Page 11 of A Trap So Flawless

The next morning goes so smoothly that I’m becoming sickeningly aware of the fact that I may actually end up married by the end of the day. During a quiet moment after getting my hair done and before putting on the dress, I begin to frantically consider how I might escape. We’re getting ready in the same townhouse we’ve been staying in this entire time – one of Papà’s Montréal properties – but there’s no easy way out. There is a window with a fire escape leading down from my large bedroom, but two of Sal’s men are stationed on the ground below.

“Come away from the window, amore,” Mamma says, her brow furrowed with concern. Like she’s worried I’ll yank it open and jump.

I’m not suicidal. But I’d risk breaking an ankle to get the hell out of here.

“It’s time to put on the gown,” she says. The hair stylists and makeup artists have long since departed, leaving only Mamma and me in the room. We’re wearing matching ivory silk robes. The dress she chose for me, altered in a flurry of activity over the last few days, lies like a white silk abomination – or accusation – on the bed.

“I’m not putting that on.”

She inhales through her nose, then pinches the bridge of it.

“Don’t do this. Not today. My head is already aching. I can’t deal with both you and your papà like this.”

“Then don’t. Just take me back to Toronto.”

She laughs, and it’s brittle.

“Then what? Wait for your papà to come drag you back?” She shakes her head, then points a dark blue fingernail at the dress. “You know if you don’t put it on your papà will come in here and hold you down and make you do it.”

It seems like a grim metaphor for the entire situation. Not just putting on the dress.

Getting married in the first place.

It’s strange how much more fight I feel like I have in me this time. I hadn’t ever planned on rejecting or trying to wiggle my way out of my marriage to Dario. So why now?

Could be the fact that my new husband may or may not have killed his first wife, and it’s a sense of self-preservation. Or…

Darragh’s face is in my head. Those strange eyes, swallowing me whole.

Is it crazy? To feel like I’m betraying him?

When he betrayed me by arranging our secret engagement in the first place?

“Valentina!” Mamma snaps, dragging me back to reality. “Please! I do not want to have to tell your papà you are not cooperating!”

I don’t want that either. Because she’s right. Papà will hold me down and make Mamma yank the dress on, no matter how hard I kick. I could try to ruin the dress – spill something on it, rip it – but I have a feeling Papà would drag me down the aisle in nothing but this thin, silky robe I’m wearing if the dress became an issue.

I can’t stop this. Not yet, anyway. Maybe the only one who can is…

No. Stop. I can’t keep relying on Darragh to come and save me.

After today…

He might not want to.

I have a feeling I’m not the only one who is going to – unfairly, unreasonably – think today is a betrayal to him.

The heat I experienced with Darragh, those odd moments of softness behind the swinging blade of his being… It was like a fever dream. Intensely vivid. But temporary. Dark and strange and in some ways, exquisite.

But not real.

What’s real is the dress on the bed. My papà’s anger. The man waiting for me at that church. The church near the restaurant that bears his dead wife’s name, where we will host the reception.

I take the dress from the garment bag and step into it. I hear – practically feel – Mamma’s exhale of relief. She says nothing as she does up the fasteners at the back. It’s hard to breathe in this thing. The bodice is tight, and it’s got heavy long sleeves. Just perfect for a September wedding on a day that promises to be unseasonably hot. Outside, the sun shines merrily down, like all is right in the world.

Too soon, the dress is on and done up. Mamma says something under her breath – it sounds like a prayer – then grabs her glass of champagne and heads into the bathroom, closing the door behind her. I stare at that shut door, feeling like something is slamming shut on my own future. My hands tingle, then begin to go numb at my sides.

Trying to focus my fingers on something so that they don’t lose feeling entirely, I grab my clutch purse and start rifling through it. My trembling fingertips brush, then seize, that smooth, black box.

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