Bad Bishop by L.J. Shen - 8

As soon as the door clicked shut, Tiernan tossed me across the room on the four-poster bed like I was an old suitcase and slithered toward the writing desk. His movements reminded me of a viper seconds before striking its target. Languid, controlled, discreet.

The windows were open, allowing the briny summer breeze to drift into the room. The curtains danced playfully across the walls. I watched fixedly as he removed enough weapons from his body to start a medium-sized New York gang.

He unholstered two guns, a silencer, and a couple of knives, lining them up neatly next to an ancient flower vase, a charcuterie board, and chilled champagne with two glasses. He removed his tuxedo jacket and tie—cut, as per Italian tradition—rolling his dress shirt up inked arms corded with muscles and veins. My heart twisted into a painful knot when he turned to me. Our eyes locked.

My new husband never blinked. It made the hairs on my arms stand on end. It was like he decided to compensate for the loss of his other eye by never closing his good one.

I wanted to beg for mercy. The only thing stopping me was the knowledge that he got off on fear. I saw it the night at the fountain.

Weakness would only encourage more cruelty.

His eye landed on a painting of a crucified Jesus above the headboard.

“Your parents sure know how to set the mood.” He plucked a fig from the charcuterie board, tossing it into his mouth on his way to the en-suite bathroom. “Wait here, and don’t do anything stupid.”

“ Don’t damage her. ” Papa’s words haunted me.

He could leave me unmarred from the shoulders up. No one would ever know.

Everything else was fair game.

I didn’t waste time. Scrambling to my feet, I rushed to the desk, grabbed one of his guns—heavier than I’d imagined—and aimed it at the open bathroom door with shaky fingers. He reemerged a few moments later, zipping himself.

A gun was aimed at his head. Yet, all he did was stare at me with leisured amusement, like I was a lab rat trying to work out a Rubik’s Cube.

I was used to being underestimated. Still, for some reason, I couldn’t bear that this man thought I was so toothless.

“Put that down, Gealach . That is a grown-up toy. I’ll have your mother send your crayons and coloring books over tomorrow.” Tiernan fished out his phone, frowning at a text message. I knew the basic mechanics of guns from watching the men in my family handling them.

I flicked the safety with my thumb.

The sound made Tiernan’s gaze flit back to me.

He sighed. “Fuck’s sake.” He flew toward me, grabbed the gun by the mouth, seized the silencer from the vanity table, and screwed it on. “It’s one in the morning. Show some decorum.” He handed the gun back to me, staring at me with a glint in his eye, daring me to hurt him. He pushed his chest against the gun, his dark gaze penetrating my soul, squeezing it with his ice-cold fist.

His heart thudded against the silencer.

Slow. Steady. Calm.

Not one muscle in his face moved.

He was calling my bluff.

He was not only calling my bluff, but suffocating my soul, touching me without permission, and pushing me to my limits like no man had ever done before. My rage, my fear, all gathered in the pit of my stomach, like a storm building momentum and speed, an anger that sat dormant for years…

I pulled the trigger.

The force of the blow tilted the gun upward. The recoil made me stagger back, and I hit the wall, falling to the floor.

The bullet grazed his shoulder. Crimson spread across his pristine white shirt.

I shot my husband.

The most vicious, bloodthirsty man in America.

Terror gripped me, and I crawled on my hands and knees toward the door.

Tiernan unbuttoned his dress shirt unhurriedly. His face gave away nothing.

He let his shirt slide down his arms, using the tip of his shoe to press the door shut to stop me from fleeing. I forced my gaze to travel up to him.

“You know, if you were a real Callaghan, I’d have taken you to the shooting range to work on your aim. We have a reputation to uphold.”

He had a sculpted body with a prominent six-pack, defined pectoral muscles, and a tattoo running from the side of his ear along his right shoulder.

Oderint Dum Metuant.

Let them hate as long as they fear.

He leaned down and reached for me. I forced myself not to flinch. I thought he’d hit me, but all he did was pry the gun from between my fingers. “Open your mouth.”

Even though he looked calm, something in his eye told me that if I wouldn’t, he’d put a bullet in my head. And unlike me, he wouldn’t miss.

Slowly, I let my jaw slack. He pushed the pistol’s muzzle between my lips. Slowly, almost sensually. It was still hot, the gunpowder sour against my tongue.

