Chapter 32
CASSIA
Three months ago, I drove myself to the grocery store and no one looked twice.
Now I don’t step outside without men in dark suits scanning rooftops.
The black SUV idles in the compound’s circular drive, two guards flanking the vehicle.
Giada links her arm through mine as we walk down the front steps, and I catch one of the guards murmuring into his earpiece.
Confirming our route. Alerting whoever needs to know that the Don’s wife is leaving the premises.
The Don’s wife. Me.
“You’re thinking too loud,” Giada says, squeezing my arm. “I can hear it from here.”
“It’s strange.” I catch the apology before it forms. Swallow the sorry that rises out of habit. “All of this.”
“The armed escort to go dress shopping?” She laughs, warm and real. “Welcome to being a Santoro. You get used to it.”
I’m not sure I will. But I climb into the SUV anyway, sliding across leather seats. Giada settles beside me. One guard takes the front passenger seat, another the driver’s position. The doors close with a heavy, armored thunk.
We pull through the gates, and I watch the compound shrink in the side mirror. The wrought iron. The magnolia trees. The world I’m still learning to call home.
“Dante’s orders,” Giada says, as if reading my thoughts. “After Romano, he’s not taking chances. Not with you.”
Not with you.
The words settle somewhere beneath my ribs. Three months ago, no one would have noticed if I disappeared. Now the most dangerous man in New Orleans sends armed guards to protect me while I shop for wedding dresses.
My hands press flat against my thighs. I hold them there until the trembling stops.
So I do what I always do: file it away and focus on the task at hand.
The boutique is on Magazine Street, all white walls and crystal chandeliers and racks of silk and tulle that cost more than my car. My old car. The one I sold when I moved into the compound because Dante’s wife doesn’t drive a ten-year-old Honda with a dent in the bumper.
The guards take positions. One near the door, arms crossed, surveying. One outside, visible through the window. The boutique attendants exchange glances but say nothing. They know who we are. They know whose money we’re spending.
“So.” Giada steers me toward the racks. “Ceremony gown first. Then reception.”
“Two dresses?”
“Two dresses. No question.” She pulls a gown from the rack, holds it up, wrinkles her nose, puts it back. “The ceremony is sacred. Traditional. The reception is where you show them who you are.”
I trail my fingers along the fabrics. White. Ivory. Cream. Blush. So many versions of the same color, the same expectation. Be a bride. Be pure. Be everything they want you to be.
My hand stops on a simple A-line. Conservative neckline. Minimal beading. The kind of gown that disappears into a crowd.
“No.”
I look up. Giada is staring at the dress like it offended her.
“What?”
“That.” She gestures at my choice. “That’s what the old Cassia would have picked. The one who didn’t want to be noticed.”
She takes it from my hands, hangs it back on the rack.
“You’re not hiding anymore. You don’t have to dress like you are.”
The words land harder than they should. Because she’s right. I reached for invisibility without even thinking about it. Muscle memory. Twenty-four years of making myself smaller.
“I don’t know how to choose something else,” I admit. The confession scrapes on the way out.
Giada’s expression softens. “That’s why I’m here.”
She disappears into the racks and returns with three gowns draped over her arm. Each one bolder than anything I would have chosen. A mermaid silhouette in ivory. A ballgown with a plunging back. A sheath with intricate beading that catches the light like scattered stars.
“Try them,” she says. “All of them. And stop shrinking yourself with your posture.”
She’s right. My shoulders are curled in, my chin tucked down. Protective camouflage. I straighten my spine and take the gowns.
The first is beautiful. Too beautiful. I look like I’m playing dress-up, a little girl wearing her mother’s clothes.
The second is stunning. But it’s not me. Too dramatic, too look-at-me, too much.
The third.
The third is ivory silk that moves like water. A deep V-back that shows the knobs of my spine. A train that pools behind me with assurance. The beading is delicate, not overwhelming. Stars scattered across a night sky.
I stare at my reflection.
My breath stutters. My fingers grip the sides of the silk.
This woman in the mirror. She’s not hiding. She’s standing in the spotlight and refusing to apologize for taking up space.
She looks like a bride. She looks like a Donna.
She looks like someone worth choosing.
“That one.” Giada’s voice comes from behind me, thick and low. “That’s the ceremony dress.”
I can’t speak. Just nod. My throat is too tight for words.
The attendant takes it for alterations, and I’m left standing in my slip, skin prickling under the boutique lights. My pulse hammering at the base of my throat. Goosebumps climbing my arms. The mirror still holding the ghost of the woman I just saw.
“Ready for the reception dress?” Giada asks.
I take a breath. “Ready.”
She’s been saving it. I can tell by the way she disappears into the back room, by the way she returns carrying a garment bag like it contains a relic.
She unzips it, revealing the fabric inch by inch.
Champagne gold. Not yellow, not cream. The color of candlelight. Of firelight. Of every fairy tale I stopped believing in when I was twelve years old.
“Try it on,” Giada says.
I do. The fabric slides over my body like it was made for me. Form-fitting through the bodice, flaring at the hips. A slit up one thigh that shows leg without being vulgar. Cap sleeves that leave my shoulders bare.
