Chapter 4
ANNETTA
My first wedding had fallen straight out of a fairytale. The joining of the Barbaras and the Chiarellis could be nothing short of perfection.
I’d ridden on a horse-drawn carriage through arches of pink roses and lavender wisteria, dusted with tiny, delicate baby’s breath.
When I stepped out in my hand-embroidered gown, which had been flown in from London and cost more than a house, everyone turned to admire me.
I’d spent weeks starving myself to squeeze into the dress, but the corset top still made me a bit breathless as I walked down the aisle.
If you looked very closely, my skin was visible beneath the faintly sheer white of the fabric.
The men I’d grown up around, my uncles, cousins, and family friends, leered as I walked past, but I didn’t cringe. I didn’t hide. I held my head high, like a good daughter. I was there to show power, and the way a woman in our family shows power is by being skinny, beautiful, and pure.
The sight of Frederico at the end of the aisle, watching me with adoration and looking like a prince with his perfectly coiffed hair and his tailored tuxedo, made guilt tug at me.
The Chiarellis had asked for Serafina—the accomplished, pretty, elegant twin—to be his bride.
When Serafina cried herself sick each night for weeks, I asked to meet Frederico privately and gave him a clumsy, enthusiastic blowjob so he’d pick me instead.
It hadn’t felt like such a hardship. Frederico was charming and young. He was a better choice than any other match I would have had.
Maybe I would learn to love him.
Serafina was grateful I’d given her a few more years of freedom, so much so that I had to make her stop bringing me tea and bouquets.
As I walked down an aisle strewn with softly wilting rose petals to a handsome, kind-faced husband, I thought, maybe I should’ve let her do this.
Frederico would be a good husband. He would make his future wife happy.
I was wrong.
Now, at Saint Roch Catholic Church, where dust bunnies and wafer crumbs collect along the edges of the pews, and the faint smell of mold permeates the air, I make myself a different bet. This won’t be the husband who makes me happy, but maybe he can keep me safe.
The priest thumbs through the Bible on his lectern, glancing with watery blue eyes over his glasses between me and the double doors to the nave. Now and then, he dry coughs into a worn handkerchief.
My wedding dress is cheap and paired with the tallest pair of white heels I could find online.
I’m so short that even with these stripper heels, the dress still drags on the ground.
I adjust one of the uneven sleeves and force myself to stay still, but the itchy lace makes me want to crawl out of my skin. The sleeve slips down again.
Mom didn’t want to bring our usual seamstress over to the house. She thought the clever woman might recognize the difference between me and who I should be. Dad made me wait a month for his answer, and had only given me a day’s notice that he’d arranged the wedding.
I can only imagine what the rest of the family will say about this.
Every time I shift to lift my dress sleeve, a few dried petals flutter to the ground, and the priest gives me a dirty look. I wanted the last bouquet Serafina was working on—the one from her bedroom. Besides Dom, it was the only thing I asked for.
There’s no clock, and my toes are slowly going numb from standing for so long. I lift one leg to roll my ankle.
“Serafina,” Mom hisses.
I drop my foot back down. Instead of a massive crowd of people to witness my union, it’s just Mom, Rafa, and Carlo.
Carlo is wearing sunglasses and looks like he might be napping through an all-day hangover.
Next to him, Rafa types away at his phone, which he pulled out after two minutes of waiting.
Dad is out there in the rain somewhere, hunting down my future husband.
Is Dom coming? Doubt blooms and with it, a touch of panic. He’s my last resort. I haven’t been brave enough to turn my phone back on after the call, but it doesn’t matter—the message had been sent.
My hands are so sweaty that I have to keep shifting the bouquet to wipe one palm along the side of my dress.
“Serafina,” Mom says again.
A faint pinkish stain streaks the sides of my dress.
I glance toward Mom, who’s pinching the bridge of her nose.
“Sorry,” I whisper, the sound magnified in the empty church. The bouquet in my hand shivers, and a few more petals shake down. “Sorry,” I say again, crouching to pick them up.
“Serafina, stand up,” Mom pleads.
“Sorry.” I launch up, holding the bouquet in one hand and a few dried petals in the other.
Ahead of me is a stained-glass image of Mary Magdalene calmly washing Jesus’s feet with her long hair.
I close my eyes and wait.
Maybe I’ll find myself waiting the entire night. I’ll stand here in the darkness like a marble statue at an art auction until another man comes up to claim me. With any luck, he’ll be strong enough to weather the danger I bring with me.
