Mafia Boss’s Arranged Bride by Bella King
Chapter 15
Annika
When we arrive at the venue, the anxiety that has been eating away at the lining of my stomach has mostly dissipated, leaving behind a slight glow of confidence at the notion of appearing in front of so many people.
I can handle this. It’s just a ceremony.
The bridal suite is cold, and my nipples ache as they press against the corset I’ve been instructed to wear under my dress. The rigid fabric brushes against them, rubbing them pink as I slip into the dress itself. It fits just as I remember it, allowing me just enough room to breathe and nothing more.
“Don’t tear that dress, Annika,” my mother says as I attempt to breathe in further than it allows.
“I couldn’t tear it if I wanted to,” I reply.
“And you don’t want to,” she says, wagging a thin finger. “You want to look perfect for Michail. He’s very happy to be marrying you. We’re all pleased with this arrangement, so don’t fuck it up.”
She says we, but that doesn’t include me. I’m only doing it because I know no other way to deal with my circumstances. I know nothing but the mafia life, and it demands that women step into marriages that form powerful criminal alliances, not out of love.
Love. That’s so far from anything I’ve ever known that I hardly think that it could exist. Love sounds more like a fairytale cooked up by some scheming capitalists to sell wedding rings and romantic comedies more than something that could ever exist.
Everyone has ulterior motives. Nobody acts simply out of affection for another person. I’ve simply never seen it.
I step out of the suite into the light near the huge windows, where I can see storm clouds forming over the water. I feel kind of like a dark, otherworldly deity returning to my home on an alternate plane.
I feel warmth in my body as I walk slowly towards the low hum of the ceremony beginning. I can just see the gigantic crowd gathered, not a single face that I recognize. There is an orchestra warming up at the front of the space, and their dissonant, atonal playing reaffirms my status as the dark queen in a dark place.
The role is growing on me.
When the warming up stops, the air falls dead with silence for a moment or two before they begin to play the processional. I was never given the name of the song that was chosen for me to walk to, and I will have no idea when to start walking unless somebody involved with the planning is able to assist me.
It all feels very silly, all of the obsession surrounding each detail save for the ones that will make the ceremony believable. It’s an orchestrated lie, and I’m the actress with the starring role and lines that some sleazy coke-head writer prepared for her.
After stepping closer and closer, I can see into the ceremony more clearly as a collection of strangers standing in as my bridesmaids walk gracefully down the aisle, each with an equally strange man on their arm.
Their dresses are beautiful, a deep teal green accented by their carefully chosen coral lipstick. There have to be at least a dozen of them, all of them looking as though an agency hired them just to look better than me in my own wedding photos.
In a way, I’m happy for them. They get to have fun and go home to a normal life. I have to go home to Michail.
Their song ends, and the last girl splits from her partner, finding herself at the end of the long line of would-be brides.
My mother appears behind me. “It’s your turn. Don’t be nervous,” she whispers. She ushers me forward somewhat hastily as another song begins to play.
I can vaguely recognize it. It might be an orchestral version of a pop song about love. If I ever learn that this is the case, I might vomit on the spot from embarrassment. How tacky. I thought the mafia would have their own special song for brides – some sort of ancient unspoken tradition like all the others that we follow.
I’m brought closer to the wide glass doors that lead into the ceremony, and suddenly I am struck with a deep, ineffable dread. I stop dead in my tracks, and my stomach drops.
I can’t do this.
My mother pushes me forward. “Annika, go. You’re fine,” she says under her breath, attempting her own brand of misguided sincerity once more.
Despite her best efforts, my skin crawls, and I’m ready to pick up the length of my dress and sprint in the opposite direction. I can’t move. My legs are there, but they are frozen to the floor. The guests look back at me in anticipation, and their eyes on me burn through me like radiation.
The song continues, and something in me releases my feet from the ground. At first, I feel myself stumble forward, driven not by duty but by some kind of primal panic that I can’t explain. Everything in me screams at me to run.
That’s when the first shots ring out.
