At the altar.
“Are you sure about this?” my friend Amy asks. She’s sitting on a chair in the small room we’ve been given in the courthouse, her legs crossed, auburn hair curled around her shoulders. She’s in a lavender dress.
A bridesmaid dress.
We joked about it, last night, holed up in a hotel room and preparing for today. I’m wearing a white dress that stops just at my knees.The bride wears white.
“I’m sure,” I say. It’s a lie, but Amy nods like she hears conviction in my words. I’m grateful for the lie.
“It’s just… Paige, you haven’t even met him. It doesn’t have to happen so fast.”
“It does. We don’t have time to lose.”
“You can give yourself a week. You can negotiate a dinner, a lunch—anything. What if he’s horrible in person?”
“He probably is. But it doesn’t matter.” I reach for my earrings, the pearl-studded gold hoops my mom gave me on my high school graduation. My hands don’t shake as I put them on. With every day that passes, my uncle drives our family’s company further toward bankruptcy. He told me that was his plan.
I’d rather ruin it than lethimhave it. If we drive the stock down, Montclair’s shares will be worthless. He’ll sell them.
But my uncle is the only reason Raphaël evencouldback us into a corner. The reason we’ve had to sell shares over the years, shares that Rafe Montclair could buy through anonymous trusts until he eventually controlled us from the inside.
He’s a fox, but Ben’s the one who let him into the hen house.
“If he’s horrible,” Amy says, “I’ll come with you. I’ll spend every single day beside you while you have to be married to him. I’ll be a human shield.”
I look down at my hands, braced against the side table. It’s been a long time since we were close enough for that sort of thing. She is my best friend, but she lives in Boston with her husband and her one-and-a-half-year old, and she has her own life.
We’re not college roommates anymore. Like so manypeople in my life, her path diverged from mine, and I was left standing alone.
“Thank you,” I tell her. “I bet your husband would love having to fly with us tomorrow.”
“A vacation to Europe? He probably would.” Amy gets up from her seat and comes up behind me. I look at us in the mirror. “You’re beautiful.”
I take a deep breath. My blonde hair is pulled back in a low ponytail, and I’m wearing a deep red lipstick. Brown eyeliner brings out my chocolate-colored eyes.
I’m a sacrificial lamb, but at least I look good going to slaughter.
Raphaël Montclair is everything I despise in this business. There’s a clear bottom line to him, and it’s all about profits—nothing else. History doesn’t matter. Craftsmanship doesn’t matter. He and his family are like a giant dragon, swallowing up all these precious historical companies without a care in the world for who they hurt or for who they demolish along the way. Small ateliers have to close because of him and his family.
Decades of experience, passed down in small craftsmanship families, now left destitute. That’s what he does, and that’s what he leaves in his wake. Worse, the brands they acquire are turned into soulless pieces in the wheels of a giant conglomerate, pumping out devalued products. These pieces sell at incredible prices based on nothing but the goodwill the brand built through its past achievements.
A keychain made of plastic with a logo on it? The overhead on that is low, and the profit margin is gigantic. But what you’re really selling is a dream, the idea that someone can own a small piece of a brand with storied history. And here he is, doing the very same thing.
Well, he won’t do it to our brand. To our company.
I want nothing to do with Raphaël Montclair, but that decision was taken out of my hands. Like it or not, ourbusiness’s finances can’t hold up to the twenty-first century. The craftsmanship and the quality need a boost of income, and, like it or not, the Montclairs can provide that.
But I’m not about to let our family business go that easily. The only way to ensure the shares are spread equally is to make the ultimate sacrifice:
To marry him.
“Think we’ve kept him waiting long enough?” I ask.
Amy smiles at me through the mirror. “He’s definitely worried that you’ve gotten cold feet.”
“Good.” I turn toward the door. “If he thinks I’m going to make this marriage easy on him, he has no idea what’s coming for him.”
“You’re scary,” Amy says, following me in the narrow courthouse corridor. “I’m going to keep my resting bitch face on for the whole ceremony, just so you know. Doesn’t mean I’m not supporting you fiercely from within.”
