“I know. It’s crazy, isn’t it. I feel like we were only in school a few months ago.”
“Me, too. I would say I envy you, but I hope I don’t get married until I’m at least thirty. I need to sow my wild oats first.” She gave me a wink and stuck out her tongue.
I raised both eyebrows. “Well, this isn’t exactly something I had planned, Lay.”
“Shit, yeah, I forgot. Sorry.”
I exhaled a breath and smoothed my dress down again. “Forget about it. This is a new start for me.”
“Marrying the enemy.” She dropped her voice so she wouldn’t be overheard. “You know you don’t have to do this, don’t you? You can always say no to your dad.”
“Say no to my dad? Are you serious?”
“You’re his daughter. He should care about your happiness.”
A knot tightened in my stomach. “He cares about me staying alive. Our two families joining means we’ll be taking over two thirds of London. We’re stronger together than we are apart. We can stop any other families from reigning over the city.”
She cocked her head. “The Gilligans, you mean.”
We both knew it was one particular family that posed our biggest threat.
“Yeah, them.”
Layla let out a sigh and took my hand. “It’s just so crap that you can’t do what you want.”
I squeezed her fingers. “I’m happy, Layla. I promise. Try to be happy for me, too, yeah?”
She plastered a smile on her face and jumped to her feet. “You’re right. I’m being a total twat. Now, where’s that champagne. Don’t tell me your dad is letting his daughter get married to someone she barely knows without getting totally shitfaced on champers first.”
I laughed. “It’s over there.” I nodded at the silver ice bucket on a stand. “I’m only having one glass, though. I would like to actually remember my own wedding day.”
She poured our drinks into crystal champagne glasses and handed me one. We clinked them together.
“Here’s to a...headboard-banging wedding night.”
“Layla, stop it.” I scolded her, but my lips twitched in a smile.
“I can’t believe you’re marrying someone you haven’t even shagged yet. What if he’s awful in bed? What if he’s got a micro penis?”
I made the unfortunate mistake of taking a sip of my drink right at that moment and ended up snorting the champagne out of my nose. “Jesus, Lay! You talk about me not making a mess of my makeup and then say something like that to me. And no, he will not have a micro dick. He’s one of the Cornell men. I cannot imagine a single one of them being anything less than hung like a donkey.”
It was her turn to snort laughter.
The door opened, and we both hid our giggles between flattened lips.
My father stepped back into the room and glanced curiously between us. “What are you two laughing about.”
Layla and I shared a look and almost dissolved again.
“Nothing, Dad,” I managed to say. “Just girl stuff.”
“Well, pull yourselves together,” he said. “The car’s here for you.”
Bloody hell, it was time. Fresh nerves tumbled in my stomach.
I didn’t really need a car. The church was only around the corner from the hotel where we lived in Shoreditch. East London was my family’s territory, where, across the river and to the south, belonged to the Cornells, and the Gilligans had the more upmarket area of Islington and North London. In central London, our territories merged, and there was the problem. It was impossible to live in London and not need access to the central part of the city. Areas were fought over for dominance, and while we did our best not to step into each other’s strongholds, there was never a line down the street marking one territory from another. Now the Gilligans had pushed out the family who’d been running West London, taking even more of the city for themselves. Their crime family had been growing stronger, month on month, making both us Wynters and the Cornells more vulnerable. The only way to keep them from taking over the city for good was this alliance between our families, starting with a marriage between two of their offspring.
The church was the same one my parents had been married in twenty-five years earlier. That was why we were getting married over on our side of the city instead of the Cornell’s. Harvey said he didn’t care where the actual wedding took place, so long as we lived in their slice of the city. I had to admit, the idea of leaving our portion of East London unnerved me. I’d lived here my whole life, except for when I was away at a private boarding school during my teenage years, and now I was going to be living somewhere else. Admittedly, it wasn’t as though it was even outside of the city, but it was the other side of the river, which felt like another part of the world. We didn’t go there—or we hadn’t until now—just like the Cornells didn’t step on our turf either. I guessed all of that was going to end now. We had to try to figure out how to be one family.