Total pages in book: 41
Estimated words: 39068 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 195(@200wpm)___ 156(@250wpm)___ 130(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 39068 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 195(@200wpm)___ 156(@250wpm)___ 130(@300wpm)
“Promise me,” my mom calls out behind us. “Promise me you’ll do it.”
What in the actual fuck is going on?
It doesn’t matter. I don’t have time to deal with her histrionics this afternoon.
“I’m doing it right now, Mom.” I don’t turn around. We arrived at the doors to the cathedral nave where the rest of the wedding party waits.
My mom takes the arm of one of the groomsmen. “All of our lives depend on it,” she hisses at me just before she enters.
“Jesus H. Christ. Did she get into the liquor cabinet?” Bea whispers.
I smother a laugh. Thank God for Bea, or I’d never make it through this day.
She takes the arm of her groomsman and walks down the aisle.
I don’t see Britt, my Maid of Honor. Maybe she already walked? I’m confused.
The flower girl heads down the aisle tossing her rose petals.
“Our turn.” My dad holds out his arm.
As I take it, I realize that he, too, looks terrible. I stop. “Dad? What’s going on?”
He’s sweating. Breathing hard. It looks like he’s about to keel over. “Did your mother talk to you?”
“Yes, but I don’t understand. What’s happening?”
“Just walk down that aisle and say your vows to the man on the other side, and we’ll all make it through this day.” He tugs me forward into the nave.
Eight hundred bodies stand as the violinists begin Wagner’s “Bridal Chorus”.
We’ll all make it through this day.
My feet move forward. The train of my gown swishes behind me. I can’t figure out what my dad is saying. None of this makes sense.
The guests turn expectantly my way. I hear murmurings, but they aren’t about how lovely I look. There’s a buzz of wondering whispers.
Who is she marrying? Where’s Jake? What’s going on?
I widen my pasted smile and look to the end of the aisle at my groom.
That’s when I realize that it’s not the future mayor of New York City standing at the altar waiting for me.
It’s someone else. Someone with dark hair watching me intently.
Now I understand what my parents meant. I’m marrying someone else today. And it’s life or death.
The air rips from my lungs as I grow closer.
My God.
It can’t be.
It’s him. The guy from the ball.
Chapter Two
Antonio
Dahlia drops her bouquet.
Her lips part.
Benedict stoops to pick up the cascade of roses and hands it to her. “Say your vows,” he hisses as he deposits her at the altar and lifts her veil.
Dahlia hasn’t looked away from me, her pale blue gaze locked in mine. She whirls to look over her shoulder at her mother, crying in the first pew. Then she scans the exits, no doubt noting I have every one of them covered.
“Nowhere to run, Dahlia,” I murmur. “You just got sold into slavery.”
I say it to be cruel. To punish her for her father’s misdeeds. And hers.
Dahlia is the ultimate revenge fuck.
She returns her gaze to mine. I expect confusion. Tears. Refusal. Instead, she lifts her chin. “I’m not running.”
And just like that, I remember why I debauched her in the first place. I enjoyed this rebellious edge–the one that separates her from the rest of them. I believed–falsely–it meant she had a soul inside that perfect shell.
I glance at the priest, who I spoke with before we walked in. He and I should understand each other perfectly now that I’ve lined his church pockets. “Go on.”
He greets the audience. “In deference to the family’s wishes, we will skip the readings and prayer and go straight to the Statement of Intentions. Antonio and Dahlia, have you come here to enter into Marriage without coercion, freely and wholeheartedly?
I nod my head. “I have.”
Dahlia glances toward her parents in the front row again. Both of them vigorously nod at her. She looks over her shoulder at her bridesmaids who look as bewildered as she does. Bea, the one closest to us, shakes her head.
I cock mine and send Dahlia a warning glance. She doesn’t know me–doesn’t know what I’m capable of or who I am. I doubt she even knew my first name before the priest mentioned it. But she understands the look just the same. I can tell because she pales and swallows.
“I have.” To her credit, her voice rings out clear and smooth.
The girl was trained to perform, and she’s putting on the performance of a lifetime right now.
“Are you prepared, as you follow the path of Marriage, to love and honor each other for as long as you both shall live?”
“I am,” I say.
“I am.”
“Are you prepared to accept children lovingly from God and to bring them up according to the law of Christ and his Church?”
A little shock ripples through Dahlia at the mention of children, but after another quick glance toward her parents, she answers after me, “I am.”
“Since it is your intention to enter the covenant of Holy Matrimony, join your right hands, and declare your consent before God and his Church.”