Page 45 of Gilded
MALIA
I ’m having a hard time thinking. It feels like my brain is on standby, and I can’t make it work. But that isn’t a real surprise when I’ve committed to killing myself.
I stare at the beads on the tulle layer of my skirt as I wait for someone to tell me it’s time to go. They sparkle in the light and look like blurred pinpoints through the tears filling my eyes, which are a combination of hopelessness and fatigue.
I spent all night in an existential search of my soul, wondering how I could want a man who treated me the way Luka did last night. What I discovered is that I’m a rationalization acrobat. I’ve tossed every excuse I could think of at the situation.
Ultimately, I’ve embraced the fact that there are no perfect people. Luka made lousy choices last night, and he hurt me. But he’s also kept me safe when he didn’t have to. He’s also shown me more kindness in our short time together than anyone in all my years put together.
I guess I’ve found forgiveness for his faults. That seems easier to do when you’re looking the end of your life in the eye.
I’ve searched for other ways out, but the church doesn’t allow for escape. Too few exits. Too many guards. On the off chance that an opportunity presents itself, I’ve worn shorts and a tank top under my dress. But I don’t see that happening.
“Malia.” Gwen’s voice pulls my gaze to the doorway. “The car is waiting.”
When I try to stand, my body feels leaden. I slide my hand into the hidden pocket of my dress and close my fingers around the pills the doctor brought for me yesterday. Not as many as I had before Luka flushed the others, but probably enough.
Remembering him pushing into the shower, terrified I’d overdosed, is bittersweet, dragging a knife down my body, but I welcome the pain.
It’s a reminder that I have nothing left to live for.
If I thought I was pregnant, that might have changed my plans.
But my period came this morning, mocking my dreams of a normal life.
Now, with the pills my only escape, I realize I never got a definitive time frame for the drugs to take effect.
I wanted to die at the altar, creating a shocking event no one could forget, with five hundred people watching.
My father and Soren would be completely unprepared for something like that to happen and wouldn’t be able to cover it up as easily.
Guests, many of whom I’ve grown close with at galas, would call for help. Emergency crews would swarm the cathedral and take me to the hospital, where they would learn I overdosed. The coroner would rule my cause of death to be suicide.
Soren’s soon-to-be wife and my father’s supposedly beloved and highly protected daughter killing herself at the altar. That would give people pause. But my father is so talented at twisting things in his favor, he’d probably become the victim in all this.
At the door to my bedroom, I close my eyes and fortify myself for the end of my life. If I’d never met Luka, I’d be relishing this. Looking forward to ending all the isolation and pain.
Gwen helps me into the hallway, where two other housekeepers gather up my train and carry it behind me.
“I’ll have all your things delivered to the house and unpacked,” Gwen tells me. “Don’t worry about a thing today.”
At the SUV, it’s a production to get the skirt and train inside with me, and just before they close the door, one of the housekeepers hurries forward to grab the very end of the train before it’s caught in the door and tucks it in at my feet.
Something shiny catches my eye, and I see she’s holding Soren’s sheathed dagger. The one he loves to torment me with.
“Why do you have that?” I ask her.
“He left it in your father’s office. I’m just going to put it back in his room.”
“Oh, no.” I force a smile while my heart throbs—with fear and excitement. “I’ll take it to him. He’ll want it for the wedding.”
“Of course.” The woman lays the dagger in my hand, and I hide it in the folds of my dress just as Toby slides into the backseat beside me.
On the drive to the helipad, I fuss with my skirt, covering for the fact that I’m searching for a place to hide the knife. When the men get out of the car, I quickly push it into the corset at my waist and let the dress fall back into place.
On the flight to the city, I smile out the window as an entirely different and thrilling plan emerges in my mind.
One that includes a horrific amount of blood against this pristine white dress in front of five hundred of the most influential people in the city, if not the country, not to mention God.
I touch my carotid artery where it lies two centimeters beneath my skin, if I remember my biology right. Skin and flesh that will filet like paper beneath this knife.
Even my father wouldn’t be able to alter that narrative.