“I hope you’re proud,” I murmur suddenly. Then I shake my head, wrapping my hand around the locket. “No. I know you’re proud. This is the life you must’ve wanted for me.”
No mother wants her child to grow up in the mafia, a place where a child may become a bidding piece. A pawn on a chessboard. Bait or blackmail.
I mean, just look at what a rival syndicate did to my mother…
They killed her.
I clasp the locket shut, knowing I’ve made the right choice to settle down and marry Brian.
This is the life I’ve chosen, and I’m happy with it.
Just like we practiced last night, I think, grasping my father’s arm. I can feel him shaking slightly, which makes a small smile cross my lips. My father is never nervous. Only a few times in my entire twenty-two years have I ever seen nerves get the best of him.
“You ready, Dad?” I ask, not taking my eyes off the church door in front of us. Everything I see has a soft filter around it, the white veil covering my face giving the world an almost ethereal glow.
“I feel like I should be asking you that.” He grips me a little tighter and I feel him turn to look down at me. “You’re not nervous at all?”
“Nope. Got all my jitters out already.” I give him a reassuring smile just as the doors open and the first strains of the Wedding March begin on the piano.
Even though my dad and I have been living a simple life for the past six years, my wedding certainly isn’t small. The shuffle of people turning in the church pews to watch my father and me walk down the aisle sends a new jolt of nerves through my stomach, but when I meet Brian’s eyes from across the church, everything settles.
There he is. This is right.
Brian doesn’t know my full history. He knows that my father and I had a rough year before I started college, but he thinks it was money problems and not anything to do with running from the mafia.
I suppose I should feel bad for lying to him, for keeping things from my future husband, but my father has ingrained that habit in me since the day we left Chicago. It’s not safe for anyone to know who we were before we became the Taylors. The surname Weston has been scrubbed from every part of my identity, and I’ll never go by that name again.
Soon enough, I’ll take Brian’s name anyway, and I’ll be one more step removed from the girl I used to be.
My soon-to-be husband beams at me as I walk down the aisle toward him. He looks as handsome as ever—classically attractive, well-built, blue eyes, blond hair.
His smile grows lopsided as I approach the dais at the front of the church, one corner of his lips lifting higher than the other in a grin I know so well. I smile back, hoping he can see it through the gauzy film of my veil. I don’t know what I was so nervous abou—
Crash!
There’s a burst of sound, and my steps falter. My entire body tenses at the sudden loud noise.
I flinch as my father instinctively pulls me behind him.
My heart lurches in my chest and my knees nearly buckle at the sight of the suited men who suddenly fill the church from all sides—behind us, in front of us, to each side.
And when they look at my father, I know they’re not here to speak now or forever hold their peace.
2
Grace
Pop! Pop! Pop!
The pop of gunfire is not a sound that should be at my wedding, and the sharp noises make me freeze in shock for a half-second. It isn’t until I begin to register the sounds of screaming around me that I grasp the reality of the situation with awful clarity.
Something is wrong. Terribly wrong.
A hum of adrenaline crawls over my skin as another round of shots ring out. The world seems to move in slow motion, and I can see and hear and feel everything more intensely than I should be able to.
Bullets zip across the room like angry bees. Wood splinters and cracks as gunfire hits the pews, sending people scrambling for cover.
My father grasps my arm so tight it hurts, and it’s that bite of pain that shocks me out of my stasis. He seems rooted to the spot just like I was, color draining from his face as he watches the scene, registering the group of men we were never supposed to see again. After six years of running, the demons of our past seem to have finally caught up to us—a day that was never supposed to come.
We’re standing in the middle of the room, halfway up the aisle, and I throw myself to the floor, yanking him down with me as another volley of bullets flies through the air.
There are so many intruders in the church, and I can’t tell if they’re firing at us, the wedding guests, or each other. But it doesn’t matter.
It’s no coincidence they’re here in this church on my wedding day. They came for Dad. For us.
You told me we would be safe now.
I look over at my father, tugging his arm to try to pull him behind the cover of a wooden pew. It was foolish to believe the Novak Syndicate would never find us, but I still feel a stab of betrayal, like my father lied to me.
“Dad—”
The words die on a scream as my father’s body jerks, collapsing to the side as one of the intruders fires around the end of the pew in a burst of noise.
“Dad!” I scream, blood rushing to my ears.
My mind spins. The world goes red.
My father goes still.
No. My heart gives a single, solid thud in my chest. No.
“Please…”
The sounds around me continue to rage, the danger still looming over me like a guillotine, but I can’t focus on any of that. All I can focus on is my only remaining parent, my lifeline, my father bleeding out on the floor. My fingers scrabble at his neck, slick with blood as I try to find a pulse. I can’t find one, but maybe that’s just because my fingers are too slippery, my own heart hammering so hard it seems to drown out everything else.
“Dad, please…”
My white dress tangles around our limbs and knots at my ankles as I try to drag his body with me to an exit, to get him to safety. He’s too heavy for me to move fast enough, and I know it’s too late— his body is limp and lifeless, his head falling to the side, eyes open wide in horror. The splatter of his blood stains my dress, turning the white fabric crimson.
“Please…” I cry, silently, ducking behind a pew.
My body is so frozen in fear as I lift my shaking hands to my vision, watching the blood drip down my hands and wrists to my elbows. There’s a tingling cold in my fingertips as they start to go numb, a sensation that goes from my hands to my arms to my chest, washing over my entire body.
Pop!
A scream catches in my throat as another bullet embeds itself in the pew inches away from my face, wood splintering. I know I should leave my father’s body behind, that there’s nothing left to save, but my gaze is pulled back to where his tall form is sprawled on the floor.
Unconsciously, my hand floats to my head where my veil should be when I see that he still holds it tightly in his hand. It must have torn from my head as we dropped to the church floor; the fresh white roses that made up the crown of the veil are smeared with blood, the petals crushed and broken.
I have to fight… I need to get away.
Fresh tears stream down my face as I turn away, dragging my body across the floor.