God of Pain novel · Chapter 4 of 24

Chapter 4: Flowers

The courtyard went silent as I came across it.

Two hundred seniors stood with their coffees halfway to their mouths, and every phone on the lawn came up at once.

Tino lifted a single white rose from the pile and held it out.

"Good morning, my love," he said. "You left your ring at dinner."

He opened his other hand.

The diamond sat in his palm, still wet.

Somebody had fished it out of my father's glass.

"I'm not your love," I said.

"Livia."

"And I'm not wearing that."

"Sweetheart, you're upset. Your father and I understand. A girl gets nervous."

He glanced at the crowd with a rueful little smile, inviting them in.

"Her mother passed when she was young," he said. "She's been through a lot."

My stomach turned.

He was doing it well.

He was making me the hysterical child, and himself the patient man, and every single person in that courtyard was starting to nod.

Beside me, Cormac stood with his hands in his pockets, perfectly still.

I felt him there at my shoulder.

I could have walked past Tino.

I could have taken the rose, and the ring, and let my father's world close over my head.

I stepped forward instead, to the foot of the steps, so everyone could hear.

"My name is Livia Maradei," I said. "I'm eighteen years old."

Tino's smile did not move.

"This man is twenty-seven. Last week my father signed an agreement to hand me to his family on the nineteenth of December.

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