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Instead, I felt as though the walls were closing in upon me. My face was pale. My eyes glassy, and my chest, which was covered by the lace of my gown was rising heavily.
“Can everyone leave?” I asked suddenly.
I felt as though I couldn’t breathe.
No one spoke. The tension in the room thickened as everyone wondered what to do..
I wasn’t calling the shots today. My mother was, and she had made it clear that no one was to leave me alone. I hadn’t even been able to go to the bathroom myself.
She was worried that I would flee. Given the chance, I might have.
“Please leave,” I asked again as I stared at myself in the mirror. The tears had stopped flowing, but I felt as though I was going to start hyperventilating at any moment.
I gasped as my lungs constricted in panic. Clutching my chest, I bent over, trying to catch my breath, which was made all the more difficult by the tight bodice of the wedding dress my mother had picked up.
“Leave,” I heard my mother bark as various women moved towards me. I could feel her red-lacquered fingernails digging into the sleeves of my dress. Her nails were cutting into my skin.
If I cared, I would have warned her about ripping the sleeve of my dress.
“Get yourself together,” she barked, shaking me with such force that my teeth rattled in my head. It didn’t help me catch my breath.
The room had been cleared. We were the only ones left.
“Don’t make me do this,” I begged through gasping breaths. I knew my pleas would fall on deaf ears. After all, it my parents who sold me off to the Italians. I thought I’d made my peace with that, but standing in front of the mirror in my bridal gown, I realized that I hadn’t given up yet. I couldn’t.
The moment I walked down the aisle. This was all over.
“Please, mother. You can’t make me marry him.”
My fear was so intense that I thought it would crush me.
My mother and I did not have the best relationship, but I expected her to show more emotion at the thought of selling me off to our enemies.
“Please,” I begged as she led me over to the couch.
“Control your breathing Sasha,” my mother said as she rubbed my back. To the outside, her actions looked maternal, but she was practically slapping me on the back.
“In and out. In and out,” she coached.
Eventually, my breathing returned to normal, but my panic at the thought of marrying Dominic Blanchi heightened with each tick of the clock.
“Now,” she detangled herself from me. “You need to get yourself together.”She touched up her lipstick in the mirror, cool as a cucumber. “Come, Sasha,” she commanded. “Your father will be here shortly, and we do not want to concern him with this.”
She held out my lipstick towards me.She wanted me to walk down the aisle, the perfect doll.
My mother was not the touchy-feely type. Even as a child, she refused to coddle me and left the maternal experiences up to nannies. I was confident she paid them extra to hug and kiss me simply so she wouldn’t have to. It hadn’t bothered me up until recently. After all, it was hard to be bothered by the lack of something you never had. But sitting here in the bridal suite of our family church on my wedding day, I wished my mother wasn’t so cold and unfeeling. I needed her now more than I ever had. Not having her made me feel truly alone.
“Maybe father will see the ridiculousness of this situation,” I shouted as my frustration and desperation grew exponentially at her dismissal.
Typically, I was soft-spoken. I’d been trained to be seen and not heard since birth, but I couldn’t contain myself. I could hardly believe that my parents would sell me off to the family that had been our enemies my entire life.
“Your father betrothed you to the Blanchis,” she reminded me. Her eyes met mine in the mirror. “He’s not likely to try and save you. Now, come,” she commanded with a click of her fingers.
Getting up, I made my way toward her. Even upset, I knew better than to disobey. That would only cause me more pain in the end.
“Father made this decision recklessly when I was fifteen and Nikolai died. Things have changed. The business has evened out, and we do not need them anymore.”
When my brother died, my parents had been beside themselves. In their desperation to end the war between the families, they decided to arrange this farce of a marriage that I was about to enter into.
