“I brought you something.” Maxim reaches into his coat and retrieves a rectangular box. I take it tentatively from his hand and run my fingertips over the leather before sliding over the clasp and opening it.
It’s a necklace, a dainty gold chain and a golden pendant with three small diamonds embedded like stars. It’s simple and beautiful, and my finger traces over the oval pendant.
“I thought?—”
He cuts off like he’s at a loss for words when I look back up at him. After a moment, he tries again. “I wanted you to have something to remind you of your home.”
I look at the pendant again—three diamonds, one for me and each of my sisters, I realize.
“Will you help me put it on?” I ask, already pulling it from the box’s soft interior.
He closes the distance, and stands directly behind me, close enough that I feel his body heat against my bare back and smell his cologne. It’s not offensive to me like most colognes. His is softer and more citrusy.
I lift my hair off my neck. Willa tried to convince me to put it into some outrageous updo, but I drew the line at the wide skirt.
My head comes just above his chin in the heels I wear, and I watch in the mirror as he focuses intently on the task of clasping the chain around my neck. When it’s secure, his hands drop to his sides and his eyes meet mine in the mirror.
We aren’t often alone like this, usually surrounded by strangers, or at least his driver. It’s for the best; I’m not sure we really have anything to talk about. But even still, we have an agreement, a mutual understanding of what this is and why we are doing it, and I see that in his eyes reflected through the glass.
In the secret depths of mind, I hope he’ll be able to stand me.
He must know by now how unlikable I can be.
The pendant hangs in the center of my chest above the square neckline of the dress, and it really was the perfect thing to add to the outfit. Simple, but beautiful. The kind of delicate thing I would never purchase for myself, which makes me like it all the more.
The ring I wear is far from simple, vintage and gold and with the most massive diamond. Even if his babushka haunts it, I have grown to quite like it.
“Thank you, Maxim.”
The thank you is for more than just the necklace. He knows it.
“Of course.”
I set my shoulders back and exhale a big breath. “Shall we get married, then?”
9
MAXIM
The church is full,one half of Russians, the other of Italians and a large handful of Irish clan members, too. They’re not all criminals. Some are children, others justmarriedto mobsters, some none the wiser or perfectly fine pretending to be oblivious.
Our communities have been friendly enough these last months, a feat considering that when my father was alive it wasn’t uncommon to spit as you walked by a Morelli. ‘Friendly’ might be too strong a word, but there is a cordiality there.
Or maybe a begrudging respect for the decisions of their dons, even if they can’t get behind them with all sincerity.
My three sisters sit at the front row on my side, Nadia looking like she is going to burst with the excitement of the event, Vera off in her own world, and Sophia vaguely bored but as put together and polished as ever. Her husband, Dante Delvecchio, an underboss in Chicago, sits by her side, arm slung behind her. They loathe each other, but he knows that hurting her would mean death by me if not by Sophia first.
Now that it’s the day of the actual wedding, I’m trying not to take our mother’s absence personally. She hates this city, but I’m certain she does love me. Just too many memories ofhim.
Nadia meets my eyes and hers sparkle as she gives two thumbs up. She said that a new person joining the family is the most exciting thing to happen in a decade, and she might be right about that.
When a violin and piano spring to life with a romantic wedding march, and the tall wooden doors at the end of the church open, blood rushes in my ears.
I’m thirty-eight years old, I’ve never been married, and now—right now—I’m marrying someone I barely know, who barely knowsme. We have no grand presumptions of love for each other, only shared duty and mutual benefit from the arrangement.
That is all.
I’ve already seen Marianna, just twenty minutes ago when I brought her the necklace. But when she appears down the aisle after each of her sisters, her arm wrapped in her mother’s, I am bowled over once again with the sight of her.
