The wedding cars had been idling outside my father's house for three hours. Marissa Belrose refused to move from the seat beside my fiancé—the seat that was supposed to be mine. She was my fiancé Dominic Sterling's assistant. The girl who'd been fighting me for the front passenger seat for eight months. She was looking straight at me through the window. "Nora. Didn't you say you get carsick? This time the front is yours. I'll sit next to Dominic." "Can you get on with the wedding now?" "Nora. You know that's my seat." I looked past her. Two of Dominic's men stood by the lead car. Neither had moved. Neither had looked at me. Their eyes stayed on Dominic, waiting for his order. But Dominic never gave the order to move her. I swallowed the heat rising in my throat. "Dominic. Get her out." Dominic shook his head. Gave me that tired look. The one he'd been giving me for a year. "Nora. She's not feeling well. Are you going to make a scene over a seat? Are you getting in or not?" "If you keep this up, don't bother. Walk yourself to the church." He checked his Patek. I smiled. "Fine. Then I'm not marrying you today." I didn't hesitate. I turned and walked toward the car trailing right behind the wedding procession. I looked at the man inside. “You said you'd wait for me. “ “Come marry me. Right now.” *** The wedding cars had shown up three hours late to begin with. I looked at Marissa in the back seat. She was wearing the sea-island cotton shirt I'd had custom-made for Dominic. Turnbull & Asser. Madison Avenue. His initials embroidered over the pocket in French navy. I finally understood. My fiancé had spent the night in bed with his assistant. Dominic wasn't answering his phone that whole morning. Nobody at the Sterling compound in Newport would tell us anything. My father thought there'd been an accident on I-95. He pulled his old bike out of the garage and rode ten miles down the route we'd mapped. Until he flagged the wedding convoy down himself. The lead car was empty of him. My father's bike folds. It would have fit in the trunk. But he rode the ten miles back. His jacket was streaked with dust. He stopped in the little grove behind the house and brushed himself off before he walked in the front door. He wanted to spare me the humiliation in front of the guests. Something in my chest twisted so hard I couldn't breathe. Every ritual my parents had planned got skipped. Dominic never got out of the car. His only explanation: "Sorry. Rough night." But the lipstick on his collar was visible from ten feet away. Chanel red. Not my shade. Marissa pulled three sentences out of the air and poured the whole mess on me. "Nora. You know there's nothing between me and Dominic. You're the one making a scene in front of everyone. That's on you." "You're supposed to be his Donna. Don't you know how to give a Don face when he's off balance? That's the least a Donna does." She said it leaning into Dominic's chest. My custom shirt against his lapel. Her look at me was pure triumph. Something in my ribs pulled tight. Today Dominic was wearing yesterday's shirt. It reeked of Marissa's perfume. "Marissa had too much last night. Nothing clean in her bag. It was the only shirt at the apartment. I gave it to her." So he'd taken the shirt I'd made for our wedding and put it on her. I pressed every feeling in my chest flat. "Dominic. Call off the wedding." Dominic glanced at his watch. Impatience flickered across his face. "Nora. Get in the car or I'll make you regret it." "So you're really calling off the wedding over a seat?" "Yes." I cut him off before he could finish. Dominic looked at me. Nodded slowly. "Fine. Have it your way." He turned back to Marissa, reaching in to adjust the shawl across her lap, careful, unhurried. He had never once touched me in public that way. "Get comfortable. We'll be moving in a minute." Then he climbed in beside her and closed the door. He looked at me through the glass, sitting shoulder to shoulder with Marissa, impatience written across his whole face. "Nora. The passenger seat is yours. Or the back of the sedan behind. Take your pick."
The relatives saw where things were going. But the men standing beside Dominic's car kept them from saying a word on my behalf. One by one they made excuses. Stepped back toward the porch. Toward their own cars. Toward anywhere else. Ten minutes ago there had been fifty people in the driveway. Now the driveway was empty. Just me. My mother. My father. "The church keeps calling. Are we going or not?" Dominic rolled the window down. That edge in his voice. Daring me. Marissa already had her phone out, posting from beside him. 【Riding in the wedding car with Dominic today. Comfy seats. Could get used to this. ?】 A picture of herself in the seat next to him. The comments came in fast. 【OMG finally!! I always said you two were endgame.】 【Thank GOD it's not that uptight Whitfield girl. Dominic deserves better.】 【So happy for you.】 Congratulations poured in like a series of slaps. And he liked the post. "Nora. You want me to sit with you?" My father took my hand. Voice low. Careful. Dominic and I had been together seven years. Started at Cornell. Everyone I knew knew how much I loved him. The Sterlings were a rising Mafia Family out of Newport. My father ran a two-bay auto shop in Cranston. I was nobody's daughter from nowhere important. The gap was Grand Canyon wide. My father had been afraid he couldn't protect me. I'd never told him what Dominic really was. But thirty years under the hoods of other men's cars had taught him things. No ordinary man swaps his factory windows for ballistic glass.No ordinary man's driver carries a gun. My father had figured it out on his own. He'd tried to stop this engagement for two years. He didn't come to two Christmases because of it. But I insisted on marrying Dominic. After graduation I clawed my way up. Nine shots of Woodford at a sit-down to close a deal. Never blinked. I knew what I was to Dominic, and what I wasn't in Family. I wanted to be useful to him. I wanted to earn