Safe Choice

Hawaii

I knew something was going to go wrong the moment Mama started crying when she saw me coming down the stairs.

Mama cried like she had just watched her baby being delivered to a royal sacrificial altar, when in reality her baby was wearing a white silk dress with a low-cut back, my great-grandmother’s diamond earrings, and satin shoes expensive enough to cover six months of apartment payments for a sane person.

“Maya,” she said, both hands over her mouth.

Behind her, Xavier, my twin brother who was born seven minutes after me and behaved like those seven minutes gave him the legal right to comment on my entire life, he lifted his champagne glass.

“Beautiful,” he said. “Too beautiful for Ricky, but our family already paid the deposit, so here we are.”

“Xavi,” Mama hissed.

“What? I said she’s beautiful.”

“It’s sounded like you were about to cancel the wedding.”

“I always sound like I’m about to cancel something. It’s part of my charm.”

Javier, my twenty-year-old brother, who still had an innocent face even though his sins could probably fill a small chapel, appeared beside the cocktail table while chewing a canapé.

“I agree. Maya looks like woman who makes old men rewrite their wills.”

“Thank you,” I said. “Finally, someone appreciates art.”

Saba, my youngest sister, seventeen years old, sat on the rattan sofa with her legs folded beneath her and her phone aimed at my face. “Maya, don’t move. The lighting is perfect. You look like a mafia wife who just poisoned her husband, but for a valid reason.”

Papa made a sound in the back of his throat, something close to a short prayer for his own patience. “This family,” he said softly in Spanish, “cannot behave normally for even two minutes before an important event?”

“Depends on your definition of normal,” Xavier said.

“Shut up, please.” Mama snapped.

And that was us. The de Cruzes in our natural habitat. Loud. Expensive. Fragrant. Faintly threatening. Too many opinions in one room, and not a single one with a low-volume setting.

Outside the resort’s private villa, Hawaii was showing off like a woman who knew she did not have to try very hard. The warm air clung to my skin, salty and soft, carrying the smell of the ocean, plumeria blossoms, and money being politely set on fire.

From the open balcony, I could see the beach sloping down into the dark blue, tiny lights strung between the palm trees, long tables covered in ivory linen, crystal glasses catching torchlight, and guests laughing with white teeth and jawlines purchased from the best doctors available.

My pre-wedding night.

Not the small, intimate rehearsal dinner I had once imagined before the Bernadi and de Cruz families decided the word “small” was an insult to our ancestors. This was more like a diplomatic reception with tropical flowers, a champagne tower, and people smiling as if they were quietly calculating the market value of one another’s kidneys.

I’m supposed to be happy.

Technically, I’m happy.

More or less.

I looked at my reflection in the glass of the balcony door. My dress was perfect. Soft white, not full bridal white because that was for tomorrow, but white enough to remind everyone that I was the reason they had flown all the way to Hawaii with suitcases full of expensive linen and family secrets. My hair was pinned in a low bun, with a few strands left loose around my face. My lips were painted in a nude shade that made me look like I had not tried too hard, even though I had spent forty minutes choosing the exact shade required to look like I had not tried too hard.

I looked calm.

Which was not true, because inside, my stomach was staging a small choreography.

Just nervous.

Normal. People got nervous before getting married. Even beautiful women with glowing skin, rich families, and the ability to walk in heels like they had come out of the womb wearing Louboutins were allowed to feel nervous before tying their lives to one man for… God, forever sounded aggressive when you thought about it too long.

I took a breath.

Ricky was safe.

That was what mattered.

Ricky was not the most interesting man in the room, not the sharpest, not the kind of man who made people turn automatically when he walked in. Ricky never changed the temperature of the air. He never made me want to throw a glass just to see whether he would catch it.

Ricky is gentle.

Ricky is stable.

Ricky reach out to me when I said I’m scared.

And for the past year, that had been enough to make me believe that maybe love did not have to feel like falling off a tall building. Maybe love could be someone sitting beside you in a car until your hands stopped shaking.

