I barely get my goddamned wedding dress into the car before I’m yelling at Alessandro to hit the gas. He turns around with his jaw hanging so low that I can see the half-chewed burrito still in his mouth.

“Go, Alessandro!” I snap as I slam the door closed on the bottom of my thirteen-thousand-dollar Alexander McQueen dress.

His wide eyes turn from me to the church across the street. “Where’s Mr. Capuano?” he asks, spitting rice and black beans onto the empty passenger seat.

My mind is racing for an explanation. I glance back at the church through the tinted car window and see my fiancé’s goons starting to pour out of the huge wooden doors. Shit!

“I forgot something at my apartment,” I say with my voice racing. “Uh… my veil.”

His confused eyes turn from the window to the veil that’s currently sitting on top of my head.

“It’s my backup veil,” I quickly spit out. “In case this one gets dirty.”

It’s not the best excuse—actually it’s probably the worst excuse—but my heart is racing, my head is swirling, my palms are sweaty, and I can’t think straight.

I’m desperate to get out of here. If my fiancé or my father get here before Alessandro drops the half-eaten burrito in his hand and throws the car into drive, I’ll be driving out of here in a hearse instead of in this Bentley.

“Let’s just wait for Mr. Capuano,” Alessandro says as he watches the church doors.

“Alessandro, please,” I beg. I swallow hard as I look back at the church in a panic. My stomach turns as hard as the unwanted rock on my ring finger when I see my fiancé Luca storming out of the church. He doesn’t look happy.

Well, I can’t blame him there. I just made him look like a fool in front of eleven hundred and thirty-seven people inside the packed church. And if mob bosses don’t like one thing, it’s being made to look like a fool.

His nostrils are flaring, and even from here, I can see that ugly vein on his neck throbbing like it does before someone gets hurt. This time that someone will be me.

He’s halfway down the stairs when I whip my head back around to the driver who’s refusing to fucking drive. “Just drive the car, please,” I beg as my chest tightens. All kinds of horrible images of what Luca’s going to do to me are racing through my head. When an image of him dragging me down the aisle by my hair in front of eleven hundred and thirty-seven shocked people flashes into my head, I grab Alessandro’s muscular arm. “Please. He’s going to kill me.”

“He’s going to kill me,” Alessandro says, looking past me to the most powerful man in Chicago, although my father would argue that Luca was the second most powerful man and he was the first.

When I turn back and see Luca on the sidewalk, I just react. The handle of Alessandro’s gun is peeking out of his suit jacket, and before I can even consider what I’m doing, my fingers wrap around it and I’m pulling it out of the holster.

He tries to grab it from me, but too many burritos have made him too slow.

“Give me back my—”

The words fall from his throat when I press the cold metal nozzle to his temple.

My jaw is clenched, and for some reason my hands are no longer shaking. “Drive,” I hiss through gritted teeth.

He gulps. “Put down the gun.”

“Put down the burrito.”

Our eyes meet through the rearview mirror, and he must see something in them that gives him a scare because he drops the burrito and nods.

“Now put the car in drive and start fucking driving.”

He quickly throws the car in drive and pulls away from the curb with the tires squealing.

I take a breath of relief when I turn back and look at Luca through the rear window. He’s standing in the middle of the street glaring at me with hard eyes.

“I think you’re making a big mistake,” Alessandro says with a shaky voice. A bead of sweat snakes down his temple onto the gun. I’ve put him a bad spot. If his boss doesn’t kill him for this, then his mobster buddies will make fun of him for the rest of his life as the fool who got played by a sweet innocent girl.

“Turn here,” I order.

“Think this through,” he says as he turns the car. “That’s Luca Capuano back there. Where are you going to go where he can’t find you? What are you going to do? Drop the gun and we can turn back, and everything will be okay. We’ll tell him you just got cold feet. He’ll understand.”

“Next street turn right,” I say. “Drive faster.”

“This is crazy, Jessie,” he says as he burns through a stop sign. “He’ll kill you for this. He’ll kill both of us for this.”

“I’m sorry,” I say, swallowing hard. “I’m really sorry I got you caught up in this, but I just can’t be his wife.”

“You have no choice,” he says, shaking his head. “There’s nowhere you can go that he won’t find you.”

My heart sinks. I know he’s right.

I’ll never be free.

My will is not my own. It’s my father’s to do what he wants with it, when he wants with it. And soon my will, will be Luca’s.

I know he’s going to catch up to me. My father traded me for power. I’m Luca Capuano’s property now, and a powerful man like him will never let his property get away.