my seat at the Family table by helping him move the dirty money into the clean columns. Five years to make it from admin to Chief of Staff at the Sterling firm. Running the properties. Running the construction contracts. Running every piece of paper that let dirty dollars come out white. Standing at Dominic's right hand. He'd sworn he kept work and us in separate rooms. Then Marissa Belrose walked in with a title and took the exact seat I'd bled five years to earn. Dominic and I had our first real fight the day Marissa was hired. Two weeks of silence. Ended without resolution. Last night, packing my things, my father, who has never once bent for anyone, pulled me aside before he turned the light off. "Whatever you decide from here on out, kiddo, your dad supports you. Just don't stop coming home." I looked at Dominic now, at the way he was speaking to me, at what he had done to my parents' morning. Dad. I understand now what you were afraid of. I don't want to marry him anymore. I pulled the veil off my head. Dropped it on the pavement. "Dominic. Take your people and go. I'm not marrying you." Dominic's face darkened as he stepped out of the sedan. "Nora. Playing hard-to-get doesn't work on me. Think carefully." "Seven years with me. Wedding's half done. You walk now, you're a woman the Sterlings threw away. Who's going to take you after that?" He said it in front of my parents. Didn't blink. The sky had gone dark. A fine drizzle started. Marissa saw Dominic get out. She slipped out of the car behind him. "Nora. Sweetheart. This is just because you think Dominic and I are too close, right?" "If you'll just get through the ceremony today. Give Dominic his moment. I promise. I'll turn in my notice tomorrow. I'll take care of the baby. I'll leave." She said it looking straight into my eyes, her hand stroking her stomach in slow. Then she threw herself against Dominic's chest, sobbing on cue.
A baby. The word passed through me like a live current. Marissa curled into Dominic's chest like a stray kitten. Her palm settled on her stomach. She hit the word pregnancy deliberately. "When." I forced it out through my teeth. The white satin glove on my hand was crushed in my own grip. Dominic's face was dark. "Don't listen to her. Get in the car. If you don't want her around, I'll send her away tomorrow." My father stepped in front of me. His voice was iron. "My daughter gave you seven years of her life. You spent them running around with other women. You think that's decent?" He only moved his foot half a step forward. Dominic's arm shot out to shield Marissa's stomach. Pulled her against him. I laughed. "Dominic. You lie like a teenager." "Send her away where? To the maternity suite at the Four Seasons in Boston?" Dominic went still. Last month I'd seen a reservation confirmation on his phone. Four Seasons Boston. Booked for the day after our wedding. Special note attached to the booking: prenatal-suitable amenities requested. I'd thought it was for our honeymoon. I'd started prenatals a month early. Walked away from a Providence account I'd spent half a year closing. Cut caffeine. Cut wine. I'd let all of it go because I thought Dominic was finally going to take me in. Make me one of the Family. I'd been prepping my body for a child. I hadn't understood, until this moment, that the room was already occupied. My eyes moved down to Marissa's stomach. She was showing. "What. Can't handle it? Just because I've got his baby?" "What if I told you my child is the one who's going to carry the Sterling name? And you? You spend the rest of your life at that table and no one on it will ever call you one of us." Marissa's voice pushed harder with every sentence. The provocation in her eyes tipped over into open contempt. My father's face went white with rage. "You have no shame. You're not going to hurt my daughter. Tomorrow I'm parking myself outside your office with a sign that says you seduced an engaged man." "I don't have much left. But I've got enough for that." My father barely finished the sentence. Marissa's hands flew to her stomach. She pitched backward. "Dominic. My baby. Something's wrong." The rain came down harder. From drizzle to full downpour. Dominic crossed the driveway in three strides. He caught her against his chest. "Nora. Get your father's mouth under control. Apologize. To Marissa. Right now. One more word out of him and I'll have his tongue on the floor of this driveway." "If anything happens to Marissa, I don't know how I'll answer to her father." I looked up. Met his eyes. "Answer? Which father are you planning to answer to, Dominic?" "Marissa's. He's practically my father-in-law." Something cold slid down my back. My father was still standing right there. In the rain. And Dominic had just called another man his father-in-law to his face. Five years I'd spent trying to earn a seat at that table. And Dominic had handed the title I'd never been given to a woman who'd never worked a day for it. "Nora. Stop playing word games. Last time. Get in the car. You know what I'm capable of. I've always thought you were a smart woman. Don't make me revise that." The sentences from him. Like the rain. They put out every last ember of expectation I'd had for seven years. For this wedding, my parents had put together a $40,000 gift for Dominic. The gap between our families was real. My parents had scraped for half their lives to pull that money together. Just to give Dominic respect. All so I could stand as Dominic Sterling's Donna without ever bowing my head. And now Dominic was calling Marissa's father Dad. I couldn't lie to myself anymore. I finally understood that everything I'd done, every year I'd bled, would never buy me one ounce of respect from this man. "And if I say no?" Dominic's brow knit at the center. "Fine." "You. And you. Take that house apart. Every board. Every window. I want the driveway looking like a crater by the time we pull off. Consider it Marissa's wedding gift from the bride."
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