Chapter One #2
My hand is trembling. Why is my hand trembling?
The leather is warm under my fingers. Not room temperature warm. Body warm. Like the book is alive. Like it's been waiting for me to touch it.
Okay, Bailey. Okay. Let's think about this rationally.
Possibility one: this is a normal book that happens to be warm because...because...there's a heating vent behind this shelf. Sure. That's plausible.
Possibility two: this is not a normal book and I should put it back immediately and walk out of this shop and never return.
Possibility three: I've completely lost my mind and I'm actually still at Lauve Studio, having a breakdown in the supply closet, and none of this is real.
I pull the book from the shelf.
Apparently we're going with possibility one.
The title stares up at me in ornate gold script:
Choose Your Own Mafia King.
I blink.
A choose-your-own-adventure...romance? With mafia heroes?
A surprised laugh escapes me. It's such a ridiculous concept. Ridiculous and wonderful and exactly the kind of thing I would have devoured in high school, back when I was still naive enough to believe that love could look like danger and turn out safe.
I flip open the cover.
The first thing I see is an illustration.
It's gorgeous. The kind of artwork that makes you stop breathing for a second.
Lush and romantic, rendered in colors so rich they seem to glow against the cream-colored page.
The composition is perfect. A girl at the edge of a ballroom, positioned according to the rule of thirds, chandeliers creating leading lines that draw your eye straight to her.
Men in dark suits occupy the shadowed edges of the frame, their faces obscured, their presence a threat that the lighting makes palpable.
And the girl...
The girl looks like me.
I mean, she has dark hair, that's all. Lots of romance heroines have dark hair. It doesn't mean anything.
I turn the page.
Meet our heroine: Bailey.
My heart stutters.
Okay. Coincidence. Bailey's a common name. There are probably thousands of Baileys walking around Portland alone. It doesn't—
Dark hair. Violet eyes. A single dimple on her right cheek when she smiles.
My hand flies to my face.
To my right cheek.
To the dimple that only shows up when I smile. The one my mother used to call my "secret dimple" because it hides the rest of the time.
This isn't possible.
I turn another page, and there she is. The heroine. Bailey. Illustrated in full color, taking up the entire page.
She's not similar to me.
She is me.
The same wave to her dark hair. The same slightly-too-wide eyes.
The same slope to her nose that I've always thought made me look like a cartoon character.
Even the way she's standing, shoulders slightly hunched, arms crossed over her stomach like she's trying to take up less space.
That's me. That's how I stand in every photo anyone's ever taken of me.
My hands are shaking now. Actually shaking. The book trembles in my grip.
Okay. Okay okay okay. Let's think. Let's be logical about this.
This is a prank. It has to be a prank. Marilyn found out I'd be working her wedding. She set this up somehow. Paid someone to make a custom book, planted it here, is probably watching from a hidden camera right now, laughing at the look on my face—
I look around the shop. Still empty. Still silent except for the crackle of the fire and the rain drumming against the windows.
No cameras that I can see. No Marilyn lurking behind the shelves with her phone out.
Just me, and the book, and the impossible girl on the page who wears my face.
I should put it down.
I should put it down and walk out of this shop and never come back and pretend this never happened.
Instead, I turn the page.
I CAN'T STOP READING.
I know I should. I know this is insane. But every page I turn reveals another detail that shouldn't be possible, and every time I tell myself this is the last one, I'll stop after this, I don't. I can't.
Book-Bailey tucks her hair behind her left ear when she's nervous.
So do I.
Book-Bailey bites her bottom lip when she's thinking.
I'm doing it right now.
Book-Bailey tilts her head to the left when she's confused, like a dog hearing a strange sound.
I catch myself mid-tilt and force my head straight.
What is happening. What is happening. Someone would have had to watch me. Really watch me, for a long time, to know these things. And why would anyone do that? Why would anyone care enough about me to put me in a book?
I'm no one. I'm nobody. I'm a photography assistant at a bridal studio who can't afford her own apartment and spends her lunch breaks listening to audiobooks so she doesn't have to think about her life.
I'm not the kind of person who ends up in stories.
And yet.
A shadow falls across the page.
I jerk my head up, but there's no one there. Just the empty shop, the glowing lanterns, the bookshelves that seem closer than they were before.