But if I can have an extra day or two where I’m not his wife, where I’m a person and not a piece of property to be traded and negotiated for, well, that’s worth dying for I think.

My chest starts vibrating suddenly, and I jump so high from surprise that my perfectly coiffed hair hits the roof of the car. My phone is tucked into my bra. I stuffed it in there before I pulled a Houdini back at the church.

“Shit,” I mutter under my breath. It’s my dad.

I know I shouldn’t answer this, but I do.

His furious screams fill the inside of the Bentley, making both me and Alessandro cringe. I can’t even put the phone to my ear. It’s too loud.

I hear a couple of snippets of words and sentences. Ungrateful. Bitch. Get the fuck back here. You’ll pay for this.

With a lot of cursing mixed in. A lot of cursing.

I picture him in the church pews screaming into the phone while the priest watches with a disapproving look as the fucks, shits, bitches, cunts, and cocksuckers bounce off the stained-glass windows and echo through the tall dome.

Without thinking, my thumb hits the little red button, hanging up on him. I’ve never hung up on my father before. A little surge of adrenaline rushes through me, and I feel my lips curling up into a wicked smile.

“He seems pissed,” Alessandro says as I tell him to make a right turn at the stop sign.

I take a deep breath as I press the button for the window and open it.

“He’s always like that,” I say as I toss the phone out. I grin as I turn back and watch it bouncing down the street.

There’s a GPS tracker on there, and I don’t want anyone knowing where I’m going.

“Up there,” I say, feeling my pulse race when I see my apartment building. I have to do this fast.

My mind races to come up with a plan as Alessandro pulls into the parking lot. I’m going to run in and get my purse, my car keys, and the cash I have stashed in the bathroom.

I don’t have time for anything else. The longer I take, the more chance that Luca and his goons are going to show up, and that would mean… I can’t think of that now. I have to focus.

“Park there,” I say pointing to the empty space.

“This is your plan?” Alessandro asks after he parks. He’s looking at me like I’m crazy. “Hide under your bed in your apartment?”

“Give me your wallet, your cell phone, and the keys,” I say, ignoring him.

I dig the gun into his temple when he hesitates. “Now.”

He swallows hard and then does as I say, giving me the keys, his phone, and his wallet. I open the wallet and scoff when I see what’s inside. “Twelve bucks?” I say, grabbing the bills and tossing the wallet onto the empty passenger’s seat.

“Stay in the car,” I warn as I shove his cell phone into my bra. “If I come out and you’re anywhere but in this seat, I’m going to shoot you in the fucking dick.”

Our eyes meet through the rearview mirror, and I give him my fiercest stare. I wouldn’t really shoot him in the dick—I don’t even know how to shoot a gun. Do I have to take off a safety or something?—but I’m not about to let him know that.

“Okay,” he whispers with a shaky voice.

“Just don’t move an inch,” I say, grabbing the car keys. I open the door and turn back to him. “Actually, you can finish eating your burrito, but that’s it!”

I slam the door closed, hike up my designer wedding dress, and race into my apartment building. A minute later, I’m in my bathroom yanking off the lid on the back of my toilet. There’s a large Ziploc bag inside with about eight thousand dollars in it. I take it out then toss Alessandro’s phone inside the water and instantly feel bad.

Maybe he had photos on there that he’ll never get back now. I’m feeling bad, thinking of him waiting in line at the phone store and having to re-download all of his apps. Obviously, I still have some work to do on being a gun-toting criminal. Number one, get rid of this pesky conscience.

Alessandro is still eating his burrito when I come flying back out of the door with my purse, cash, and car keys. I wave to him as I run past his car to where my red Acura is parked.

“No!” I gasp.

A car comes speeding into the parking lot, but it’s not my father, my fiancé, or any of their many goons. It’s my older sister, Nora.

We have different moms but share the same asshole dad.

She jumps out of the car in such a hurry that she forgets to put it in park. She doesn’t even turn back to watch it roll into the hedges.

“Jessie!” she says in a breathless tone as she rushes over in her purple bridesmaid dress. “What are you doing?”

The intense adrenaline that I’ve been running on just seems to empty out of me when I see her beautiful made-up face and thick blonde curls. We don’t look anything alike except that we both have our father’s big ears.

My eyes start burning with tears, and I’m struggling to hold them in when she takes my hand.

“I… I… I can’t,” I say, suddenly feeling very overwhelmed. What have I done? Pissed off a mob boss, put a gun to an enforcer’s head, disobeyed my father, threw a perfectly good cell phone in the toilet… One of these dangerous men is going to kill me.

