I Thee Take To Have and To Hold Duet Book Two Natasha Knight Copyright © 2021 by Natasha Knight All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. Contents 1. Cristiano 2. Scarlett 3. Cristiano 4. Scarlett 5. Cristiano 6. Scarlett 7. Cristiano 8. Scarlett 9. Cristiano 10. Scarlett 11. Cristiano 12. Scarlett 13. Cristiano 14. Scarlett 15. Cristiano 16. Cristiano 17. Scarlett 18. Cristiano 19. Cristiano 20. Scarlett 21. Cristiano 22. Cristiano 23. Scarlett 24. Cristiano 25. Scarlett 26. Scarlett 27. Cristiano 28. Scarlett 29. Cristiano 30. Scarlett 31. Cristiano 32. Scarlett 33. Cristiano 34. Scarlett 35. Cristiano 36. Scarlett 37. Cristiano 38. Scarlett 39. Scarlett 40. Cristiano 41. Cristiano 42. Scarlett 43. Cristiano 44. Scarlett 45. Cristiano 46. Scarlett Epilogue 1 Epilogue 2 What To Read Next Also by Natasha Knight Thank you! About the Author About This Book Scarlett Cristiano is my enemy. He’s also the only man with whom I’ve ever felt safe. Protected. But I have to remember that he married me with one purpose in mind. Revenge. I would be the bridge to his real enemies. I can’t let myself forget that he isn’t the hero of this story. His hands are covered in blood. I saw that with my own eyes. Cristiano I thought I knew Scarlett’s past, but I didn’t know anything. I thought I knew the worst of monsters, but I hadn’t seen anything yet. Sometimes you have to lie to yourself to survive. Sometimes it’s those closest to you who will bury their knives in your back. Too many times it’s the innocents who pay for your mistakes. For your refusal to see. I can’t let Scarlett pay for mine. But I may be too late to stop it. I Thee Take is the second and final book of the To Have and To Hold Duet. With This Ring, Book 1 of the duet, should be read first. One-click With This Ring here. 1 Cristiano Six men lie on the ground at the front of the house, all but two shot execution style. The two are riddled with bullets. They were taken by surprise. The others were rounded up. They saw death coming. “The front door was open when we got here,” Antonio says. I should have left him with her. Why didn’t I leave him? “Any of their soldiers among the dead?” my uncle asks. Antonio shakes his head. We were ambushed. Betrayed again. No one knew this house even existed. Even if they did, no one knew she was here. No one but the men who were here with her. Who are now dead. All except for one. “Where’s Alec?” I ask. He’s the lone survivor. He called it in a few hours ago. “Kitchen.” I look beyond the house to the mountains. Turn around to the ocean. They drove right up. Killed the men at the checkpoints and continued straight to the house. Betrayed. Again. I turn to my uncle who has remarkably not puked at the sight of the bloodbath, both outside and inside the house. Maybe I don’t know him as well as I think. Inside is decidedly worse, the blood marking the walls and furniture. I’m taken back in time, back a full decade to another massacre. The other half dozen men and the kitchen girl lie dead. Shot in the back of the head execution style like the others. “Fuck.” The bedroom doors stand open and from here I see the rumpled bed, see the shards of glass from the whiskey bottle I’d smashed against the wall. The bathroom light is on, too. At least she’s not dead. They didn’t kill her. Anything is better than dead. “Cris,” Alec starts, rising from his seat, but wincing and falling back down to the chair. I look him over but can’t tell how much of the blood is his and how much is from the others. What strikes me most isn’t that. It’s his expression. The tears he’s trying hard not to shed. The last time I saw a grown man cry was when my father watched his wife degraded before his eyes. My jaw tenses, my gut twists. I go to him. “Are you okay?” “I should be dead.” Why aren’t you? I don’t ask. “He’ll be fine. Out of commission for a while, but fine,” the doctor who stitched me up just days ago says. Lately, it seems I singlehandedly keep his mortgage paid. “Can’t work this arm for a while and he’ll need a cast for his leg.” “Who were they?” I ask Alec. “Mexican soldiers. Her uncle led them.” Jacob De La Cruz. I’d seen him just hours ago. Ordered him to arrange a meeting with that fuck Felix Pérez. “Was she hurt?” He doesn’t quite look at me. I grip his hair, force his face to mine. He needs to man up. I made a mistake trusting him to protect her. “Did. They. Hurt. Her?” “She was hunched over when they dragged her out,” he pauses. “Naked,” he adds in a barely audible whisper. It’s hard to swallow. I can’t put a finger on the thoughts and emotions turned to physical sensation inside me. Blood pounds against my ears. A burning hot rage followed by the cold fear of loss. Of losing someone else. Losing her. My dream comes back to me, that scene again. Scarlett in my mother’s place. Scarlett calling for me. Calling for me to help her. It was no coincidence. “I figure if I’m drunk enough, it won’t hurt as much.” I release him and walk into the bedroom. Glass crunches under my shoe. I look down only to see the wedding band I ripped from her finger. I called her a whore. I almost hit her. “I figure if I’m drunk enough, it won’t hurt as much.” Won’t hurt as much. It had struck me when she’d first said it. Not a virgin, no. How badly did Marcus Rinaldi hurt her? Did he do more than she let on? And was her uncle lying when he told me that story of how her brothers humiliated her? Wouldn’t let Rinaldi touch her until after the wedding? I shake my head, run a hand through my hair and bend to pick up the wedding band. I’d dropped it on the bed after forcing my mother’s ring from her finger. Fuck. Fuck me. No. It’s not me who’s fucked. It’s her and I’m
