2. Vivi
VIVI
In the narthex, someone thrusts a bouquet into my hands. It’s heavy. The scent potent, overwhelming.
Father keeps us moving. We’re in the nave, several steps up the aisle, when I hear the music.
The organist is playing The Wedding March, the same song I’ve caught myself humming nonstop since the nuns confirmed I was returning to Chicago.
It’s silly, I know, but when your entire life has been building to one specific moment, it’s hard not to fixate on every tiny detail. Not to galvanize each second to memory.
Like the heavy swish my dress makes whenever I take a step.
The echo of the organ’s notes as they crest up to the ceiling.
The awful taste Father’s warning has left in my mouth and the way the champagne is making it hard to think straight.
The way my heart is pounding so hard against my ribs I’m worried they’re going to crack.
The cool, solid strength of the hand that grips mine when Father presents me to the man who is about to become my husband.
Tino Valori.
Being this close to him after so long is doing funny things to my senses. The scent of his cologne undercuts my bouquet. It’s tantalizing, enticing. Makes it harder to breathe.
The champagne sloshes in my stomach and I wobble, swaying closer to the body towering over mine.
Tino has grown since I last saw him. Two years can really change a person.
He’s always been taller than me, sure, but I’m wearing stupidly high heels and he still looms above me, almost threatening.
His chest and shoulders are a wall blocking out what’s left of my peripheral vision.
The stupid veil makes it impossible to see, but every time he answers the priest’s prompts, his voice floats high above my head.
His voice is different, too. Lower than I remember. Harsher. With a sharp edge beneath every word that makes goosebumps pebble across my skin.
My balance takes another hit.
Dizzy, I squeeze his hand, lock my knees. The bouquet tumbles from limp fingers.
Someone in the pews gasps. I get hot, embarrassed.
I’d argue dropping the flowers is better than fainting in front of the entire congregation, but I don’t have time to think about it. A nudge from Tino and a cough from the priest tell me it’s time to say my vows.
To have and to hold…to love and to cherish…in sickness and in health…till death do us part.
For something I’ve been dreaming about for years, it’s over so fast.
Tino slips a ring on my finger. If I angle my head just right, I can glimpse it between the shelf of my chest and the heavy fall of my veil. The band is simple, platinum and pretty against my skin.
It goes from pretty to stunning as Tino closes his fingers around mine. They’re long and thick and so tanned the pale metal glows in his grasp. The bubbles and balloons and butterflies riot in my abdomen.
I’m his.
He’s mine.
Mr. and Mrs. Tino Valori.
The priest declares us husband and wife. Stars blur my vision as I’m hit by another wave of dizziness. I squeeze Tino’s hand and screw my eyelids shut, searching for some sort of equilibrium.
It’s time for the kiss.
Finally, finally, Tino is going to kiss me. Again. For only the second time. As my husband, sanctioned by God and the church and our families. The nuns can’t punish me now. Can’t call me horrible names for feeling the urges I do.
I lick my lips in anticipation. Smother a squeak when he lifts the veil.
My eyes are still closed. I’m nervous, frozen in place, waiting.
The air shifts, his smell, his heat getting closer and closer until his breath ghosts across my lips.
It’s just a hint of him, and I’m already shaking.
“You’re mine now, mia sposa.” It’s a warning and promise, and I can’t swallow.
Can’t breathe.
Like, actually can’t breathe.
Tino is eating up all the space in front of me, but it’s the smoke that’s suffocating. I cough, eyes burning behind my lids as fumes char my nostrils. Something is on fire.
A woman screams. I turn in the direction of the sound, eyes flying open as flames tear across the back pews. Black smoke billows from the rear aisle. What’s left of the small congregation scatters in panic, some rushing to exits, others running in our direction.
My husband pulls me closer. Wraps a solid arm around my waist. I’m just about to grab him, to tell him we must go, when I see a man I recognize at the rear of the sanctuary.
He’s running straight at me. His suit is torn, burned. His face is covered in bruises and soot, his hair singed. He’s screaming, his expression contorted. I can’t understand what he’s saying.
I can’t understand anything because the man running at me from the back of the burning church is Tino. My husband.
How…?
I’m crying for real now, the air hot and thick and dangerously heavy with smoke.
My makeup is melting off my face, sweat soaking my scalp and spine.
Heart in my throat, I look up at the man clenching me against his body.
My vision is blurred, but I can see enough to know that Tino isn’t the man I married.
My husband is a stranger.
Dark hair threaded with silver. Dark eyes. Deeply bronzed skin. He stares down at me, expressionless. Barely blinks when a back section of the building explodes.
Fear—raw, unbridled—swamps me. Through it, I hear people screaming.
Hear Tino shouting.
Hear the stone building groan as the fire burns hotter.
A chunk of the ceiling crashes to the ground a few feet away. Debris flies. With lightning-fast reflexes, the dark stranger moves, protecting me. Through it all, his expression doesn’t change. The only hint he’s human is the heat pouring from his body into mine.
I can feel him across every pore of my skin. Through every layer of fabric, down to my bones.
The smoke, the heat, the alcohol in my blood. Tino’s angry shouts. The stranger holding me very, very tight. Possessively. Painfully.
It’s too much.
My knees dissolve, my neck gives out. I’m staring at the ceiling as it’s consumed by flames, my vision darkening by the second. The man presses his mouth against my ear. “Nice try, Viviana, but you’ll have to do more than faint to escape me.”
His words snake their way through my brain, strangling out everything but a single conscious thought.
This is hell, and I just married the Devil.