Shattered Vows: An Arranged Marriage Standalone Romance (Tarnished Empire)

Morina was the one person I wanted to actually force to do something. She needed someone with her in the middle of a dark night and I would force that if I had to.

She didn’t make any sense.

The way she wanted to do everything on her own and keep everyone at arm’s length told me she was smart enough to be scared of something that could emotionally hurt her. I’d watched her with that little Moonshine puppy. She’d frowned and at one point even turned toward the door to wipe her eyes. She loved that little dog even if she was avoiding taking it home. Yet she’d go in the dark of the night to close up a building on her own, not at all caring about her physical well-being.

She’d almost gone by herself but Ivy, thankfully, had brought us all here and shown me just how dangerous Morina going out on her own was.

She didn’t look around or protect her back while she locked up.

Reckless.

And naive.

That’s what I was marrying and if I didn’t take care of her soon, she’d be dead.

As we watched the movie, she twisted her wavy hair around her fingers, and when that wasn’t enough, she moved to playing with her beaded bracelets. Did she really feel like those crystals in her pocket had some effect?

Was she more tranquil now?

“Our tent needs to be much bigger for us to fall asleep,” Ivy announced as we stared at some princess singing about a magical house.

“We’re all going to sleep in beds, Ivy.” I told her.

“What about we sleep here for a little bit after the movie and then we go to our bedrooms?” Ivy tried compromising.

Cade chuckled probably because he knew my appreciation for negotiation.

Morina watched me with those piercing eyes of hers, waiting for a response. When I nodded sure, her mouth dropped.

Morina thought I was something I wasn’t, and I had to prove her wrong. We needed a united front when we went out in public, and she had to trust I would do right by the company. The only way to do that was by winning her over.

My father would have illegally wormed his way out of this one. There would have been fear, coercion, and threats.

I wanted this to be of her own free will. A business traction we both agreed on.

“Why can’t we have a singing house, Uncle Cade?” Ivy pointed to the movie.

Cade glanced up from his phone and his hand fell to her curly head, rubbing back and forth. “That’s not real, Ivy.”

“But aren’t we going to see a real castle tomorrow?” Her voice was high with concern.

Morina glanced at both me and Cade like we were going to ruin the experience. “Well, the princess castles are real, of course,” I corrected before Cade could kill her dream. He wouldn’t pick up on the social cues. He’d grown up too isolated from them. “And Uncle Cade made sure you’re going to get to them as quickly as possible tomorrow.”

Cade muttered when Ivy went back to watching the movie. “The theme park has some high security. We’ll have to get fingerprints into my tablet tonight. I’m working the system though. I’ve also sent a message to the CEO. If they see it, we’ll be good. Worst case scenario, you call him.”

“Call him for what, Cade? To get my niece into a park? That’s a little ridiculous.”

“Not ridiculous, Uncle Bastian,” Ivy singsonged.

We all winced. The girl had the uncanny ability to be listening even when she wasn’t. She’d grow up a fantastic multitasker.

We watched more of the movie, and Ivy’s eyes drifted shut as she snuggled next to Morina. Cade meandered off to grab his laptop and retired to another room.

Morina lifted her head to stare at me. “Why do you even have the CEO’s number?”

Morina didn’t understand that I was a man that had most people’s numbers, especially if they were in the business of making money. “He was a friend of my father’s.”

“What exactly did your father do, Bastian?”

The question made me tense. The muscles in my neck that were rarely ever this relaxed coiled tight again. “We were all in the business of growing businesses.”

“Or protecting your own, right?”

“Does it matter?”

She leaned in close. “I think if you’re doing something illegal and threatening companies like my grandma said your dad used to, it does matter. I have to marry you and be tied to you for six months. You want this to be believable and for me to understand your intentions?” She glanced down at Ivy. “Are we safe around you?”

“More safe than you would be not around me. Your food truck was ransacked with you in it.” I held back a wince at the reminder.

Morina was like one of these naive princesses in the cartoons. She knew something was up and yet I swear she avoided it at all costs. She avoided everything except maybe goading me.

“Ivy is a sweet kid.” She tugged at the little girl’s curls softly.

“Yes, and she’ll remain a sweet kid.” My voice was low. Was she insinuating I would hurt my niece?

