Married to the Monster They Said Was Dead Chapter 02

Married to the Monster They Said Was Dead Chapter 02

The Castellano compound sat an hour outside the city, hidden behind stone walls, iron gates, and men in dark suits who watched me like I was a problem they hadn’t yet decided how to bury.

I arrived with one suitcase and zero illusions.

A woman in her fifties met me at the door. Lucrezia Castellano, Dante’s stepmother. Pearls, a tailored black dress, and a smile that died before it reached her eyes.

“So. The Marchetti girl.” She looked me over like livestock at auction. “Smaller than I expected.”

“I get that a lot.”

She led me through a foyer that smelled of old money and gun oil, past oil portraits of dead men with cruel mouths, into a parlor where dying lilies sat in crystal vases.

“Let me be clear,” Lucrezia said. “Dante requires constant care. He doesn’t speak. He doesn’t move. This marriage is a formality. The inheritance demands he be married before his thirty-first birthday—six weeks from now.”

“And after the inheritance transfers?”

Her smile tightened a fraction. “That isn’t your concern. You’ll receive a generous allowance. And a settlement, upon the marriage’s natural conclusion.”

Upon his death, I translated silently. They were waiting for him to die. Or planning to help him along.

“I’d like to see him,” I said.

She hesitated—just a heartbeat too long. “He’s resting. Perhaps tomorrow—”

“Now. Please.”

Something flickered behind her eyes. Annoyance. Or fear. She recovered fast and gestured toward the staircase. “Very well. But don’t expect much.”

The master bedroom on the third floor was dim, the curtains drawn tight. Medical equipment beeped softly in the corner. And in the center of an enormous bed lay Dante Castellano.

My breath caught—not from pity, but recognition.

I’d studied his scans for months. Seeing him in person was different. Even motionless, he filled the room. A jaw carved from stone. Dark hair across his forehead. Scars along his collarbone where the bullets had gone in. The kind of dangerous beauty that warned you before it ever touched you.

But it was the monitors that held me.

Heart rate: steady. Oxygen: normal. Brain activity—I froze.

The EEG readout was wrong. Not abnormal. Deliberately altered.

Someone had calibrated the machine to display flatline-adjacent garbage. But beneath the suppressed signal, barely visible, the real waveforms told the truth.

Full neural activity. REM cycles. Cognition.

Dante Castellano wasn’t brain-dead. He wasn’t even unconscious.

He was being sedated.

My hand trembled as I checked the IV. The label read saline, but the faint cloudiness of the fluid said otherwise. Someone was drugging him—keeping him still, keeping him silent.

My jaw clenched. I’d suspected it from the scans. Seeing it confirmed in person lit a fury I hadn’t expected.

Behind me, Lucrezia’s voice drifted from the doorway. “As you can see, not much to work with. The ceremony will be Friday. Small. Family only.”

I didn’t turn. “Friday works.”

“Wonderful. I’ll have a room prepared for you down the hall.”

“Actually,” I said, keeping my voice flat, “I’d prefer this room. With my husband.”

The silence behind me went razor-sharp.

“That’s… highly irregular.”

I turned, meeting her gaze with a calm that bordered on a threat. “I’m going to be his wife. I should be close to him. Unless there’s a reason you’d rather I weren’t?”

For half a second, the mask slipped—something dark and panicked flashing in her eyes. Then it slid back. “Of course not. I’ll have a cot brought in.”

After she left, I locked the door and returned to his bedside. I leaned close, studying his face. His eyelids flickered—almost nothing, but I caught it.

“I know you can hear me,” I whispered. “I’m going to get you out of this. But I need you to keep pretending. Can you do that?”

For a long moment, nothing.

Then—so slight I nearly missed it—his index finger twitched. Once. Deliberate.

I exhaled slowly, my pulse roaring in my ears.

The dead man was listening. And he was furious.