Chapter 3 #2
He turns to look at me and opens his mouth and —
"Gia."
My father's voice cutting through the space between us like a blade.
Rafael goes still beside me.
My father approaches and this time there is something adjusted in how he moves toward us, something recalibrated, careful in a way that was not there before the church. He stops a beat further back than he normally would. I notice this. I don't know what to do with it but I notice it.
Rafael moves. Not away. Forward, just slightly, just enough, and he looks at my father with an expression that is completely neutral and functions as a wall anyway.
"She's busy," Rafael says.
My father's jaw tightens almost imperceptibly. "I need a word with my daughter."
"She's my wife." The same way he says everything, like the world simply arranged itself around the fact. Then he turns to me and the turn itself is deliberate, making it clear to everyone watching. "Do you want to speak with him?"
What in the world…
I look at my father's face. The controlled impatience there. The thing underneath that says this conversation is happening regardless.
"It's fine," I tell Rafael. "I won't be long."
Something passes through his eyes. Not satisfied. But he steps back, and I follow my father toward the dark edge of the tent where the music becomes muffled and no one can read lips.
My heart is already going faster because nothing that begins with my father pulling me into shadows has ever once ended well.
He doesn't ease into it.
"The alliance you just entered is strategic. You understand this."
"Of course." What else has any of it ever been.
"What you don't understand yet are the specifics." He glances once toward the crowd. "I'm working with Killian O'Rourke."
The name hits me like cold water to the face.
Killian O'Rourke??
"We're seeking revenge for your brother's death," he continues. "The Romanos will pay for what they did to Vittorio."
The Romanos. Rafael's people.
He built this entire thing. He planned every piece of it. The marriage, the timing, all of it, and at the center of it is me.
"Your role," Salvatore says, voice dropping to that register that means he has already decided and is simply informing me, "is to act as my eyes and ears inside the Brotherhood. Everything you learn as Rafael's wife. Meeting schedules. Security details. Weaknesses. All of it."
Is he kidding me right now?!
"No." Flat. Absolute. "No."
His hand closes around my arm, fast and hard, hard enough that I know exactly what my skin is going to look like tomorrow. "This is not a negotiation, Gia."
"I won't spy on my husband." The word is still new and wrong in my mouth but I mean every part of what I'm saying. "I won't do it; I don't care what you—"
He pulls out his phone and puts the screen in front of my face.
Laura.
A room I don't recognize. Plain walls. One small window. Two men at the door not hiding what's under their jackets.
I have been scanning this entire reception for her.
Every corner, every table, every shadow at the edge of every tent, and I could not find her because she was never here.
She was never brought to the reception at all.
While I was standing at that altar, while I was letting Rafael put a ring on my finger, my father already had her somewhere else entirely.
He took her before any of it started.
You absolute—
"She's safe," Father says, in the voice he uses when safety is a condition not a promise. "For now. As long as you cooperate, Gia. Any disobedience—"
"You fucking bastard." The words come out low and level and I mean every single one of them. "She is nine years old!”
His expression doesn't move. Not a flicker. "She is nine years old, she is completely unharmed, and she will remain that way as long as you do exactly what I tell you. So, I suggest you take a breath and listen."
I want to put my hands around his throat. I want to take his phone and throw it into the dark and scream until someone comes. I want to grab my sister and run until we hit water deep enough to disappear into.
Instead I breathe. One breath. Then another.
I look at her face on the screen and I breathe.
"There's a burner phone in your jewelry box," he continues, like this is a normal conversation between a father and a daughter on her wedding day.
"You'll contact me with updates. Regularly.
If you try to warn Rafael or anyone in the Brotherhood, Laura pays.
If you refuse to cooperate, Laura pays. If you disappoint me in any way—"
"I understand." The words come out even. They taste like something rotten. "I understand you."
"Good girl." He straightens his jacket. "Rafael will expect to consummate the marriage tonight. Don't give him any reason to think something is wrong. Be convincing."
And he walks away.
I stand there in the shadows at the edge of this beautiful expensive lie of a party and I let it all arrive.
He never considered that I wouldn't. Not for a single second. He built this entire plan around me and it never once crossed his mind that I might be a person who could refuse.
I fold it up. All of it. Somewhere I can't see it right now.
Then I turn back toward the reception.
Rafael is where I left him.
Watching me. Not staring, not obviously, but positioned so that I was in his sightline the entire time, and when my eyes find his he doesn't look away or pretend he wasn't watching. He just holds the look with that steady unhurried patience and there is a question in it he isn't asking out loud.
I have to betray you.
The thought arrives clean and cold and terrible.
He starts walking toward me and I lock every single thing behind every wall I have.
"They're asking for us," he says when he reaches me. "Time to leave."
I look at him. This man I married today. This stranger I'm going to lie to.
"Ready, little Gia?"
My jaw tightens.
Little Gia. He has known me for approximately six hours and he is already—
"Let's go," he says firmly.
And I follow him out because I don't have a choice.
I'm sorry, I think, watching the back of Rafael's head as he walks ahead of me.
I don't examine why.