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“I’ll go with you.” I squeeze her hand. “You shouldn’t have to do any of this alone.”
“Luca isn’t going to let you! He wouldn’t even let you leave for the funeral—”
“I’ll figure it out,” I promise, standing up to get the steeped tea for her. When I hand it over, Caterina takes it gratefully, wrapping her hands around the cup as if she’s cold, even though the penthouse is always warm. “I’ll talk to him.”
Truthfully, I don’t think I could convince Luca to let me do anything. Especially not after last night.
But I know I have to at least try.
* * *
True to whatI’d feared, Luca almost laughs in my face when I ask him to let me leave the penthouse with Caterina. “Not a chance,” he says flatly. “Everything I’m doing to keep you safe, and you want to go wedding dress shopping? I’m not even sure I believe that. I told you that you’re staying here, and I meant it.”
After all that coldness, I don’t expect a knock on the door the next day. But right about ten a.m., as I’m finishing up the bowl of yogurt and granola I managed to throw together, I’m startled by exactly that.
I open the door to see a tall redhead in a black wrap dress standing there, smiling brightly.
“Hi!” she says cheerfully. “I’m Annie. I work for Kleinfeld’s. My assistant and I are here for Caterina Rossi’s appointment?”
I stare at her, slightly dumbfounded. Caterina isn’t here, obviously, and I blink at her with confusion for about ten seconds until I hear thedingof the elevator door opening down the hall. A moment later, Caterina appears behind her.
“I have my assistant here too, and the dresses, if I can bring them in?” Annie’s smile doesn’t falter for a second as I step aside, still a little dazed, and the blonde assistant and Caterina follow her in, along with a garment rack frothing with silk and satin and lace.
I pull Caterina aside immediately, of course, as Annie and her assistant are setting up. It takes all of five seconds of talking to her to figure out what’s happened.
Luca called her after our conversation and arranged for the final dress appointment to be at the penthouse instead of the salon. Which, of course, he could have told me that he was going to do—but he didn’t. He opted to let me think that he didn’t care instead and let this happen out of nowhere.
As always, it leaves me confused as to how to feel. I was so angry and frustrated with him for refusing to let me go—and then he turns around and does something like this, something kind for Caterina, something that makes it possible for me to be there for her despite the limitations. And yet, I’m still mad at him for refusing to let me leave the apartment at all.
I wish I’d never met him, I think as I sink onto the couch, watching Caterina talk to the assistant quietly, touching each of the dresses as she looks at them.I wish none of this had ever happened.
But even as I think it, I’m not entirely sure that it’s true anymore. Without Luca and our forced marriage, I’d be graduating in a few weeks, getting ready to go to Paris and then London. I’d be on my way to leaving Manhattan forever, becoming an accomplished member of an orchestra, starting a new life far away from the memories here.
When I imagine that now, though, it feels like a dream. Like a life that belonged to someone else. And the thought of never seeing Luca again makes me feel almost like I’m losing something.
Like a drug that I don’t want to admit I’m getting addicted to.
“I’ll try this one on,” Caterina says, jolting me out of my thoughts. “What do you think, Sofia? Is it nice?”
I glance over at the cascade of lace that she’s holding up and force a smile. I’m supposed to be supporting her today, not lost in my own thoughts. “It’s gorgeous,” I tell her, which is easy to say. Anything would look good on her.
She tries on a few dresses, changing in the downstairs bathroom and then coming out for me to see. They’re all beautiful—the first is a fitted white lace dress with a v-neckline and elbow-length sleeves, another is a strapless lace bodice with a floaty tulle skirt, and the third is a sleek mermaid made of heavy, plain white satin.
And then she comes out in the fourth. It’s simple, made of heavy off-white satin, an off-the-shoulder neckline, and a fitted bodice that flares out into a full skirt. There’s nothing fairy-tale or princess-y about it. It’s an elegant, gorgeous dress, one that makes Caterina look like a queen. Her tanned skin glows against the soft candle white of the satin, the dress clinging to the lines of her body in a way that’s beautiful without being too sexy, and when the assistant pins a veil to her hair, sweeping the tulle around her, I feel the prickle of tears at the corner of my eyes.
“This is the one my mother loved,” Caterina says quietly. “I thought I wanted something more ornate. But now that I’ve put it on again—” she hesitates, looking in the mirror that the assistant set up for her. “I think it’s perfect.” She glances back at me, biting her lip. “What do you think, Sofia?”
My chest tightens, and it takes me a moment to be able to speak. We don’t know each other that well—it’s only through circumstance that we know each other at all, and I want to say the right thing. This is an important moment in her life, one that she should be sharing with her mother, or a sister, or a close friend—anyone closer to her than I am. But I’m all she has.
“I think it’s perfect, too.” It’s true—I can’t imagine a more perfect dress. The others were gorgeous, but this suits Caterina as if it were made for her. “And it’ll feel like she’s there with you, at least a little bit.”
“That’s what I was thinking, too.” Caterina bites her lip, crossing over to the couch and sinking onto it next to me while still in the dress. She reaches out for my hands, grasping them in both of hers as she smiles through the tears that are starting to run down her face. “Thank you so much, Sofia. I can’t tell you how much it means to me that you were with me today. It feels like I have a friend.”
My chest tightens with emotion as she squeezes my hands. Like that moment at our engagement party when I caught a flash of what my life could be like with Luca if we actually loved each other, that moment where we were joking and teasing one another, I see a glimpse of what my life could be like if I were actually a part of this family. If I accepted my place as Luca’s wife, I worked to be a good one, support him, and love him. Caterina would be my friend, married to Luca’s underboss. I can see the dinners we would host, the parties we’d go to together, the events we’d help organize. I can’t imagine a day when Ana isn’t my best friend, but I can see the place in my life that Caterina would occupy too, and the place I would have in hers.
And it wouldn’t be bad. It would probably even begood, a happy, fulfilling life in many ways.
But in order to have that, I’d have to let go of all of the ideas I’ve always had about what my life would be. I’d have to come to terms with my feelings about what Rossi and his thugs did to my mother, the fact that Luca is now occupying the spot that Rossi used to, and the way I’ve been dragged into all of this.
I don’t know if I can do that. I don’t know if I can find a place here when I resent how it all began so much. When I don’t even understand my feelings for my own husband. When I’m alternately unsure if he’s someone I could fall for or someone who I should be terrified of.
But I do know one thing Icando.
I squeeze Caterina’s hands back, looking at her with a smile on my face. “You do have a friend in me,” I tell her firmly.
And that, I know I mean. More than anything I’ve said in a long time now.
