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Gabriel looked at me. “Wow, your bride and mother-in-law have really outdone themselves.”
“Christ, I know our families wanted to make a show of today to signify strength to the rest of the organization, but even I didn’t expect them to go this far.”
The cloying air overpowered my senses with the scent of hundreds of flowers. The church was rammed with people and it appeared that the whole Società had turned out in force for today’s wedding—which I suppose wasn’t surprising given that I’d heard Mrs. Bonardi had been telling everyone that this was going to be the ‘wedding of the year’.
Mrs. Bonardi herself was dressed in what could only be described as a gold monstrosity. I hoped to God that Jessica would not be wearing gold today and her dress would be more tasteful than her mother’s over-the-top outfit and the bridesmaids’ flouncy dresses.
I made my way down the aisle to the front of the church. I had to push past the floral arrangements at the end of each pew, which were overflowing into and taking over the aisle. Some petals clung to my tuxedo and I brushed them off in annoyance. The wedding hadn’t even begun, but I had already had enough.
While we waited for the ceremony to start, I greeted various guests and alternated business talk with polite chit-chat.
I checked my watch and clenched my jaw. Jessica was already twenty minutes late.
She knew the time that the wedding was due to start, and I expected her to show up on time.
When forty minutes had passed, the priest approached me and cleared his throat. “I have two more weddings to conduct this afternoon. I’m not sure how much longer we can wait. Do you think your fiancée will be turning up soon?”
“You’ll wait however long I require you to,” I growled at the priest, putting my hand on my revolver.
I saw the priest follow the movement of my hand. His face turned white, and he made the sign of the cross. Whatever—he knew the price of doing business with the Società. He might serve at the right hand of God, but that didn’t protect him from the deadly hand of the Società.
As the priest scuttled away, Gabriel murmured, “Perhaps she’s having second thoughts.”
“She better not be. She’s signed the engagement contract and she knows there’s no way out from it—except through death.” Those were the rules of our world and I wasn't going to apologize for it.
We continued waiting and Gabriel tried to distract me by talking about business matters. Business always managed to distract him, but I wasn’t the same as my brother.
Fifty minutes after the scheduled start time, there was a flurry of activity at the wooden doors to the church and I focused my gaze on it, hoping for Jessica’s sake that she had finally deigned to turn up.
The doors abruptly opened, and the organist began playing. A small figure dressed in white appeared, and as I watched her make her way down the aisle, I forced myself to unclench my fists and relax my muscles, but I didn’t quite manage to remove the frown from my face.
I didn’t like being kept waiting and as a Mafia daughter, she should have known better.
She walked toward me, and I watched her shoes crush the petals which had fallen from the arrangements onto the floor. Thank God she wasn’t wearing those horrendous sparkly gold shoes again—that surely would have been the last straw for me today.
While she made the long descent to the altar, I could hear noisy sobs coming from the golden meringue—that is, her mother. But I shut my ears to it all and focused my attention on my bride.
Her dress was white with a high neckline and cap sleeves, showing off her slender arms. The dress flared around her delicate figure into an A-line skirt and there was a small train. My gaze rose to her face, and I noticed that her hair was swept into an updo, its dark luster sharply contrasting with the veil covering it.
She came closer to me, and I could see that her father was tightly holding her hand and practically tugging her to the front of the church. She couldn’t make it any more obvious to me and the whole of the Società that she didn’t want to be here and that she didn’t want to be marrying me.
Goddamnit, what was wrong with her? Didn’t she understand what was required of her?
Jessica and her father reached my side. He pulled up her veil, revealing her soft gray eyes huge against her pale face, before forcefully putting her hand into mine. I closed my fingers around hers and I saw her flinch as I gripped too hard. I made myself loosen my hand, but only slightly.
The priest began his spiel about God, matrimony, and children. I felt like telling him to get a fucking move on. We all knew that this marriage wasn’t about love or religion—it was about business and money.
The priest turned to me. “Rafael and Jessica, have you come here to enter into marriage without coercion, freely and wholeheartedly?” What a stupid question—everyone could see how my bride was.
“I have,” I said firmly, and then I pointedly looked at Jessica who was hesitating.
The blood in my veins heated to boiling point and I tightened my grip around her fingers.
She replied in a tremulous voice, “I have.”
“Are you prepared, as you follow the path of marriage, to love and honor each other for as long as you both shall live? And are you prepared to accept children lovingly from God and to bring them up according to the law of Christ and his church?”
I barely gave the priest a chance to finish his words before I impatiently barked out, “I am.”
