The Runaway Bride Crashed a Mafia Funeral in Her Ruined Wedding Dress—Then the Most Feared Man in Providence Smirked,

Part 2

Max stood in the front garden beneath the estate lights, trying hard to look like a man who had not been dragged from power into another man’s territory. The five men with him were surrounded by twelve of Sylvio’s. No one had drawn a weapon. No one needed to.

Audrey came down the steps in the black dress Sylvio’s staff had chosen, her mouth still tasting faintly of smoke from the gown she had burned. Max stared at her like he could not decide whether she was ruined or reborn.

“Audrey,” he said, forcing his voice soft. “You’ve had a traumatic day. You’re confused.”

She almost laughed. “I was confused when I thought marrying you was love.”

His face darkened. “You don’t want this. You don’t know what he is.”

Sylvio stepped off the last stair, rifle resting at his side. “She knows what you are. That was enough.”

Max tried another angle, the one he always used when charm failed. “Her passport, her ID, everything is in my car. No ceremony without identification is legal. On paper, she’s still mine.”

The garden went still.

Audrey felt Sylvio’s hand come to her waist, not rough, not asking. A shield. A warning.

“Max,” Sylvio said almost gently, “do you still think the world runs like a filing cabinet?”

Max swallowed.

“This is Providence,” Sylvio continued. “My family built that church before your grandfather learned how to borrow money. By tomorrow morning, every record that needs to exist will exist.”

“You can’t just take her.”

Sylvio’s eyes went cold. “I did not take her. She walked away from you.”

The words entered Audrey like air. She had walked away. No one had carried her until after. No one had made her run. That choice had been hers.

Max took one step toward her. Two of Sylvio’s men shifted. He stopped.

“I made you,” Max hissed. “Without me, you were nobody.”

Audrey looked at the man she had once tried to please and felt the last small bruised part of herself release him.

“No,” she said. “You made me smaller. There’s a difference.”

Sylvio turned his head toward her. For a moment, the garden, the guards, even Max disappeared. He looked at her not like a useful answer, not like a wife he had acquired, but like a flame he had expected and still found startling.

Then he kissed her.

It was not gentle enough to be polite and not hungry enough to be careless. It was controlled, public, devastating. Audrey’s hand hit his chest to push him away, then stayed there. His heartbeat was steady under her palm.

Max cursed.

Audrey broke first, breath uneven, furious at Sylvio and more furious at herself for feeling anything at all.

When Max was forced back through the gates, she pulled from Sylvio’s arm.

“Don’t ever touch me like that again,” she said.

Sylvio’s expression did not change, but something behind his eyes did.

The next morning, Aldo waited for her at breakfast with champagne and a smile sharp enough to cut fruit.

“Do you know why he married you?” Aldo asked.

Audrey poured coffee with steady hands. “Because I was convenient.”

“Because of the will,” Aldo corrected. “Our father left everything to the first son who married and produced a Gallow heir. Company. house. leadership. All of it. Sylvio needed a wife before I found one.”

The coffee cooled untouched in Audrey’s hand.

There it was. The missing piece.

Not rescue. Not fate. Not even revenge against Max.

A condition.

A throne.

A womb.

Aldo leaned back. “Don’t confuse being chosen with being useful, Mrs. Gallow.”

Audrey stood before he could see the sentence land.

But when she reached Sylvio’s study, he was already waiting, as if he had known the truth would find her before he was ready to give it.

“Is it true?” she asked.

Sylvio’s jaw tightened once.