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Page 8 of A Trap So Flawless (Titans and Tyrants #4)

Valentina

T here’s a big juicy steak on my plate at Sofia’s . Usually, I love steak. As rare as I can get it. It looks like a good one, too. But I can’t force myself to take a single bite. Every time I lift my fork and knife, my throat closes up when the soft, low light catches on my new wedding band.

Except, I’m not convinced that it’s new at all. The white gold band shows signs of wear. A few pale knicks and scratches.

I think this was Sofia’s ring.

“You should eat,” Sal grunts, sawing into his own steak beside me. “I don’t need you passing out on me tonight.”

Tonight. After dinner. After this ridiculous reception. When I have to go home with him and lie down in the bed of his first wife’s ghost and consummate our marriage.

Passing out would be a blessing.

My left ring finger itches underneath the band and around the knuckle, the skin still raw from earlier.

Papà and Mamma are across from Sal and me at the table, along with Sal’s consigliere and his chatty, busty wife.

Apart from that, it’s mostly just Sal’s men, some of Papà’s other Montréal allies and their wives, and Curse in attendance at the reception.

The wedding was a small one. There wasn’t even a photographer, besides Mamma trying to take some frantic shots on her phone when she realized no one was documenting the day.

I can feel Sal watching me from the side as his jaw works, the muscles pumping beneath the shaven skin while he chews. If this is some test of wifely obedience, I think I’m already failing.

Might end up at the bottom of the stairs on my very first night with him.

It should be a terrifying thought, but fear has been buried under a cascading numbness that goes from my head all the way down my spine to my toes. It’s only early evening, but I’m already exhausted.

I’m only nineteen, but I feel so fucking old.

I curl my left hand into a fist and raise my right hand. Only my right hand doesn’t go for my fork, it goes for my glass of wine. I hold it gingerly by the stem, swirling the burgundy liquid in front of my face, letting Papà’s words from earlier filter through my head.

He’ll be disinherited if he marries.

He isn’t coming back for you.

Despite that, despite everything, I still half-expected Darragh to come blasting through the church doors before I had a chance to say “I do.”

He didn’t. And I pretend that a part of me wasn’t disappointed, wasn’t just a little bit hurt, by that.

Pathetic. Literally pathetic. I shake my head at myself and bring my glass closer to my face. Hopefully I can drown just a little of that disgust for myself in these sweetened waves of wine.

But I never get to take a single sip.

The glass explodes in my hand.

I stare dazedly at what used to be my wineglass.

It’s only a stem between my fingers now, a sad little spindle of glass with a lethal, broken end.

Some distant part of my brain surmises that this must have been Darragh’s revenge.

He put a tiny bomb inside my drink. Maybe he hoped that I would swallow it.

Or that I’d choke on it.

There’s wine all over me. My sleeves are spattered, the front of my dress soaked red like somebody’s gone and slit my throat above the sweetheart neckline.

Even the side of my face is somehow wet.

I bring my quivering left hand to my cheek, smearing thick, warm moisture.

So slow, so slow it’s like a movie, so slow it’s like a dream, I turn to the left to see my new husband with a dark hole where most of his face used to be.

And then, everything happens fast. A cacophony rushes in, like someone’s just yanked cotton from my ears. The sound of screaming and swearing and glass shattering and the revving of engines outside. Pop pop pop.

I gasp as a set of mercilessly strong hands drags me from my chair. Curse has me in his grip, and he’s hauling me further into the restaurant, away from the broken front windows and the road with the flashing metal and spinning wheels of motorcycles beyond.

“Stay here,” he says, shoving me down behind the barrier of the bar. Then he rises and disappears, a gun in his tattooed hand.

I don’t dare look out from behind the bar yet.

I’m stubborn, maybe even stupid, like Papà said, but I don’t need my own face looking like Sal’s does now.

The image of it is as crisp and clear in my mind as it would be if I were gazing upon him now.

I’m not. I’m staring at the ruined front of my own dress, wine and blood converging in a nauseating set of stains.

I can’t breathe.

I’m going to throw up.

I have to get this fucking dress off of me.

Despite the fact I just survived a goddamn shootout, apparently the most pressing issue in my survival is the sudden, visceral need to disrobe.

I should be worried about what to do next.

I should be worried about what’s become of Curse, or Mamma.

But I guess some primal part of my brain is trying to protect me.

And I guess it’s focusing on one of the very small things within my control.

Honestly, I don’t care about the psychology behind it. All I care about in this moment is getting this dress off before I puke or pass out.

I’m still holding the broken stem of the wine glass. I take the sharp end of it and hook it into a seam in the bodice. I don’t stop hacking away until a tear opens up. I gasp at the sight of it, like it’s the first sign of light I’ve seen in days of darkness.