“I’m just saying, if something happened to any of you because you were all doing something illegal–”

“Morina, my father did illegal dealings long before I was born.”

She kept staring at Ivy. “So, you are all the mob? I’m marrying into the mob instead of getting further away from it.”

“It’s not what we consider ourselves anymore.” I pulled at the back of my neck and looked toward the ceiling, searching for the right words. “I’m cleaning up his businesses slowly. We’ve got families too. We’re products of this shitty life he brought us into but I’m on the cusp of having everything clean. I just need…”

I couldn’t tell her I needed to confirm that no illegal imports were coming into her grandmother’s company, even as she stared at me, completely willing to listen. She was studying me, her dark blue eyes swimming with questions.

“I need you to trust me. We need to work as a team.”

She chewed on her bottom lip. “So, I need to read that packet.”

Something about the fact she’d brought that packet up while we were talking about millions of dollars, and people’s lives pulled a laugh from deep under all the stress of this situation.

“Yes, Morina. You need to read the packet.”

She sighed. “Maybe keep this movie on in case she wakes up while I start that?”

She stood and stretched her long legs and toned stomach. The movement went straight to my dick. It remembered how smooth that skin was, how smooth every part of her was.

When she pursed her lips at my staring, I smirked. “Can’t blame me, piccola ragazza. You’re still the woman I slept with just a few weeks ago.”

“You said no more of that, daddy.” There was her goading.

I hummed low and her blue eyes flared.

She stomped away, walking around the tent we’d made from Egyptian cotton sheets draped over the couch and barstools. I watched her ass the whole way.

We were going to have to figure out a way for us not to take the path of least resistance and end up sleeping together again. It would complicate an already complicated situation.

She returned with the files and plopped down next to me, leaning against the couch while Ivy slept.

“I’m going to read it out loud in hopes I can focus.” She cleared her throat. “Sometimes I have a hard time keeping my attention on things like this.”

I shrugged at her omission, not caring at all that she thought this was boring. “It’s a lot of information.”

She wrinkled her nose. “I’m not that good with focusing sometimes.”

I shrugged again as she blushed in embarrassment. I didn’t know what for. “Everyone has their strengths. Can’t hold this one against you since I don’t particularly enjoy combing through data either.”

She beamed at me and then got to reading. When she’d read about two pages into the oil company’s daily processes, her eyes started to droop.

“Did you write this?” she grumbled.

“No.” I straightened. “I compiled some of it and Cade pulled some from the internet. We had a few people work on drawing up the documents.”

“Do I really need to know all of this? I find it hard to believe my grandma did.”

“She didn’t. That’s the point. If we want to clean this company up, we need to know everything. You want your town running in a way that it can stand the test of time, right?”

“Of course I do, Bastian.” She set the file down and got up in a huff before filling a cup of water. “I just don’t think I can provide any good insight. Tell me what you want to change and why.”

“You’ll just take my word for it?” That wasn’t smart business practice.

“Oh my God, can you wipe that look off your face?” She poured the whole cup of water into the plants. I winced. That wouldn’t help them thrive at all.

I took time to cover Ivy up on the floor before going to meet Morina by the kitchen island. “You can’t water the plants in anger like that.”

“Huh?” She glared up at me. “I’m not angry.”

“You’re frustrated. And you just dumped a whole cup in one spot. How’s the orchid and its roots way over here going to get anything?”

She rolled her eyes, but then she watched as I got more water and trickled it in, circling the plant. “You said before that you don’t nurture plants. Was that a lie? Maybe you should water the plants.”

“I can do that.”

“If you’re here, that is.”

I chuckled. “Fair comment, Morina. You get one more. I’m sorry for not being around.”

“One more? Then what?”

The way she questioned me, I had half a mind to take her over my knee. I glared at her, ready to tell her just what a punishment from me would look like.”

“It’s fine.” She sighed out before I could and slumped onto the counter. “If I can have friends over or–”

“Do you have many friends?” The girl was a free-spirited loner as I was learning. If she couldn’t take home a dog and she hadn’t called a girl since I’d been around her, I doubted she had many. “What’s the name of that girl you were with the first night we…?”

I stopped talking when she side-eyed me. “Linny’s busy a lot.”

“Linny let you go on a jet with a man you barely knew.”