And the color. God, the color. It catches the boutique lights and throws them back, warm and alive and impossible to ignore.
I turn to the mirror.
And I don’t recognize myself.
Not the way I didn’t recognize myself in the ivory gown. That was becoming someone new. This is becoming someone I forgot I could be. Someone bold. Someone who walks into a room and owns the air she breathes.
“You walked into his study in that burgundy dress,” Giada says, her voice hushed, “and changed everything. You didn’t know it then. But you did.”
I remember that dress. The only nice thing I owned. I wore it because I wanted him to see me, even though I’d never have admitted it. Even though I told myself it was about duty, about family, about saving Elena’s place.
It was never about Elena.
“This is who you are now,” Giada continues. “Not the replacement bride. The woman Dante fell in love with. The Donna.”
My vision blurs. I blink hard, but the tears come anyway, tracking down my cheeks before I can stop them. Involuntary. My body deciding before my brain catches up.
“I don’t know why I’m crying over a dress,” I whisper.
Giada’s hand finds mine, squeezes tight. She doesn’t explain. Doesn’t need to.
I never thought I’d be someone who cried over a dress. I never thought I’d have a sister who looked at me like this.
“Mama would have loved you.”
The words level me.
“She always wanted a sister for me,” Giada continues. Her voice wavers. “I was the only girl. Surrounded by brothers. She used to say, ‘One day, Gia, one of them will bring home someone who sees you. Someone who stays.’” She swallows hard. “She would have loved that it was you.”
I’m crying now. Can’t stop. Don’t want to.
Permission to belong. That’s what she’s giving me. Not a compliment. Permission to take their Mama’s place, not as a replacement, but as a continuation. Permission to be the sister Giada never had.
“I never had a sister either,” I manage. “Elena and I were never close. She was the one everyone noticed. I was just there.”
“You’re not just there anymore.” Giada squeezes my hand harder. “You’re here. You’re family. And you’re wearing that dress to your reception if I have to wrestle you into it myself.”
I laugh. It comes out wet and broken and real.
“Deal.”
We buy both dresses. The guards load the garment bags into the SUV with careful hands, treating them like they contain state secrets instead of silk and beading.
Giada gives the boutique owner her card, and I don’t flinch at the total.
Dante’s money. Our money. I’m still learning to think of it that way.
We’re pulling away from the curb when my phone buzzes.
The screen shows a name I haven’t seen in weeks.
Mom.
My thumb hovers over the accept button. Giada notices, raises an eyebrow.
“My mother,” I say.
“Do you want me to—”
“No. It’s fine.” I press accept. “Hello?”
“Cassia.” My mother’s voice is careful. Measured. The way it always is with me, like she’s never sure what to say. “Your father and I will be there. Sunday.”
“Okay.” The word comes out flat. I don’t know how to make it warmer.
Silence stretches between us, thick with everything we’ve never said. All the years she looked through me while Elena glowed.
“What you did. For the Santoros.” She stops. Starts again. “We heard. Dante told us.”
I wait. My pulse drums in my ears. My free hand grips my knee.
“You could have run,” my mother says. “When Elena came back. You could have let her take your place. But you didn’t.”
“No.” My voice is steady. “I didn’t.”
Another pause. Then, so low I almost miss it:
“I’m glad.”
My chest seizes. I press my fist against my sternum and breathe through it.
Silence. I think she’s done. I’m reaching for the words to end this call when she speaks again.
“I failed you, Cassia.”
My breath stops.
“Elena was so loud. She needed so much. And you were always so steady.” Her voice shakes. “I told myself that meant you were fine. That you didn’t need me the same way.”
I can’t speak. My hand is white-knuckled around the phone.
“You needed me. And I looked right past you.” A wet sound. A breath pulled through tears. “I can’t take that back. I know I can’t. But I see you now. What you did. What you’ve always done.”
My eyes burn. I stare at the back of the driver’s headrest and count the stitches in the leather because if I blink, the tears will come, and I don’t have any left.
“Mamma.” It comes out broken. A child’s word in a woman’s voice.
“I know, baby.” She’s crying. My mother is crying. “I know.”
“We’ll see you Sunday,” I manage.
“Yes. Sunday.” A pause. “I love you, Cassia.”
She hangs up.
I lower the phone to my lap and stare at the screen until it goes dark.
“You okay?” Giada asks.
I think about the question. Think about it for real.
“I think my mother just apologized,” I say. My voice cracks. “I think that’s the first time she’s ever said it.”
Giada doesn’t say anything. Just reaches over and takes my hand.
I hold on, counting the squeeze of her fingers until my chest unlocks.
The SUV carries us back toward the compound, the guard in the front seat murmuring coordinates into his earpiece, the afternoon sun slanting through tinted windows.
In the back, two garment bags hang like promises.
One ivory. One gold.
One for the ceremony that makes me his wife. One for the celebration that makes me me.
I have the dresses. I have a sister. I have a family that sees me.
Now I just have to walk down the aisle and prove I was worth seeing all along.