Dropping the broken glass, I get my fingers inside the hole and yank for all I’m worth, feeling the fabric go taut with resistance, then give out.

The dress tears harshly, loudly. It sounds like the teeth of a zipper getting yanked apart.

Soon, the entire side of my dress is split, from armpit to hip.

It gives me enough leeway to shunt my shoulders backwards to peel my arms out of the sleeves.

Panting desperately, I wrench it down to my hips and then kick it viciously off my legs until it's nothing but a torn and dirtied pile of silk on the floor. My chest heaves and burns. I stare at it the way I’d stare at a viper, as if it can somehow still hurt me now.

But it’s just a dress. Something pretty. Something beautiful.

Something ruined.

I’m still breathing hard, but getting the dress off has released the pressure points of constriction inside me.

I don’t feel like I’m going to hurl or black out now.

I feel like I can think again. I consider taking off my shoes, because it will be easier to run without them if I need to.

But a set of shoes – even ones with heels as high as these – will probably be better than bare feet among the broken glass.

The rest of me is awfully exposed. All I’ve got on besides the shoes and the makeup is the matching lingerie set of lacy white bra and panties.

From where I’m seated on the floor, I spy a set of open shelves with what look like shirts or aprons or something all folded up nicely. I seize on one and pull it out.

It's a white dress shirt, the sort that the waiters wear. I don’t bother trying to undo the buttons. I doubt my fingers are capable of that right now. I pull it on over my head. It must be for a big guy. It tents around me.

Somewhat dressed now, I still myself for a moment to listen. What I want to do is peek out from behind the bar, but the way things are going for me lately, that would only be an invitation for a bullet to find its way to my forehead.

But I don’t hear any gunfire now.

I hear frantic conversations in English and Italian. I hear the scream of sirens in the distance.

I hear Mamma crying.

It’s that sound that has me scrambling out from behind the bar, my heart punching up to my throat. My legs feel weak and watery as I rise and scan the room for her.

She’s on the floor, hunched over and sobbing so hard I think she must be badly hurt. Like she’s taken a bullet to the leg or the gut.

Mamma. No sound comes out, though I’m sure my lips move. I rush towards her.

Then stop.

She isn’t bent over because she’s injured.

She’s bent over my papà who lies limp and bleeding on the carpet.

Four years old in the hallway of my youth. Papà and Elio and another man bleeding on the floor as a door clicks shut.

But it’s always another man. Always.

Never Papà.

“Vincenzo!” Mamma sobs. She bangs on his bleeding chest. I shake myself out of whatever suspension has gripped my limbs in numbness.

“We have to stop the bleeding,” I hear myself say. I fall heavily to my knees, and some distant part of myself echoes with pain. “Give me something!”

Mamma jerks her head up and stares blankly at me, like she had no idea I was here even though this is my fucking wedding reception. She blinks through ruined makeup and, absurdly, she then asks me, “ Amore , what happened to your beautiful dress?”

“It got blood on it.”

I’ll have more blood on me by the time this night is through. Papà is bleeding badly from his chest. He’s breathing, though. I think.

“Fuck,” I whisper. I reach up and blindly feel along the table above, hunting for one of the thick cloth napkins. My hand seizes on one, and I tug it down and press it against the bleeding wound. But in mere moments, it’s getting soaked through. “Fuck!”

I need something else. In desperation, I steal Papà’s pocket square from its place, adding it to the bloodied napkin and holding them both down with as much force as I can muster.

It can’t be more than a minute or two, but it feels like I’m frozen there forever, on my burning knees with my hands against Papà’s bleeding chest, gritting my teeth while Mamma weeps beside me.

But the sirens are louder. And then there are new voices, barking in English and in French for me to move, get out of the way, bougez-vous!

I jump up and stumble away. Paramedics instantly surround Papà, as if sucked into the vacuum of my absence.

In seconds, he’s loaded onto a stretcher and carted out the door.

Mamma follows without a single look back at me.

So I look down at myself. The big shirt is more red than white.

My hands look like I’ve put on shiny scarlet gloves.

The wedding band gleams dully. Just like my dress behind the bar, I’m overwhelmed with the need to get it off.

I clutch at the band. My finger is wet, so it slides much more easily than it should.

I want to hurl the thing, but all I’m capable of is dropping it from my shaking hands.

I watch the white gold descend. It lands among shattered glass and…

And another ring.

Just beside the white-gold band I’ve dropped is the yellow-gold band with that brilliant diamond. The one Darragh gave me. The one Papà took from me. When I pulled his pocket square free, I must have dislodged it.

I consider leaving them both. Let the stupid rings have each other. Let them both sit here in the fucking carnage forever. See if I care.

But… Goddamnit, I do care. After a too-brief moment of hesitation, I bend and snatch up the yellow-gold engagement ring. I cradle it in my bloodied hands.

Then, I put it on.