I look like a giant cupcake with too much vanilla frosting. I try to pull the veil one way, and then the other. Am I really doing this?
Lula is also here, trying on bridesmaid dresses. Royal has left the house to attend to business.
“Whoa,” she says when I emerge from the walk-in closet. The suite two doors down from Royal’s master bedroom looks like a bridal shop, and it’s been turned into one for our benefit to prep for the wedding tomorrow. “That’s… a lot of tulle.”
“I know.” I wrinkle my nose.
“It’s not so bad. You do look beautiful.” Speaking of beautiful, Lula is gorgeous, in a trumpet gown that falls to the floor in a deep wine red that suits her coloring. She approaches me and gingerly touches the tulle that’s frothing around my knees, adjusting it here and there. “Hmmm,” she says gently, before pinching at my veil. “There, now what do you think?” she asks, and we turn to the mirror.
My eyes widen. There’s something about the way she’s adjusted the fall of the veil, and arranged my train behind me—
I look like a princess. My cheeks flush. I look like a bride. The woman in the mirror doesn’t look like the girl with pastry baking dreams. She looks like a goddess.
She looks nothing like me.
“You’re good at this,” I say to Lula. “If you ever get sick of being a lawyer, you could be a stylist.”
Lula laughs. She laughs easily, which is another point in her favor.
“It’s easy when the bride’s so beautiful,” she says, and her words warm my heart. She doesn’t have to be nice to me. She doesn’t owe me anything, not even kindness. But here we are, the day before I get married, and she’s fussing over me like I’m her sister, not a woman she just met who’s now her cousin's fiancée.
Uncertainty wells up inside me again. No matter how tight Royal holds me at night, I still feel out of place. A raisin in a chocolate chip cookie. Like one day, Royal will wake up and see the shy, shabby girl he’s chosen, and send me back to the bakery where I belong.
I wish I could be more like Lula. Calm, collected Lula.
“Enzo said that Royal has to get married so he can take over the family,” I blurt.
Lula tilts her head to the side, studying me. “Yes. That is true. He also used you to force a confrontation with his father.”
“What?” I whisper.
Lula circles me, tweaking my voluminous train. “One thing you need to know about Royal. He never does anything that doesn’t net him multiple results. Two, three, ten times the returns. That’s why the family is so eager to give him what he wants. They will do anything to keep him happy, and you make him happy.”
I press a hand to my forehead. The diamond is heavy on my finger.
“I don’t know what to do,” I whisper.
“Leah, as long as I’ve known my cousin, I’ve never known him to be this obsessed with anyone. It’ll work out. You’ll see.” She finishes tweaking my veil and steps back. “I’ve got to go. Want me to unzip you?”
“Uh, no, I’ll wear it a bit longer.” Maybe if I wear it, I’ll get used to it.
“You sure?” Lula says. “It’s bad luck for the groom to see you.”
“I don’t think anything will derail Royal from making this wedding happen.” I smooth a hand down the beautiful bodice.
Lula’s smile is bright enough for the both of us as she goes to unzip her bridesmaid dress. “You're right. He doesn’t believe in luck. He believes in fate.”
The house is extra quiet when Lula leaves. Standing and staring at myself in a wedding dress is doing nothing for my confidence. The woman glowing under the soft lights of the guest bedroom before a sea of fine dresses looks nothing like me. I should have let Lula unzip me. Then I could get back to the kitchen and procrasti-bake.
Downstairs, a door slams.
I hitch up the tulle and start walking down the stairs, careful not to step on my train. “Royal?”
Downstairs is dark. I descend into shadows, and when I get to the bottom of the steps, I round the railing in the direction of the front door.
Five feet from me is the slumped form of one of Royal’s bodyguards, his gun on the ground beside his limp hand. I catch the scent of stale cigarettes.
I whirl. At the back of the walk-in closet in Royal’s bedroom is a safe room. He showed it to me just the other morning in a brief tour, telling me to go there if there was ever a problem. Another freaky mafia wife lesson I need to learn.
Two steps up the stairs, I trip on the tulle.
“I don’t think so,” someone says, and seizes me around the waist. I shriek and drive my elbow backward into a firm belly. The man grunts and then claps a hand over my mouth, a cloth fisted in his fingers. I inhale the fumes, antiseptic and sweet. My head fogs over, my vision clouding, and that’s all—