Desiree laid her warm cheek with a delicate touch against mine as we embraced so that she wouldn’t mess up the excellent make-up job she had blessed me with. For someone that hardly wore make-up, Desiree had skills that could transform anyone into a superstar. I believed her being an artist played into her knack of transforming and sculpting objects into beauty.
Despite the kind of work I did, I didn’t skimp on maintaining a respectable level of class where it concerned my femininity and presentation to the world. If I had to die, dammit, I was determined to go out looking my best.
I didn’t dress myself down with tight hip-hugging low-cut dresses. The go-to outfits I chose were usually designer slacks and expensive blouses, power suits, and jumpsuits that dripped enough class that you would know that I ran a multimillion-dollar corporation.
My particular corporation wasn’t a legal one, but the operations and managing processes were the same. The world, even the illegal one, took you more seriously when you presented a smart appearance and a take-charge attitude.
Desiree stood and ran an appreciative glance over me, her eyes scanning from head to toe. “I’ve got a feeling this marriage is going to go from arranged to real in no time once Arjen gets a look at you. You look so beautiful.” Her eyes were starting to glaze.
“Child, please. You know damn well I don’t do white chocolate. He is merely a step in the pathway to greatness I’m about to climb.”
Talking shit was my thing. Some was straight bullshit, however, more often than not, the shit I talked, I believed, because I usually strived to make the truth come from my mouth.
As far as Arjen was concerned, I didn’t even care about getting to know him on a personal level. We were using each other, so my mind was keyed in on what his name and resources could do for my organization.
Once the Black Saints was back up and running at full strength, it would make us and the Vallins one hell of a strong alliance. I could already picture my name in the dictionary, replacing the word untouchable and forming a compound word with danger.
Desiree cast me a skeptical look before she went up on her already elevated toes and reached across my shoulders before she lifted and draped my veil over my head.
“Love you, Mecca.”
“Love you too,” I replied without hesitation.
A lingering stare kept us in place before she turned and linked her arm with mine. The expression she had left me with before taking my arm was one I couldn’t figure out. I had always been able to read my cousin because we were like sisters. But not this time, and not that particular expression.
If not for Desiree, I would probably be an empty, emotionless vessel, incapable of forming or giving true affection. My father died when I was too young to remember him, and my dead crackhead mother remained a nameless soul that my uncle refused to talk about in detail.
I had never gotten the soft hugs and sweet kisses little girls were supposed to get. I was taught to fight, to survive, to protect, and to dish out punishment. The streets were my parents, because incidentally my uncle had only ever been interested in shoving me into them.
Although I had never gone into any branch of the military, I was a soldier of a different kind, one created by wrath and fury, danger and sin. Desiree had never given up the quest of proving that I was capable of more than loving her and the streets.
The expression she cast on me lingered as we made our way out the door. It was a cross between hope and fear, and it was too late to ask her about it. She sprang the second door open, and we were met with crushing silence, followed by the wedding march being keyed by an overpaid piano player.
My fingers tightened around Desiree’s hand, crushing it. She walked in place beside me, acting as my best-woman and the person I had picked to get me down the aisle. The aisle was a floral pathway that divided the huge room in half.
Surrounded by an ocean of sunlight and a rainbow of different shades of blue and white flowers, each side of the space was packed with excited onlookers who had snapped around quickly in their seats, unwilling to miss a thing. Instead of benches, elegantly decorated tables made up each side of the room.
“It’s okay,” Desiree whispered. “You’ll do fine. When haven’t you?”
Her words of encouragement landed on my heart and allowed me to concentrate on the most beautiful scenery I’d had the pleasure of seeing in years. The mountains called my attention through the glass walls. The sun’s rays pierced the bluest clouds, shining down streams of light that appeared to be blasted straight from heaven.
Soft murmurs dwindled into a stilled silence that called my attention from the view and momentarily stifled my movements. The guest eyed me with a lingering intensity as gasps lifted their shoulders high and parted their lips like they were holding their breath.
The breath I was holding rushed out when I noticed the emergence of approving smiles and the sparks of excitement in their expressions at my appearance. Phones and cameras were lifted and aimed, the clicks blending into the melody of the wedding song being played.
Despite the crowd’s excitement, my legs became weighted like two inflexible led pipes. A big neon sign flashed in my head, reminding that with each step I took, I was walking towards an uncertain future.
Waving silk banners hung from the glass ceiling as crystal figurines accented with my favorite color, sky blue, sat in strategic places among the crowd. This was the wedding of my dreams. Too bad I didn’t know my groom well enough to even care about him, or any of the people filling the space with their excited, but sketchy energy.
I’d had a reoccurring wedding dream through the years, my mind always summoning a similar fantasy wedding day. I would always see my groom waiting, visible from the neck down, but his face had always been a mystery. I accepted the dream as a sign that there wasn’t anyone out there for me.
My Mr. Right had likely already been shot and killed or had never been born because his mother had had an abortion, some crazy mess my brain would conjure up as a reason for my groom being faceless.
The revolving door of faceless men I had dated throughout the years, and dropped, hadn’t given me an ounce of hope on putting a face on the mystery husband of my dreams.
However, there was finally a face on my groom this day, but it was the last face I would have pictured. I had imagined a dread-wearing, insanely handsome brother waiting on me. Instead, I was inching closer to a man I never envisioned touching me, much less marrying me.
Based on the few encounters between Arjen and me, I didn’t believe he would be opposed to not consummating our wedding. He gave me the impression that he wanted what I wanted, which was to strengthen the empires we ran.