VINCENZO’S POV

Walter Morales’ face was a shade of red and purple as I twisted his arm harder until he could no longer breath properly.

The old man has been grating on my nerves for the longest time and for some fucked up reasons, I couldn’t stand him controlling my wife like he always did.

We are married and she’s my fucking wife.

The ties she shared with her father ends in this fucking reception and anything other than that, Walter would have to face me directly.

“Let me go!” He barked in a low voice.

From the profiling and background check I ran on Walter Morales, one thing was sure about the old man; he valued reputation even more than his own daughter.

It didn’t come as a surprise when he wanted to drag my wife with him for some fucking socializing she wasn’t in the least interested in attending.

Ava has been forced to socialize all her life and now that she was married to me, I have just freed her from the clutches of her father’s obsessive nature.

“Shouldn’t I get a ‘thank you’?” My lips curled slightly, dragging my gaze to my wife.

The expression on her face screamed horror.

I guess she was honored to be married to a man who could stand up against her father.

I bet if she had gotten married to an oldie who is a few years closer to his grave, her father would still have some control over her life. It might be worse if her father and her husband were close friends.

But that shit didn’t apply to me. I make no friends with greedy bastards. If anything, they irk the fuck out of me.

I will never like this man and even though I’m married to his daughter, that didn’t change shit.

It had been seconds, if not minutes since my wife stood frozen in shock at me defending her in front of her dad.

I didn’t do it because I felt I needed to. I just had to put the old man in his place.

He had no right to drag my wife to socialize with some old men with half a brain cell.

“Why should I thank you?” She cleared her throat, her shoulders stiff and her siren eyes fixed on me.

She came back defiant and more confident, not looking like the shocked girl who froze just a few seconds ago.

Interesting.

Wasn’t my little ballerina wife interesting?

I guess our marriage wouldn’t be as boring as I had pictured it to be the second I agreed to marry her.

“Because you defended me in front of my papa?” Her eyes dragged from me to her papa, whose face was still a shade of purple and red from pain.

Ava sighed and took a step closer, flashing me a smile through gritted teeth. “Can you let go of him already? You’ve already made your point clear. Now let go.”

Oh wow, commanding type..

“So sorry, Little ballerina. Too bad I don’t take orders from you.” My voice turned hard like steel and my eyes darkened. Beyond every shade.

If there was one thing I hate so fucking much, that would be taking orders.

My brothers and the Bratva knew how much I hated taking orders so they let me do my thing.

But getting an order from my little wife who was just twenty-three and is younger than me by ten years, irked something in me.

Hell, it ticked my brain.

If it were some fucker who barked out orders at me, their neck would have been snapped out of their head and sent to the wolves in the forest of Saint Petersburg.

Knowing I wasn’t relenting and would probably snap her Papa’s wrist, she exhaled loudly, shutting her eyes. “Please, Vincenzo.”

Fuck! I liked it when she begged.

“That’s more like it.” Working my jaw, my gaze swept over my little wife, who after apologizing, glared daggers at me.

“You don’t bark out orders at me,” I paused, letting go of her Papa’s wrist and he staggered backward, breathing raggedly. “You beg.”

As if on cue, my brothers strode towards me, their faces unreadable but I knew damn well something wasn’t right.