The Godfather Stolen Bride

The first thing Vivian heard was a woman laughing, low and breathless, from behind the door of the church office.

She had come to St. Aurelia's to meet the priest. Julian had texted her that morning: Be at the church at four, baby. Wear the blue dress. I'll join you. The wedding was tomorrow at noon. She had her checklist folded in her bag, and she was carrying her heels so they wouldn't click on the marble.

The laugh came again, followed by a man's groan.

She slowed. The corridor was cool and smelled of beeswax and old stone. For two years she had imagined walking down the nave of this church in her mother's veil, and she had come early today to say the vows aloud in an empty room, just once, to hear how they sounded. She had folded and refolded the paper in her bag so many times the creases had gone soft.

Flower vendors, she thought. Or two people who had forgotten that churches have walls.

"Yes,"

The woman said.

"Just like that. You're the best I've ever had."

Vivian stopped walking.

She knew the answering voice. It had said, good morning, beautiful into her phone for three years. It had said, I love you on her birthday and held her through her mother's funeral. For a few seconds she tried to believe that many men sounded alike.

"Tell me the truth, Julian,"

The woman said, slowly and pleased.

"Has she ever made you feel the way I do?"

"Never."

Julian laughed softly. "Vivian is boring and she is such a loser. Kissing her is like kissing a church wall."

Her shoes slid out of her hand and hit the floor. The crack ran down the corridor like a gunshot. Inside, nobody stopped.

She pushed the door open.

Julian stood against the desk with his shirt hanging open, his tie on the carpet. Pressed against him, her red hair tangled and her lipstick on his collar, it was Laila.

Laila, who had held Vivian's hair back at nineteen after a bad night and cried at the engagement party. She was supposed to walk her down the aisle tomorrow in lavender.

"Viv,"

Laila said. She did not say sorry.

Vivian waited for the rest of it: an excuse, a tear, anything. Laila only drew Julian's jacket around her shoulders with slow, practiced care, and Vivian understood that this had not happened to them by accident. It was a habit, and it had been going on long enough to become comfortable.

Julian took his time buttoning his shirt. He looked at Vivian the way he might look at a delayed train.

"You're early."

"Is this what you've been doing?"

Her voice shook and she hated it.

"Tomorrow is our wedding. If you wanted her, why would you agree to marry me?"

"Because I never agreed to marry you."

He said it gently, as if she were the one who needed patience.

"Not really. You're not marrying me tomorrow, Vivian."

"What does that mean?"

"My father's company owes eleven million. The banks have given us until the end of the month."

He leaned back against the desk.

"A man has offered to cover all of it, in exchange for a bride."

The room went very quiet. Laila examined her nails, and that was what made it real. Laila had known.

"You knew,"

Vivian said to her.

"You sat at my engagement dinner and you knew."

Laila's hands stilled. For half a second something crossed her face that Vivian could not read, and it was not triumph.

"Don't look at me like that. You don't know what I was told, or what I was promised."

"Laila,"

Julian said sharply.

She shut her mouth. It was the first time Vivian had ever seen her take an order from him, and it was the one detail in that room that did not fit.

"A bride,"

Vivian said.

"You. Tomorrow. In the white dress your aunt paid for."

He shrugged.

"Just not to me. His name is Magnus Dray."

She knew the name. Everyone did, and most people lowered their voices to say it. Magnus ran half the docks and, people said, everything that arrived through them. He was almost fifty.

"No."

She heard her own breath.

"Over my dead body. I will never marry that man."

"Nobody is asking you."

"You can't sell a person."

"It's a marriage, Vivian. People have survived worse."

He checked his watch.

"My parents signed last week. We are marrying you off to settle our debt. I'd have told you tonight, but you came early."

Three years sat on her chest like a stone. The flowers she had chosen. The vows she had rewritten four times. His mother kissing her cheek at Sunday lunch, already knowing.

"Your family has been smiling at me for months," she said.

"They're polite people."

She thought of her father's company, Hale Logistics, which had sat under Gerald Marsh's signature for two years because she had been too grief-stricken to read what she signed. She had thanked him for taking the burden. She had brought him coffee.

"What else did you take?"

She asked quietly.

For the first time, Julian's eyes slid away from hers.

"I don't know what you mean."

"Yes, you do."

"We're not doing this now."

Her hand was shaking so badly that it took three tries to work the ring off her finger. She set it on the desk between them, and the small sound it made was louder than anything she had said.

"Keep it,"

Julian said.

"It's not worth much."

He glanced at it, then at her, and almost smiled.

"Nothing I gave you was."

It was the cruelest thing he had said yet, and he had said it so lightly that Laila laughed.

She stepped toward him without knowing what she meant to do. Before she could do anything, the heavy front doors of the church boomed open, and footsteps came down the nave, several men walking in step.

Julian's composure slipped.

"They're early."

"Who are these people?"

He didn't answer. Two men in black coats filled the office doorway, and between them walked a broad, gray-templed man with a pleasant face and eyes like wet slate. He looked at Julian, then at Vivian.

"Is this the bride?"

"Yes, sir,"

Julian said.

"Vivian."

"You told me she was docile."

Magnus said it pleasantly, but Julian flinched as if he'd been struck.

"Mr. Marsh signed for eleven million dollars on the strength of that description. I expect delivery as described."

"She's upset, sir. By tomorrow she'll..."

"Tomorrow is a long way off."

Behind him, Laila had gone pale. She tugged Julian's sleeve and whispered something Vivian could not hear, and Julian shook her off without looking at her. Vivian filed it away. Even now, with everything collapsing, she was cataloguing every detail, as if some part of her already knew she would need them later.

Magnus Dray circled her slowly, as if she were a car he was thinking of buying.

"Very pretty. Prettier than the photograph."

He smiled.

"I knew my investment was sound."

Tears stung behind her eyes. She did not let them fall.

"I will never marry you."

"As if you have a choice,"

Magnus said mildly. Then, to the men beside him, without looking away from her:

"Take her."