Someone who did not laugh when you said there had been a man following you since freshman year. Someone who believed you when you found flowers outside your dorm room, candid photos slipped under your door, red lipstick smeared across the bathroom mirror, and a little note that turned your stomach cold.

[You look better when you know someone is watching.]

I still remembered that paper.

I still remembered the handwriting.

I still remembered the way Ricky took it from my hand, his jaw going hard, then pulled me behind his body like the world had an off switch and he knew where it was.

“He’s not going to touch you,” he said back then.

I believed him.

Me, with my sharp tongue and my eleven p.m. espressos. Me, the girl who once made her graphic design professor apologize for criticizing the alignment on my poster incorrectly. I just believed him.

So when Ricky proposed after a year, in the garden of his family’s house in New York, with a diamond ring that was far too big and eyes that looked truly sincere, I said yes.

I’m twenty-two.

Well.

Very young. My brain was not even fully finished developing, but my wedding dress had already been ordered from Paris. Life did love a bold design choice.

The music outside swelled a little, an event coordinator appeared with a clipboard and a panicked smile, and all of us moved like a rich family that had been trained many times to enter a party without looking as if we had just been threatening one another with minor homicide.

The moment I stepped out, the party swallowed me whole.

Lights hung between the palms like pieces of stars bought in bulk. The wind stirred the tablecloths. In the distance, waves broke softly, politely, as if even the ocean understood the guest list mattered tonight. Waiters moved with silver trays. Champagne flowed. Laughter rose. Cameras flashed. Everyone kissed my cheek, touched my arm, told me I was beautiful, asked whether I was nervous, then did not wait for my answer because they were already busy searching for someone more useful to speak to.

I smiled until my cheeks were ready to resign.

The Bernadi family arrived in dark colors and old diamonds. They were not warm the way my family was. They were quieter, sharper. Italian old money with straight posture and eyes trained to enter a room and immediately locate the seat of power.

My family embraced.

Ricky’s family evaluated.

A very healthy combination for a marriage.

Ricky found me near the coconut bar, handsome in an ivory suit, his brown hair neatly combed, his smile easy. He kissed my cheek. His cologne was familiar, clean, a little citrusy.

“You disappeared,” he said.

“I’m standing in the middle of the party in a white dress. If you lost me, that’s an optics problem.”

He laughed. “You’re beautiful.”

“I know.”

“Maya.”

“What? I’m trying to build a marriage on a foundation of honesty.”

“I want you to meet someone.”

Suspicion hit me immediately.

“Rhysand is here.”

I turned my head. “Your brother?”

Ricky rarely talked about Rhysand without rolling his eyes. According to him, Rhysand Bernadi was a professional bastard. Arrogant, impossible, a full-blown bad boy with a brain too sharp and morals too flexible. He was often absent from family events because of the company, oil negotiations in the Middle East, investor meetings in London, or some minor scandal in Monaco that always got handled before the media could get a decent photo.

Rhysand was twenty-five, but his life already sounded like a business magazine profile edited by an ambitious devil. He had graduated from an elite university in America with a Bachelor of Science in Economics and International Political Economy. Then London School of Economics for an MSc in Energy Economics and Finance. Then a short executive program at Oxford on global energy strategy, because of course a man like that could not simply be handsome and rich. He also needed the vocabulary to make countries nervous.

He was being groomed to take over Bernadi Petroleum Holdings.

He had been living in Italy lately.

He had not come to the engagement party.

Had not come to the family dinner fitting.

Had not come when Papa made Ricky nearly cry with questions about his five-year plan. And now, two nights before I’m supposed to marry his younger brother, he had appeared.

“He landed this afternoon,” Ricky said.

“Should I feel flattered or cautious?”

“Maybe both.”

I looked at Ricky. “You’re making me feel very confident.”

His hand touched my waist, gentle. “He’s annoying. Don’t take it personally.”

Men’s favorite sentence when another man was being insufferable. Don’t take it personally. As if my heart were a little clutch I could leave on a table.

“I’m his future sister-in-law,” I said. “I’ll charm him.”

Ricky grimaced a little. “Don’t too much.”

Interesting.