Except...
On the small table beside me, there's a cup.
A delicate porcelain cup, hand-painted with tiny roses, steam curling up from its rim.
It wasn't there before. I'm absolutely certain it wasn't there before.
I stare at it. The steam keeps rising, and the way it catches the light is beautiful. Soft and diffuse, like the fog from a smoke machine on a photo set. It carries a scent that makes something in my chest ache. Sweet and floral, roses and honey and something underneath I can't name.
Don't drink it, the sensible part of my brain says. Don't drink the mysterious tea that appeared out of nowhere in the creepy magical bookshop. That's literally how every fairy tale goes wrong.
But my stomach is louder than my brain right now.
It always is, when I'm like this. When I'm tired and sad and just so done with being careful. With being safe. With doing the smart thing and the right thing and the thing that won't get me in trouble.
Once in a pink moon, I just want to do what feels good.
Even if it's not safe.
Especially if it's not safe.
I pick up the cup.
Take a sip.
Oh.
Oh.
It's...it's really good. It's unfairly good.
Warm and sweet and layered in a way that makes me want to close my eyes and just taste it.
There's honey, definitely. And roses, but not the cloying kind.
Something deeper, more complex. The tea equivalent of a perfectly balanced dessert, where every element is doing exactly what it's supposed to do.
I take another sip, and then another, and somewhere between the third sip and the fourth, I realize I've stopped panicking.
The fear is still there. The confusion. The absolute certainty that none of this makes sense.
But it's muffled now. Distant. Like it's happening to someone else.
That should probably worry me more than it does.
I settle deeper into the armchair I don't remember sitting down in and turn back to the book.
FOUR HEROES. FOUR ROUTES. Four ways the story can go.
The book lays them out for me like a tasting menu, each one illustrated with the same gorgeous, impossible detail as everything else.
Quinn Haydraugh. Mafia King of the North. His territory spans Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine. White-blond hair, blue eyes, icy demeanor. Cold but fiercely loyal once you earn his trust.
His illustration is all cool tones. Silvers and blues and whites, the kind of palette that reads as expensive and untouchable. He's beautiful in the way a glacier is beautiful. You don't want to get too close.
Skye Wyndham. Mafia King of the West. The Berkshires and Western Massachusetts fall under his reign. Dark hair, silver eyes, mysterious and quiet. The one no one sees coming until it's too late.
This one is all shadows. Deep purples and blacks, with points of light that catch like stars in a night sky. His expression is unreadable. His eyes seem to follow me as I look at the page.
That's...unsettling.
Wolfe Sideris. Mafia King of the East. Boston and the Massachusetts coast bow to him. Broad and rough-edged, with a scar through one eyebrow. The most dangerous of the four—and the most fiercely protective.
Warm colors here. Golds and oranges and deep reds, like embers in a dying fire. He looks like he could break someone with his bare hands. He also looks like he'd pull a stranger out of a burning building and never mention it again.
And then...
Devyn Chaleur. Mafia King of the South. Connecticut and Rhode Island answer to him alone. Dark-haired, golden-eyed, legendarily impatient. His anger runs cold, not hot—and that makes him more dangerous than all the others combined.
I don't look at his illustration.
I don't know why. Something about the description makes my stomach clench. His anger runs cold, not hot. That's...that's the opposite of what I grew up with. My father's anger was hot. Explosive. Loud enough to rattle the windows and send my mother retreating into silence.
Cold anger sounds worse.
Cold anger sounds like the kind you can't see coming.
So I skip Devyn's route.
I play through Quinn's instead, and "play" is the right word, because the book works exactly like a choose-your-own-adventure. Decisions branch into new paths. Pages tell me where to turn next. The story unfolds differently depending on what I choose.
I finish Quinn's route. Then Skye's. Then Wolfe's.
I don't touch Devyn's.
The shop has grown darker around me. The rain still drums against the windows, but softer now, like it's tired. The fire has burned down to glowing embers. My teacup is empty, though I don't remember finishing it.
I should go. I should have gone hours ago. Heart is going to kill me. I was only supposed to be on my lunch break, and by now it must be...
I check my phone.
Dead. Completely dead, even though it was at sixty percent when I walked in here.
That's...fine. That's probably fine. Phones die sometimes. It doesn't mean anything.