Arranged To The Mafia

Ava's POV

The mirror lies to me.

The girl staring back wears ten thousand dollars of imported Chantilly lace, white roses braided into her hair, and the exact shade of red lipstick that's supposed to mean bride. She looks radiant. She also looks like she's about to vomit.

"Ava, oh my God, stop fidgeting." Chloe slaps my hand away from the lace at my collarbone, phone in one hand, champagne in the other. "You are getting married to Damien Vance in forty-five minutes. Do you understand what is happening here?"

'I understand it better than you ever will.'

"I understand," I say, and my voice comes out smooth as a blade pulled from velvet. "I'm marrying a man I last spoke to when I was twelve, who has the conversational warmth of a marble headstone, in front of three hundred people who own more guns than they have manners. It's the wedding of the century. I'm thrilled."

"Oh please. He's gorgeous. He's richer than God. He could've picked anyone and he picked you. You know how many girls in this city would've thrown themselves under a bus for the chance?"

'I'd happily drive the bus.'

I don't say it. Chloe doesn't know what my family is. Chloe thinks I'm the daughter of Eastern European money, old shipping fortunes, the kind of background that buys this kind of dress and this kind of groom. Chloe thinks she's been my maid of honor at a fairy tale.

I let her keep it. It's the last gift I have left to give her.

"He's beautiful," I agree, because it isn't a lie. Damien Vance is beautiful the way a loaded gun is beautiful. "And rich. Yes. Very rich."

"And he's going to look at you in that dress and die, Ava. Just die."

I meet my own eyes in the mirror. They are the wrong color for this dress, my eyes,too green, too sharp, the color of something feral cornered in a garden.

The hairpins prick my scalp like small accusations, and somewhere underneath the perfume and the powder, I can still smell the cigar smoke from my father's office.

Three weeks ago. Late. The grandfather clock striking eleven, my father pouring himself a second whiskey instead of looking at me.

"You will marry him, Ava."

"No."

He'd smiled then. My father has a smile he uses for me alone, and it has nothing in common with affection.

"There is no son in this house. There never will be. Do you understand what that means for us?"

"I'm not livestock."

"You are exactly what I say you are." He'd swirled his glass, ice clicking against crystal like teeth. "The Vance family wants this alliance. We need it. And if you fail to give it to me, your mother is going to find out what happens to wives who outlive their usefulness. Are we clear?"

I'd stopped breathing. I think part of me has not started again.

"You wouldn't."

"Try me. Remember why you're doing this, little girl. Every time you want to forget. Remember whose life is in your hands."

My mother. Lilian. The only person in this house who still touches me like I'm something soft.

I'd walked out of his office that night, emptied my stomach into the toilet for an hour, washed my face, fixed my lipstick, and gone downstairs to tell him yes.

That's the thing nobody understands about brides like me. We don't say I do at the altar. We say it the moment we choose someone else's life over our own.

"Ava?"

Chloe's voice pulls me back, soft now. She's set her glass down. She's looking at me the way she used to look at me when one of the older girls made me cry.

"You're white as a sheet, babe. You okay?"

I open my mouth to lie, and the lie collapses on the way out.

"Chloe. I'm going to be very far away. After today. Very, very far."

Her face crumples. "Hey. Hey. No. Planes exist. Phones exist. I will fly to wherever Mr. Tall Dark and Terrifying drags you. I will be the most annoying houseguest of his life."

I laugh and the laugh breaks open into something I haven't allowed myself in weeks. The first tear is hot and shocking against my cheek, and then there are more, and then Chloe's arms are around my shoulders, careful of the dress, careful of the hair, fierce in a way only she has ever been with me.

"You call me," she whispers into my temple. "Every day. Every single day, Ava Sterling. I don't care if you're crying or laughing or threatening to murder him in his sleep. You call me."

"I will."

"Promise."

"I promise."

She pulls back, brushes a thumb under each of my eyes. "Save it for the honeymoon, when you've got him eating out of the palm of your hand."

I let her pretend that's a future that exists.

The staircase down to the courtyard is wide enough for an army, and that's exactly what's gathered at the bottom of it.

Three hundred faces tilt up as I descend. I find my mother first. Lilian Sterling, in palest blue, her gloved hand pressed to her mouth, her eyes already wet. She does not know what this wedding is buying. She believes the lie completely. That belief is the only thing keeping her alive.

I find my father next. He stands beside her, the picture of a doting husband. When he sees me, he opens his arms, bends, brushes a kiss against my temple.

"My beautiful girl," he murmurs, loud enough for the front row.

His other hand closes hard around my wrist, just for a heartbeat.

Remember.

I do not look at him. I will scratch his eyes out in front of three hundred witnesses if I look at him.

I look, instead, at the man waiting at the end of the aisle.

Damien Vance. Black tie. Black suit. Black hair pushed back from a face cut by some unkind sculptor. And eyes,God, his eyes,the cold blue of glacier water, fixed on me with absolutely no expression at all.

Across forty feet of rose petals and candlelight, his gaze locks onto mine. Not warmth. Not even hatred would be warmth. Just calculation.

I lift my chin and let him see the green of my eyes. Let him see what he's bought.

My mother steps in front of him before I reach the table, and she takes my face in both of her gloved hands.

"My Ava. My darling. You're going to be so happy. I can feel it."

I press my forehead to hers because if I open my mouth I will scream.

"I love you, Mama."

"I love you more."

She doesn't know. She will never know if I do my job.

The signing table is small, ridiculous, set with a single fountain pen and two thick documents bound in leather. Damien is already there. Behind him stands a man I don't recognize,broad-shouldered, watchful, the slight bulge of a holster under a tailored jacket. Victor, someone whispers behind me. That's Victor.

Damien doesn't look at the priest. He doesn't look at the witnesses. He looks at me, and his mouth moves in something almost like a greeting.

"Ava."

"Damien."

"Make it quick."

'Quick. Yes. Like execution.'

"By all means."

He picks up the pen. Signs his name in three impatient strokes, hands it to me without a word. The metal is still warm from his fingers, and I hate that I notice it. I bend to the page.

Ava Sterling.

My hand does not shake. I will not let it shake. Beneath my old name, I write the new one.

Ava Vance.

Two words. Ten letters. A death certificate written in my own handwriting.

The priest is saying something about the joining of two great families. Damien turns toward me. I turn toward him. We do not touch. He does not lean in for the kiss the audience is waiting for, and neither do I. I have never been kissed in my life,not once, not by anyone, that humiliating fact tucked away like contraband,and I will not be kissed for the first time by him, not in front of three hundred strangers, not as a transaction.

He sees my refusal. Something like cold amusement flickers across his face. He sees the line I've drawn and chooses, for reasons of his own, not to cross it.

We were friends once, when we were children. I wonder if he remembers. I wonder if he ever cared.

The priest lifts his hands. The room lifts its voice.

"It is my greatest honor to present to you, for the first time, Mr. and Mrs. Damien Vance. Welcome, Mrs. Vance, to the family."

Mrs. Vance.

The girl who used to be Ava Sterling closes her eyes, and when she opens them again, she is gone.