to her, so why the hell was I stopping her? “I don’t expect Maverick to waste a single minute before coming over to bombard us with questions.” I pulled an excuse out of thin air. “Oh,” she silently agreed. “I believe you don’t have any problem pretending to know me. You do have a lot of information up your sleeve.” I was taunting her, and her expression only made it more fun. She looked like she wanted to bolt away, like I was a wolf trying to trap her in my cage. Maybe I did want to trap her, just to see how long she would pretend to be helpless before she started trying to claw her way o

Angelica This wasn’t as bad as I thought. The Arciero family was not welcoming in the slightest. Not that I expected them to be friendly to me when we all knew what my presence meant. They were ready to dig their claws into my flesh within a minute of my arrival.The only good thing that came out of it was getting to know my in-laws better. It only took half an hour to learn that Meghan and Miles had a worse relationship than Miles and Curtis. Meghan was to Miles exactly what he was to Curtis—the illegitimate child who destroyed his parents’ marriage. Meghan’s mother had disappeared two years after her wedding and her body had been found in the woods later, and Meghan blamed Miles’s mother. To be fair, it could be any of Fergus’s innumerable women. Not that it mattered. If I could use my in-laws as weapons against each other, I would enjoy the show without getting my hands dirty. My brother-in-law couldn’t keep his eyes off me. It made my skin crawl. I generally hated male attentio

Angelica. I do not believe in coincidences. If something happens twice, it's a pattern. And patterns were my forte–especially those hidden underneath the mask of perfection. I didn't believe perfection existed on its own. There had to be something behind every urge to keep a place impossibly perfect. Every other person found the slightest disorganisation to be unpleasant but normal. For germophobes, it was disastrous. But for people like Curtis, it triggered a full-blown traumatic reaction. I had caught a glimpse of it. When a maid accidentally spilled water on him at his family mansion earlier in the day, he had nearly blown his top. He looked like he wanted to strangle me for ditching a hairpin in the living room but susprisingly, he had no reaction to the mess in my room. I had set it all up and his lack of reaction didn't quite add up. So I raided his room for a new towel and 'forgot' to put the rest back, leaving the rest on his bed. I still couldn't get over his outrage an

Angelica Of course the day I have to sneak out when my husband goes to sleep would be the day he has so much to do that he stays up working. I watched the clock tick, gritting my teeth with every hour that passed. If I didn’t make it to the tunnel by 3am, what would Spider do? We worked perfectly together but I knew Spider all too well. He was impatient. If I didn’t get there on time, he would try to sneak in without me. Not only would that be unsuccessful since he didn’t know where the secret room was, but he could get caught. What was worse, I couldn’t give him a call. If the Arcieros were onto us like Spider suspected, discussing anything on the phone might be the fastest way of giving ourselves away. With nothing else to do, I set an alarm for 2:40 am and tried to catch some sleep. That wasn’t successful either. I was too wired to close my eyes for more than a minute. I checked the time. It was 1 am. If Curtis were to stay up all night, I wouldn’t be able to leave under his scr