“You were very convincing, Bastian. And Linny will trust any human in the world. She travels and believes in the good, not the bad of anyone. She once took a cab in the middle of Mexico with three men who were twice her size by herself without a cell phone.” She poked my chest and smirked. “Also, don’t discount that you have a way about you. You gave her your card and everything.”

A lot of men could have done the same. I hummed low. “Don’t trust a man when he does that.”

“No other man’s ever done that. I normally just go find a private–”

“I don’t want to know.” I shook my head as something twisted in my stomach. I returned to Ivy and sat on the couch. “Want to watch the rest of this movie?”

“The princess cartoon?” Her eyebrows lifted.

“Don’t you want to see how it ends?” I was ashamed at how much the film intrigued me.

She yawned but shrugged. Before she came over, she grabbed a lighter and pulled a stick from a little vase she’d placed on the counter. She inserted it into a wood plate with a lip.

“What’s that?”

“Just a bit of incense. It’s supposed to–”

“Do you believe in all that?”

“Of course. The oils have proven to be great in diffusers and this incense is soaked in citrus and peppermint. You liked my shake right?”

I nodded. They were probably the scents I couldn’t get off my jet.

“Well, you can get the same effect with smells. Taste and smell are tied very closely together.”

“Did you read all about those oils in one sitting?”

“Yes, but…” She paused. “Are you going to say I need to read that offensive file again?”

I didn’t hold back a smile. “Come on. If you’re not interested in the movie. You can read while I watch and ask me questions.”

She stomped her foot like a petulant child, but she meandered back over and placed the file on her lap.

I gave her credit. She got through another page before looking up. “There’s a lot of money here if my grandma really owns all that stock.”

I nodded. She glanced up and down the page, her midnight eyes trying to decipher something. “You are seriously going to pay me that much money for some shares in this company?”

I didn’t hesitate. “This is the last company my father had his hands in. I’ve changed hundreds over the past five years. I’ve righted illegal dealings, I’ve cleaned up shitty organization, and I’ve made my family a profit we won’t ever see the end of. I’m cleaning up my legacy.”

“You want this for something other than profit then?”

“I have enough profit if I’m able to buy these shares, right?”

She sighed and combed a hand through her hair. “Can you explain to me what you want to do to my city?”

“Sure.” I sat back and told her what I pictured. “The UK has done this, and I think we have all the workings to do it here. I’ve talked with engineers. We have plans drawn up in that file but essentially, we want to transition to clean, green energy. It’ll be more secure for your city and all the skilled oil and gas workers in the long term. We’d be giving them a foundation to work on for years, and we’d get government buy in. We just need the board to vote that way. Ronald, the owner of ShellOil and part owner of this company, won’t do that. Without your vote or mine, they’ll push more oil at the risk of causing a spill or something catastrophic.”

I stopped, giving her time to process even though I wanted to keep talking.

“You really believe in this, don’t you?”

“We converted in California and it’s gone very well.”

“My grandma wanted this?”

“I think so. She didn’t trust me though.”

“Why?”

“My father was a shifty man, Morina. He didn’t shake your hand and keep his word. He crept around at night and stabbed you in the back.”

She bit her lip and stared at me, then nodded. “I believe we can be better than the ones before us. After we’re married, let’s go to the plant, and I want to hear you make those calls to the government. We get that started and I’ll hand over the shares to you.”

“I’ll pay you.”

She smirked. “It won’t change my life, Bastian. I have what I want out of it. I just want what’s best for the town.”

With that, she went back to reading and got through another five pages before her head slumped onto my shoulder and her eyes closed on a long blink. They didn’t open back up.

How quickly she’d trusted me like she knew me, like I was a man of my word. I had been to everyone I’d done business with. I’d bent over backwards to be different from my father. I’d always been furious when people compared me to him and didn’t trust me immediately.

Yet, with her, I wanted her to push back. She shouldn’t be barreling into just handing over that much money. Was she crazy?

Or was I crazy for wanting to make sure I dotted and crossed every I and T in making this a perfect transaction? If she wanted to dive headfirst into a shit deal and get nothing out of it, all the better for me.

Right?

Except Morina was becoming something more than just an obstacle. She was nice and weird in a way that I wasn’t used to. She was trusting and eccentric with her beads and her incense.

She lived in a land of sand castles on a beach and surfing and cuddly puppies.

