Page 11 of Unholy Union
“She’d want you to wear it on your wedding day. She would be so proud of you, Sabrina. The wonderful woman you’ve become.”
He takes the hair comb and reaches over to slide it into my hair, pushing back some of the curls from my face.
“There,” he says. “Now you look just like her.”
Things have been tense—to put it mildly—between Papi and me since he struck the marital deal with the Valentes. I’ve done my best to pretend he barely exists while he’s remained staunchly unapologetic about his decision and the upcoming wedding.
Whereas the two of us used to have family dinners a few nights a week, we’ve avoided each other like the plague.
I’ve struggled to come to terms with the fact that he’s ripped my future away. Just a week ago the future had felt so limitless, so full of possibilities. I was going to spend the summer in Europe with Tessa and then slowly find myself and what I wanted to do with my life.
Instead, he’s marrying me off to our worst enemy.
But as he slides the delicate silver comb into my hair and his eyes twinkle in fondness, I’m reminded that he’s still my father. He’s done his best to raise me well and spoiled me rotten. Leowas his prized heir, but I was a different kind of prize—I was his little girl, hisprincipessa.
He loves me deeply and would never put me in a truly terrible situation.
Maybe I’ve gone in with blinders on. I’ve acted out of the same stubborn streak I inherited from Mami…
“Thanks, Papi,” I mumble, my lips tilting into a small smile. “I’m honored to wear Mami’s comb.”
He opens his arms for me to give him a hug and kiss on the cheek.
I walk out of his office with the silver comb in my dark curls, more conflicted than ever.
There isn’t a cell in my body that doesn’t detest Cato Valente and the rest of his family. There isn’t a single part of me that’s not disgusted by the idea that in forty-eight hours, I’ll be marrying into the family, even taking the surname.
But Papi is so certain this is the right thing to do…
I’m turning the corner down the hall when Nella appears from the laundry room and starts scurrying toward me.
“Bambina, vieni con me,” she mutters, grabbing me by the arm. “Not here. Your father hears too much.”
She drags me away to the laundry room that’s warm with the heat from the dryer and scented by all the fabric softener she uses during the wash. She gently shuts the door behind us and then turns to face me, digging inside the front pouch of her apron.
“Per il tuo matrimonio,” she says. She presses a rosary into my hands, the faded silver-and-blue pendant practically an ancient antique. “Qualcosa di blu. Per protezione.”
I frown, my brows connecting.
“Quando le preghiere non bastano più,” she adds.
I’m still not sure I understand as Nella gives me a motherly kiss on the cheek and then curls my fingers shut over the rosary resting in my palm.
“Keep it on you at all times,” she says, switching to English.
I’m sent on my way once she returns to the laundry. I’m running late for my appointment at the bridal shop, anyway, but it doesn’t change the fact that I leave the Corsini estate feeling more lost and confused than I should be less than two days before my wedding.
“If one of those leeches gets a photo up my skirt, I’m sending them to the ER with a broken nose!” Tessa growls from the moment she steps through the bridal shop. She turns back toward the windows where a group of paparazzi have camped out with their cameras in hopes they’ll snap some candids of me, and then she raises her middle finger at them. “Take a pic of that, you assholes!”
The bridal attendant gives a nervous laugh and then rushes over to guide her away from the entrance. “We can draw the curtains to give more privacy. I have already closed the shop at Mr. Valente’s request.”
I roll my eyes from where I stand in front of the tall, oval-shaped mirror by the dressing room.
How could I forget?
Augusto Valente insisted that he provide the “something new” for the occasion. That something being my wedding gown.
On the surface it seemed like a generous gift—among everything else he’s footing the bill for—but what it’s really turned out to be was another means of control.
