Page 3 of A Trap So Flawless

Do I have two fiancés now? Is that even a thing?

Papà hasn’t said a word about how he’s going to deal with Darragh.

I don’t even think he can be dealt with.

I shiver despite the warm September sunshine spilling down on rue Saint-Hubert.

Mamma clucks at me from a few steps ahead. She turns her head back towards me. The sun catches on the diamond-accented frames of her dark sunglasses and gleams on her dark burgundy-brown hair.

“Hurry up, amore,” she huffs. “We don’t have much time left to arrange your gown. We’re already going to have to buy something off the rack.”

She practically wails it, like the mere thought wounds her at her very core. Never mind the fact that she’s marrying her only daughter off to a forty-one-year-old mobster from another city. Never mind the fact that this wedding could implode our entire world when Darragh catches wind of it.

No. It’s the off-the-rack dress that’s the problem.

“We should have gone to Donata’s,” I remind her, my tone barbed. Donata makes all our dresses in Toronto. She designed Deirdre’s wedding gown. I always imagined that’s where I’d end up when the time came.

I might not get to choose my groom, but I always assumed I’d at least get to choose the fucking dress.

“Don’t remind me. I feel like we’re cheating on her,” Mamma groans. She pauses on the pavement, rubbing at her temples, then pushing her sunglasses further up her nose. I think she’s probably hungover. We’re up bright and early for our nine o’clock appointment at the dress shop.

It perks me up, just a little bit, to know that Mamma doesn’t love the way this is unfolding, either. Gives me the smallest semblance of hope.

“Why don’t you talk to him and-”

“Don’t start.” She pins me with a hard stare. I can see the sweep of her false lashes behind the dark lenses. “Your papà has told me all about what you’ve been up to. You’ve made mistakes, ragazza. Huge ones. Your papà is merely trying to clean up your mess. If he feels this is the best way to do it, so be it.”

“My mess?” I scoff. Bitterness climbs up my throat as she turns and begins walking once more. I hurry to catch up, striding so angrily beside her that I actually think I might break one of my heels on the pavement. “My mess?” I repeat, louder this time. “How is it my fault that I’ve been meeting with my own fucking fiancé! I was engaged to him, Mamma! I might still be! And it wasn’t my fault he threw Dario off that roof! Dario was fucking everybody up the ass and-”

“Quiet your voice!” she hisses, glancing around at the milling, shopping crowds surrounding us. Despite the fact that we are among the other people on the street, I feel like we’re separated from them by some invisible, impenetrable barrier. We all stand in the same place, in the same time, but not on the same plane of existence. The smiling couples and families enjoying a stroll on a sunny September day could never fathom a conversation that included casual mention of someone being thrown to their death from a rooftop.

“The shop is just up ahead.”

“Jesus, Curse!” I snap, whirling to face him. My cousin stands behind me in all black, totally still. He’s so fucking silent when he wants to be. I nearly forgot he was chaperoning us.

“Meno male,” Mamma breathes. “Thank God.” She waves her hand between us, like she’s dispelling cobwebs. Or curses. “No more talk of this. We are going to have a nice morning at the dress shop, Valentina. This is what your papà has decided, and we are going to do it with smiles on our faces.”

“I’m not crazy, right?” I ask as Mamma stomps off towards the dress shop we’ve been aiming for.

Curse doesn’t answer. Which is pretty fucking rude, considering the question I just asked.

“Curse! I’m serious.” I stop walking. He stops, too, staring down at me with those empty assassin eyes. “This is a terrible idea, isn’t it? Darragh’s going to lose his fucking shit when he comes back here and finds me married. He gave me a fucking ring!”

I’m so angry I feel like I’m on the verge of becoming hysterical. It’s like I’m screaming in a dream. No sound is coming out. Nobody can hear me.

Or nobody wants to.

“We’ve avoided a war with Darragh before,” Curse says at length. “We can do it again.”

“Oh, hell no. We aren’t getting out of this with some underground boxing match. This isn’t Darragh coming after us for a debt like he was with Deirdre. This is personal.”

I can see in the resigned set of his jaw that Curse already knows this.

“Darragh’s already killed for me,” I add bluntly.

My cousin rarely shows emotion. But there’s no mistaking the twitch of his eyebrows upwards.

“Who?”

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