That packet held the greed and viciousness that came with money.

Something dark like oil would pour into Morina’s pure water, and I just wanted to get her out unscathed.

My father never did that.

And yet, now it was all I wanted.

The movie ended with the girl finding magic in just being herself. I sighed and turned to Morina, who breathed heavily on me.

I needed to get her to a bed and Ivy to one also.

“Morina?” I whispered and she stirred against me. “Want to go to your bedroom?”

She shook her head and with her eyes still completely closed, crawled onto my lap. Somehow she folded into a little warm ball and snuggled against me.

Jesus, her ass rubbed right on my dick, reminding me how good it had felt to sleep next to her.

“Uncle Bastian,” a little voice whispered. I snapped my attention to my little niece who stared at us with stars in her eyes.

“She’s your princess.” Ivy’s chin rested on the back of her threaded hands as she sighed at what she thought she was witnessing. “I love her with you.”

Then the little girl plopped back down on the floor and pulled the covers up to her shoulders.

“Fuck me.” I groaned just as Cade came and scooped Ivy from the floor.

“I’ll take her to the spare and take your bed, considering you two don’t seem to be moving any time soon.”

“Fuck you,” I grumbled but Cade was already laughing his ass down the hallway with our niece in his arms.

I let my head fall back and closed my eyes.

It might have been minutes or hours later when I felt her slide and pull me down with her. My eyes shot open, hands at her hips immediately. Those sapphire gems sparkled in the night’s dim light as she stared at me, biting her lower lip.

“Morina,” I warned, my voice low.

“Yes?”

“Don’t tempt me, ragazza. Our marriage contract is too important for that.”

“Your cock is the thing tempting me right now, Bastian.” She arched and her ass pressed against my sweatpants. “Plus I don’t think the company has to get mixed up with our pleasure. I’m too wound up and used to getting some somewhere. You think we’re just going to hold out for six months? We could…you know…just this once or twice. It’s not like we haven’t before.”

“Morina Bailey.”

This time she smiled, a mischievous languid look in her eye. She was still a mixture of subconscious sleep and reality. She’d fallen victim to what she thought the dark could hide.

“You’ll regret this in the morning.” I closed my eyes and attempted to go to sleep.

Rustling made me open my eyes again. Her hand was between her thighs, her night shirt had ridden up, and suddenly I needed to know what was under it.

“Fuck, woman,” I ground out.

She didn’t stop, just arched her back and pushed her ass into my hard dick as she rode her own hand. Her gaze, blue as the deep water, locked over her shoulder onto mine. “Bastian, please…”

She might have been lost in her own ecstasy and dark dreams but now I was lost to her, a siren of beauty in the dim light who had hooked me. I gripped her hips but she slid my two fingers into her wet pussy.

“So wet for me, Morina?” I whispered.

She gasped but didn’t answer.

“Tell me it’s for me now so I can let you come.” I needed to hear it.

“Only for you.” She turned and whimpered into my neck as I slid another finger into her. I let her ride me as I stroked her clit and she bit my neck when she got off on my hand.

When she finally came down from her high, I don’t think she wanted to lift her head to meet my gaze. I saw the blush staining her cheeks even in the dark, even though she tried to hide just below my chin.

I slowly removed my hand. “Ragazza, look at me.”

She sighed, her breath small and soft before she did.

I made sure she caught how I put the fingers that got her off in my mouth. I tasted her finish on my skin, salty and sweet and fucking perfection. “You taste divine, love. Don’t ever be ashamed of that.”

Then I kissed her forehead.

“Bastian, I…”

I shook my head, my resolve about to snap. “I’m not sleeping with you, Morina. You need to go to bed.”

“You don’t want to get off too?”

Fuck me. “I want slide in and out of you over and over again. I want you to scream my name instead of you muffling your gasps against my neck. But I need you to trust me, ragazza. Now go to bed. Please.”

With that, I closed my eyes and pulled her thigh up around me. I’d sleep as close as possible to the woman I wanted but couldn’t have.

If I tempted myself enough, maybe I’d become immune.

Maybe in the morning, I’d rethink my plan of staying here. Morina was turning into the damn storm I’d been trying to avoid.

The morning would come and wake me from the fairytale of Morina’s little world.

We’d be back to reality very soon.