I take a deep breath and look at Nora. She understands. She grew up with the same father, only she had a strong mother to protect her. They were able to move to another state and get away. I wasn’t so lucky.

“I can’t marry him,” I say in a firm voice. “I have to leave.”

“Where?” she says, looking pretty shaky herself. “Where can you go that’s safe?”

There’s only one place that comes to mind, or one person in particular. He’s the man I was thinking of when the bridal march started playing through the dusty church organs and I started running. He’s the man I’m thinking of now, and the man I’ve been thinking of ever since I left him eight years ago.

Lachlan.

He’ll keep me hidden. He promised.

I really should have asked if there was an expiration date on that promise, but I’m taking the chance. And it’s not like I have an abundance of other options to consider.

“Jessie,” Nora says, jerking me out of my daze. “Where are you going?”

I can trust her. I know she would die before she let anyone know.

“You already know,” I say under my breath as I open my car door.

“Red Dead Creek,” she whispers. Just the name of the town sends goosebumps running up my sweaty back. She knew how hard I had fallen for Lachlan. She was the shoulder I cried on when we came back home.

I turn back to her and my eyes say it all. That’s where I’m headed.

She lunges forward and wraps her arms around me in a hug. “Go,” she says as tears start rolling down her eyes. “Go and never come back.”

“Come visit me,” I say as I hurry into the car, trying to get my huge dress in. Nora helps and then closes the door.

“I will,” she says, nodding as she wrings her hands together. “I promise.”

I place the gun on the passenger seat, smile at her one last time, and throw the car into drive.

* * *

About forty-six hours later, my bus rolls into Redemption Creek, Montana. It’s not how I remembered it. At all.

It’s beautiful. Cute and cozy. The perfect place to raise a family or spend a nice three-day weekend. There are adorable little mom-and-pop shops along the cobblestone roads selling homemade goods and homey crafts. There’s a huge hotel near the top of the mountain that wasn’t there the last time I came. It’s like the whole town got a facelift. Like it went to rehab and came out a much better version.

My father had taken me here on vacation eight years ago, back when it was called Red Dead Creek. It was a rough, ugly town back then, filled with dark seedy bars that were filled with hard violent men. Their motorcycles sat outside waiting like chrome monsters ready to eat any innocent seventeen-year-old girls who were foolish enough to walk by.

It was a cruel raw place filled with outlaws, biker gangs, and dangerous people who you’d prefer didn’t know that you existed.

Only my father would take his seventeen-year-old daughter to a place like that on vacation. He left me to wander the hostile streets by myself while he made deals with the local gangs. I was terrified and spent the first few days in my room until I met Lachlan. Then, this place didn’t seem so scary. It seemed like paradise.

“Redemption Creek,” the bus driver shouts as he looks through the rearview mirror. There’s only three people left on the bus—the young guy with the headphones who’s slept the entire time, the older woman who has hummed the Price Is Right theme song for the past ten hours, and me, the runaway bride.

After leaving my apartment, I drove two towns over to the bus station and bought a ticket. It took some time for the nice guy at the counter to find out that Red Dead Creek, Montana, had changed its name to Redemption Creek about six years ago, but we found it. I tossed the gun, my purse—basically everything but my cash—into the garbage, got on the bus that was leaving twenty minutes later, and now I’m here.

“Have fun on your honeymoon,” the bus driver says with a snicker as I pull my dress past him.

“Shut up,” I mutter as I catch a glimpse of myself in the rearview mirror. I’ve been on this bus for two days, and I look like it. My makeup is smeared up my cheek, my perfectly styled hair is now a perfectly riled mess, and my designer Alexander McQueen dress now looks like it was designed by Dirty Al from Queens.

All eyes in the bus station turn to me and people start to giggle and look at each other with big smiles—all laughing at the runaway bride, although in my case, I probably look like my groom took one look at me and was the one to run away.

When the phones start coming out and people are taking pictures, I rush to the back of the building.

I hate this dress.

The long beautiful lacy sleeves feel like handcuffs, the silky strap around my neck feels like a noose, and the long sequenced train feels like a stone ball.

I grin as I grab the delicate lace fabric in my fists and rip it apart. Fuck, that feels good.

A crazed laugh bubbles from my lips as I rip it again and again and again, not stopping until it’s lying on the pavement in shreds and I’m only left with a short white skirt and my ripped-up top.

I catch my reflection in the full window and laugh. I no longer look like I escaped from a wedding. I look like I escaped from a mental institution.

But I don’t care. I’m free.

For now.