Chapter 8
My head throbs like someone’s driven a nail through my temple. My cheek is pressed to a scratchy surface. Voices murmur over my head. Male voices.
My heart slams in my ribcage, and I jolt awake. I’m still in the wedding dress. The veil has flopped over my face. I brush it aside.
I’m lying on faded green and yellow cushions, on what’s got to be the ugliest plaid couch in existence. The room is musty, with dust motes dancing in the dim sunbeams. The walls are fake wood paneling.
“What?” I mumble with a painfully dry mouth.
“She’s awake,” someone mutters, and stale cigarette smoke wafts over me.
I push myself up and lean back on the couch. A dark figure looms over me.
Vinnie Regis. Royal’s dad.
“Where am I?” I mutter.
“Welcome to my humble abode.” Vinnie flicks his cigarette, and ash flies onto the matted brown carpet.
“Not as nice as Royal’s place, is it? Course, his place used to be mine.
What sort of son pushes his father out?” Spittle flies out his mouth.
He raises a hand to push back his hair. He’s holding a gun.
I press myself into the couch.
“Fucker always was a silent freak of a kid, always plotting.” Vinnie notices me cowering in a cream puff of a dress.
“I don’t know what he sees in you.” His lip curls.
“La Famiglia isn’t gonna allow their golden prince to marry some nobody.
If he goes through with this—” he waves his gun at my poofy white dress, “they’ll reject him. I’m doing him a favor, taking you.”
I lick my lips. Stay calm. Stay calm. Channel Lula. “What are you going to do with me?”
“Keep you a while, teach him a lesson. Make him trade you for the territory he took from Stefanos. Stefanos was cutting me in.” Vinnie keeps ranting. His men hover around him, nodding and smirking at me.
I close my eyes. Do not cry. I press my thumb against the band of my engagement ring. Royal will come for me.
I just have to hold on until then.
“Can I use the bathroom?” I rasp once Vinnie’s stomped out of the room. One of the goons left to watch me shrugs and points out a door in the wood paneled walls.
In the bathroom, I scoop water into my hands and drink my fill. Twitching my skirts away from the filthy tile, I lean over the sink and stare at my reflection. “Think, Leah.” A goddess with big brown eyes blinks back at me. She looks calm, in control. Ready to get married.
Royal is going to come for me, and I need to be ready. If I see an opportunity to escape, I need to take it. Maybe I can manufacture a distraction.
I open the medicine cabinet and stare at the contents. I can figure this out.
I keep my head down when I exit the bathroom. Vinnie is back, lighting a new cigarette. I clasp my hands in front of me.
“Can I use your kitchen?”
“For what?” Vinnie blows smoke in my direction.
I shrug. “I’m a baker. I like baking. I want to make cupcakes. I always do that on Valentine’s Day, but didn’t get to yesterday.”
Vinnie’s bushy brows rise. I try to look meek and scared. Unassuming. Out of my depth. I don’t have to try hard.
“Whatever. Make yourself at home. But don't get any ideas.” He motions to one of his men. “Take all the knives outta there.”
Vinnie’s goon precedes me to the yellow kitchen and yanks open a silverware drawer, pulling out all the knives. My skirts swish over faded linoleum. “Thank you,” I murmur, keeping my eyes downcast. I find an apron that’s clean besides a few old stains, and put it on over my dress.
In what feels like no time at all, I’m turning off the oven buzzer and pulling out my creations. A few goons have gathered in the living room, drawn by the vanilla scent. I swan over to the dusty dining room table and set down a full plate of pink cupcakes.
“How’d you get them pink?” Vinnie asks, suspicion written on his face.
Blood in the frosting. “I found a little bottle of food coloring. You can have as many as you like,” I say. “I already had mine.” I point to a demolished pile of crumbs and baking paper. I did pretend to eat a cupcake, so as not to arouse suspicion.
The men fall on them. Even Vinnie eats one. Pink frosting smears his face. My cupcakes are too good to be ignored.
While the men are eating their fill, I putter around the kitchen for a few minutes, pretending to clean up.
Then I take off my apron and visit the downstairs restroom again before sitting on the edge of the ugly couch in the front room, my hands folded in my lap like a good little girl. The wedding dress poofs around me.
Under the mix of cigarette fumes and the pleasant smell of cake, there’s a slight stench of rotten eggs starting to build up. It’s very faint. No one should notice it, unless they’re looking for it.
I watch the cheap clock askew on the wall. The seconds tick by.
It doesn’t even take a half hour, like it said on the box. Fifteen minutes in, the first mafioso groans and staggers to the bathroom.
This is the dangerous part. If Vinnie catches on and orders someone to put a bullet in my head for what I’ve done, it’s all over.
But he doesn’t. From the moans and groans all over the house, he and his men are making good use of the bathroom. In the closest bathroom there’s also some hacking and coughing. The toilet bowl cleanser I dumped in with the bleach in a stopped up tub must have produced some toxic gas.
I need to get out of here, fast.