“Wrap those pretty lips around it,” he instructed coolly.

My eyes stung with tears, and I followed the instructions I wasn’t supposed to understand. I acted on pure instinct. I didn’t want to die. I didn’t want to live, either. But I didn’t want to leave this earth before I killed my rapist and at least plucked this bastard’s other eye out.

My husband looked bored out of his mind. Like shoving guns down people’s throats was a daily occurrence for him.

“Next time you try to shoot me, you better not fucking miss, because this’ll be my cock. It’s thicker than the gun. I’ll watch you choke on my cum as punishment. Understood?”

I didn’t answer. Screw him.

I stared up at him, shaking with rage, and spat the gun out of my mouth.

He shook his head in response. “Get your ass in the bathroom and get ready for bed while I clean myself up.”

I staggered to the bathroom, locking the door behind me. I clutched the edges of the sink, stared into the mirror, and swallowed air to draw in some oxygen. I wished I had a phone. Mama wouldn’t let me have one. She said phones created zombies, and everything I needed from life could be found in our library.

My eyes drifted to a condom in a foil packet on the vanity. I recognized it from an anatomy encyclopedia I read a few years ago.

So he was planning to rape me after all.

Not as long as I have breath in me, stronzo.

Searching my surroundings frantically, I found a glass vase next to the clawed bathtub. I tossed the fresh roses in the trash—couldn’t look at them, anyway—and drained the water down the sink. I rolled the vase inside the skirts of my wedding dress and crouched down to the floor.

The door rattled behind my back. He didn’t trust me. Or maybe he just got tired of waiting to claim what was now his. Either way, I had no time.

I smashed the vase against the floor, hoping the layers of fabric silenced the thud, and picked the sharpest shard of glass from it. I scurried up to my feet, ripping the door open. Tiernan stood on the other side of it.

He arched a brow. “Done with your hissy fit, fetus?”

I launched the shard at him, stabbing him just above the elbow. I was going for his veins, but he was tall, and my vision was blurred by adrenaline. He dodged me quickly, moving like a striking serpent. I tried again, blindly lashing at him, but before I knew what was happening, he wrapped himself around me from behind, yanking the shard from my hand.

“Note to self.” He dragged me to the bed, shoved me against one of its posts, and efficiently tied me to it using his own belt. “She’s not very good with taking orders.”

Not from assholes who cheat on me five minutes into the marriage , I wanted to bite back.

He disposed of all of the broken glass in the bathroom and hid all of the weapons in the room.

When he was finally done cleaning up after me, he untied and sat me down on the edge of the bed and crouched before me. “You have to stop trying to kill me, Lila. It’s giving me a massive hard-on, and I’ve never been good with delayed gratification.”

I glared at him skeptically. I wasn’t even sure what he meant by that.

“I’m not going to fuck you,” he explained plainly. “Not tonight, anyway.”

My eyes darted to the condom on the vanity in the open bathroom, my throat bobbing with a swallow. He followed my line of vision.

“Bold of you to assume you’re worth my time.” A smile tilted the corners of his lips. It was mocking and humorless, but the first I’d seen from him. “The condom isn’t meant for you. I was supposed to fuck someone else. Unfortunately, I wasn’t in the mood for a brunette.”

My shaking subsided little by little. Nobody had ever used these words with me. In truth, people hardly spoke to me at all. When they did, they treated me like a small child.

Tiernan slanted his head. “How much do you understand?”

I didn’t answer him. I still hadn’t decided what’d be the best course of action to protect myself in this marriage.

“You gonna stop trying to kill me?”

I shrugged noncommittally.

“Very quixotic.” He rubbed his thumb across his lower lip. “How about a six-hour ceasefire until morning?”

This time I nodded. I was exhausted. Hungry, thirsty, and overwhelmed with my own existence.

“Same bed?” he offered.

My eyebrows slammed together.

He grinned in response. “Have fun on the floor, then.”

I assumed the tiny square of bathroom carpet as my bed, curled into a shrimp-shaped figure, crying myself to sleep. Tiernan didn’t suggest I take the bed, nor did he check on his whimpering, hiccuping wife.

The marble beneath me was cold, the pins in my hair too tight, the corset too suffocating, but I was safe.

Locked away from the big, bad monster.

At least until dawn.