Married To The Wrong Brother

We were told the Tri-Annual Gathering was supposed to be a celebration. Every three years, the families would come together in glittering ballrooms and fortified villas with walls so thick you couldn't hear the gunshots from the other side. 

I was seven the first time I attended. I wore silver shoes that hurt my toes and a dress that made me feel like a porcelain doll. I clung to my sister’s hand and watched men with eyes like stone kiss her cheeks and compliment my father’s loyalty and servitude.

Now, I am seventeen. Still wearing dresses and pretending to fit into a world I didn’t belong to. Except this time, I wasn’t clinging to my sister’s hand. I was waiting for him.

Dominic.

God, even just thinking his name made warmth crawl through my chest. He wasn’t like the others or even polished like the famous Vincenzo. He wasn't carved from ice like the other heirs we were paraded in front of. He laughed when I tripped over my heels, stole desserts for me at the dinners, and kissed my ears with things in the dark that made my heart swirl.

He wasn’t mine yet, but he’d promised he’d find a way.

“Wait for me by the fountain after the gun works,” he said the night before. 

The gun works was a twisted tradition which meant to signal the start of the Gathering's final night. Men fired antique pistols loaded with blanks and ceremonial rifles in synchronized bursts across the estate grounds and into the air, a symbolic display of peace between families. The louder the shots, the more bullshit they were covering. My stomach still churned every time it happened. 

Even though I’d been to D.C. four times before, it never stopped feeling like a world apart from ours in San Francisco. I was raised in sunlight, school life, and cafe parties. Here, this life always felt like fiction to me, like pages from a book my father never let me finish. No wonder he never let us stay for too long. That was changing now, though, at least for my sister.

The sky turned orange and gold as the ceremonial gunfire thundered in the distance. Even muffled by walls and space, my breath shook. I’d heard it three times before, still I hated it, only that it made my belly twist in anticipation because that sound meant he was coming.

A gust of cold wind pushed through the hedges, and I pulled my shawl tighter. The air was crispy and stingy in the garden just the way he and I always liked it.

It was tucked behind the ballroom, past the ivy-covered wall and through a maintenance door most people ignored. He found it because it was obviously built by his grandfather. It was our hideaway. We’d sneak off every few years when the families met for mergers and strategic alliances, and tonight should’ve been the same.

Except it wasn't.

Because he was late.

Again. 

I checked the time. 12:04 a.m, before leaning against the marble edge of the fountain that was old and chipped, tucked in the courtyard behind the estate where the Gathering was held that year. It smelled like stone and moss and roses, and I pressed my palms to the cold rim, watching the surface ripple beneath the moonlight. 

The noise from the ballroom was muffled with laughter, wedding vows exchanged for the newly wedded heirs and merged families, and the occasional burst of applause. A celebration of power in pressed suits and killer heels, but this wasn’t my scene.

I hadn’t even wanted to come, but my father insisted. “I’ve always been in the Cosa Nostra and you are now, Rose. There are rules here. Appearances.” And appearances apparently meant dragging his daughter around in designer gowns while assigning a six-foot shadow to follow her everywhere.

It took me fifteen minutes to lose him.

“Bathroom,” I’d said with a smile as I neared the velvet-curtained hallway.

Matteo’s jaw clenched like it always did. “I’ll wait right outside,” his voice was as flat as his expression. “It’s dangerous to be alone in here, especially tonight.”

“That’s sweet,” I touched his arm gently. “But unless you’re planning on following me into the stall, you’ll have to wait.”

And just like that, he stayed.

I was fine. I wasn’t alone because I knew who I was going to meet. And once I was inside, I’d veered left, slipped through the staff wing, and opened the maintenance door. The hinges whined softly, and my heart beat louder.

Three years.

Three years since I’d last seen him in person. Since I’d touched his hand without fear of cameras or secret phone calls and texts or even consequence. I was tired of hiding. Tired of pretending we didn’t mean something, even if we were still technically hiding, this moment, I was going to see him and touch him. That was the difference.

Footsteps echoed behind me, and I grinned.

My heart did that stupid flip thing again that it only does for him, excitement already curling at the edge of my thoughts. I stepped out from behind the pillar, playful, ready to scare him the way he used to scare me as kids.

“Dom?” I began, but the name died in my throat.

No answer.

But the footsteps didn’t stop, so I walked around the hedges, still smiling until the grin slid off my face like someone had poured ice down my back.

It wasn’t Dominic.