I stand and step lightly over the creaking floorboards. The front door is wide open like someone rushed inside and forgot to shut it. They were probably trying to make it to a toilet before shitting their bowels out.
I don't have a phone or a car, but I glide out the door and start up the gravel drive towards the road. I make a great target in my white dress. Hopefully all the mafiosos are occupied trying not to die on the toilet. Or the other distractions I’ve set up will keep them occupied.
Inside the house, people are swearing. Someone in the bathroom upstairs is praying to God, loudly.
I’m a few quick steps down the walk when the fire alarm in the kitchen starts to beep.
The mix of oil and crumbs I poured in the toaster oven finally did its job.
Smoke’s pouring out of the kitchen, which means the bag of flour and sheaf of old newspapers I shoved in the oven are probably about to catch fire.
I pick up my skirts and start to run.
There are shouts behind me. A few shots ring out, and I duck, still rushing away from the house as fast as I can in this huge dress. I guess the laxatives wore off.
Royal’s dad is on the front lawn, gun in hand. He tries to take aim even as his face contorts and he folds over his cramping stomach, bending double. He’s pretty determined to shoot me, even as he’s shitting himself.
I hoist my skirts higher and force myself to pick up speed. I run like the house behind me is on fire.
I’m at the top of the road when a giant booming blast makes me stagger. I get to my feet. Royal’s dad is prone on the lawn, still moaning. Still alive.
Flames roar in the space that used to be the house’s kitchen. The fire quickly spreads. Thugs pour from the windows and doors onto the lawn, hacking in the thick smoke. Most are bent in half like their colons are still rioting.
A black SUV screeches up to me. Royal jumps out the back, a gun in his hand. “Leah!” His black hair and eyes are wild, but he tucks the gun away as he strides to me.
Then I’m in his arms.
“It’s okay,” I murmur. “I’m all right. He didn’t hurt me.”
Royal crushes me to him, burying me in his wool coat. He jerks his head towards the house, and Enzo and the rest of his men head towards it.
“No!” I gasp. “Wait!”
“Shhh, principessa mia,” Royal says, trying to bundle me into the car.
“You can’t go in there,” I shout to Enzo and the rest. “Not yet. I messed with the gas lines.”
Enzo and the men stop short.
In the distance, there’s a whine of fire engine sirens.
“Come here.” Royal scoops me up and sets me in the car. I fight through my crinkling skirt to grab his lapels. “Royal, I’m serious. They can’t go near the house.”
“They won’t, baby. Give me a second.” He tears himself away.
I collapse back into the car seat in a pile of white fabric. I did it. I survived.
Outside the car, Royal stands in a knot of his cousins, giving orders. His deep voice rises and falls. The sound is soothing. I could fall asleep, if I weren’t so charged with adrenaline.
“Principessa.” Royal pushes into the car and pulls me into his arms, easily overcoming the wall of the wedding dress.
I pull my skirts out of the way so they won’t catch in the door. “You know, for two hundred yards of tulle, this dress survived pretty well.”
Royal cups my face, forcing me to focus. “Leah.”
“It’s okay.” I press myself to him. “I’m okay.”
He steals a kiss, murmuring against my lips, “I’ll never forgive myself.”
“It wasn’t your fault. And everything turned out okay.”
Enzo appears by the open car door. “Boss, you’re not going to believe this. I had one of our men drive by and get intel. Looks like the firemen found illegal substances in the house. The cops arrived to take everybody in.”
I bite my lip. Is it bad I got Royal’s dad arrested?
“The guys all had their pants down,” Enzo continues. “They ate some bad shit or something. It stunk so bad—”
“What the fuck?” Royal breathes.
Time to come clean. I duck my head and raise my hand, like a kindergartener in class. The men’s eyes cut to me.
“I may have found an expired box of off-brand Ex-Lax and made cupcakes with them,” I say.
“Fuck me,” Enzo says with awe.
“I also, um, put a bag of flour in the oven, and oil in the toaster. And turned them on. Oh, and dumped bleach and ammonia into the bathroom. In addition to, um…” My voice dies to a whisper as Enzo’s eyebrows creep upward. Royal’s face is scarily blank. “Tampering with the gas line.”
Enzo looks too overcome to swear. He opens his mouth, closes it, and crosses himself.
“Let me get this straight,” Royal says. “You took down a house full of thugs using nothing but a smoking oven and cupcake mix.”
“Excuse me, I bake everything from scratch.” I’d never made laxative cupcakes before, but when my ex dumped me, I might have looked up a recipe a time or two.
Royal’s brows are two angry slashes in his face. Is he mad at me?
“Tell me the truth, Leah,” Royal rumbles. “Did you take out my father and a bunch of his men with homemade cupcakes?”
“No one expects stealth poop muffins,” I whisper.
“Fuck me,” Enzo says in a tone of awe.
The blaring sirens are coming closer.
“Uh, boss?” Another mafioso hovers behind Enzo. “We should get out of here before the cops widen the net.”
“All right.” Royal waves a hand. “Move out.” He crushes me to his side. His lips burn a kiss to my browline. “I am taking you home.”