I wrinkle my nose so I don’t sneeze from the mildew surrounding me. I glance at the priest. Is it him I’m smelling? He looks up from the Bible and scrutinizes me.
I resist the urge to apologize, bowing my head to avoid his gaze.
The other reason I’d been looking forward to this wedding with the smallest scrap of anticipation is that I thought, I hoped, that in this church, I would feel something—a powerful assurance at the presence of God around me, or a whisper to let me know everything is going according to plan.
I’d light a candle, and I’d feel the weight of my sister’s cheek pressed against mine one final time, hear her voice in the wind, or God himself would plant peace in my heart.
There’s only emptiness.
Her soul is supposed to go somewhere. Isn’t that a law of nature? Energy isn’t created or destroyed.
But I can’t feel her, and I can’t make myself pretend otherwise, though I wish I could.
Tears prick my eyes. Even if she were only a prayer away, I wouldn’t ask for her. I don’t want her here in this rotting church. I don’t want her anywhere near me. My soul will corrupt hers and weigh it down with my sins like a yoke around her neck until she sinks to the bottom of hell.
A breath ghosts over the back of my neck, and my eyes fly open. The church doors burst open with two heavy thuds.
Licking his dry lips, the priest opens his Bible to a marked page. Mom points to her sleeve.
I pull up my dress collar, and a few more petals float down.
My chest heaves as I inhale, and heavy footsteps thunder around the corner to the nave.
Whatever happens now, I asked for this. I turn toward the newcomer, and my heart stops, the seconds unfurling into infinity.
The man striding toward me doesn’t look like a husband.
He looks like a warlord. Somewhere outside, thunder cracks.
Dom is soaked, dressed in his usual dark jeans, black boots, and a brown leather jacket with fur trim.
Most of his hair has been pulled loose from his ponytail and hangs around his face in an unruly mane.
He storms toward me like he has the intention to tear me from the altar and sling me over his shoulder as his spoils of war.
I lick my lips. This will be my new husband?
He stomps to a halt in front of me, not meeting my gaze.
Dad strolls around the bend with his hands in his pockets and joins the pew where Mom and my brothers are sitting.
My future husband gives the priest a dark look.
The holy man clears his throat. “Well. Okay. Friends, family. We are gathered here today under God’s watchful eye to witness the joining of two souls…”
As the priest drones on, Dom rolls his head to one side, then the other, the muscles in his neck and jaw flexing as he looks everywhere but at me. The fur trim of his jacket hides that private joining between his neck and shoulder where I bit him. I run my tongue over my teeth.
For a month, I’d held on to a certainty that Dom, like any other man, would accept a marriage with Serafina, but I’d also clutched at a secret hope that I’d made a mistake at Turi’s house and had revealed my identity to Dom in a way that only a person intimately familiar with me could know.
How he’d looked at me—I thought maybe he’d known who I really was.
That the kiss I’d stolen from him when I was eighteen, next to the rosebush at the foot of my bedroom window, had carved out a tiny little What if in his heart for him the same way it had in mine.
But I see the truth now. Dom, who’s been a bachelor for almost as long as I’ve known him, who just has to snap his fingers for a woman to throw herself at him, fought this union tooth and nail. Dad only won out with threats or bribes.
I swallow a lump in my throat and glance at my parents.
Mom has her head bowed. Rafa looks like an overgrown high schooler with his phone tucked against the side of his thigh, tapping against the screen.
Carlo snores until Mom elbows him sharply, and he jerks up.
Dad meets my eye. One of his eyebrows twitches up.
Well?
I look back at Dom, forming a fist over the dried petals in my palm.
So, he doesn’t want to get married? Tough. We all have to do things we don’t want to.
His eyes are lined with dark circles, and a tendon in his neck jumps as he glares at some far-off spot in the church. He shifts, throwing another menacing look at the priest, who stutters in his reading.
I stand as tall as I can, shifting my weight between my heels, and burn my gaze into the side of Dom’s face. He will look at me.
Right as I’m considering reaching forward to tug at his hand or clear my throat, the priest saves him.
“Do you have the rings?” the priest asks Dom.
“No,” Dom rumbles.
The older man blinks a few times. He scratches behind his ear and turns to me. “Serafina?”
For the briefest moment, I fight the urge to look for my sister. But he’s talking to me.