โดดร่มไม่เลือกฉัน ฉันตายแล้วคุณเป็นบ้าอะไร

Thirty minutes before she was scheduled to marry the most feared man in Chicago, my sister cut her way out of her bridal suite.

She hadn’t used the door. The suite was on the third floor of St. Michael’s Cathedral rectory, guarded by four men in tailored charcoal suits with bulges beneath their left armpits—Dante Valerius’s personal perimeter. Seraphina had used the narrow service elevator behind the flower prep pantry, leaving behind only the scent of French gardenia, a shattered vanity mirror, and three yards of French Chantilly lace hacked to ribbons on the Persian rug.

"Find her," my father snarled, his voice vibrating with a panic so thick it smelled like bile. Arthur Thorne didn't look like a proud father of the bride. He looked like a man standing on a trapdoor with the noose already cinching his throat. "Search every alley. Call the private hangar. If she gets on a plane, we are dead men."

"She’s gone, Arthur!" my mother, Helena, shrieked. Her manicured hands clawed at her own diamond necklace, smearing liquid foundation across her collarbones. "Her phone is in the toilet! Her passport isn't in her bag! She planned this! She knew what he would do to her, and she ran!"

I stood in the shadow of the velvet dressing screen, holding a tray of steaming chamomile tea that no one was going to drink.

My knuckles were white against the silver handles. I had been up since four in the morning steaming Seraphina’s second dress, pinning her diamond hairpieces, and running downstairs to fetch the vintage champagne she took two sips of before throwing a flute at the wall because it wasn't cold enough.

That was my place in the Thorne family. The invisible daughter. The buffer. The shock absorber for Seraphina’s tantrums and my father’s ruinous debts.

"Dante Valerius is downstairs," my father whispered, slamming his fist onto the marble vanity. The perfume bottles jumped. "There are three hundred people in that cathedral. The mayor. The state supreme court justices. Half the syndicates from Detroit to New York. If he walks up to that altar and there is no bride, he won't just pull the twelve million in debt forgiveness—he will put a bullet through my skull before the organist finishes the prelude!"

"Then tell him she was taken!" Helena sobbed, tears cutting black mascara tracks down her powdered cheeks. "Tell him the Morettis ambushed her!"

"Valerius owns the Morettis’ debt, you idiot!" Arthur shouted, veins corded like blue snakes against his temples. "He knows who breathes in this city and who doesn't! If I lie to him, he flays us alive!"

A heavy, deliberate knock struck the oak door.

Three beats. Methodical. Unhurried.

The entire suite went dead silent. Helena choked back a scream behind both hands.

My father froze, his complexion draining to the shade of wet concrete. He wiped the sweat from his upper lip, turned toward the heavy mahogany panels, and took a shuddering breath. "Y-yes?"

A low, gravel-edged voice cut through the wood: "Ten minutes, Mr. Thorne. Mr. Valerius does not tolerate delays. If the doors do not open on the quarter hour, we come in."

Marcus. Dante's head of security. The man who had cleared the church with bomb-sniffing dogs at dawn.

"Understood!" Arthur called back, his voice cracking on the syllable. "She’s just... finishing the veil. Five minutes!"

Footsteps retreated down the stone corridor—steady, heavy, lethal.

The moment the sound faded, my father’s head snapped toward the corner. Toward me.

I felt the temperature in the room drop ten degrees. The silver tray rattled against my ribs.

"No," I said, the word coming out before I could stop it.

Arthur didn't speak. He stepped across the shredded lace, his eyes dark with predatory calculation. He didn't see his youngest daughter. He saw a ledger balance. He saw an insurance policy.

"Arthur..." Helena whispered, lowering her hands. She looked at me, then at the bespoke white gown hanging from the mahogany wardrobe—the spare ceremony gown, tailored with a high lace neck and a cathedral-length blusher veil thick enough to obscure a woman's features.

Her grief vanished in a split second, replaced by that cold, sharp socialite pragmatism I had despised my entire life. "The veil. The lace blusher is triple-ply antique lace. Nobody will see her face until they reach the chancel."

"I am not doing this," I said, backing toward the wall until the brass edge of a radiator bit into my shoulder blades. "Are you insane? That’s Dante Valerius! He isn't a businessman you can cheat with bad accounting! He will know the second he lifts the veil!"

"Then keep your head down!" Arthur lunged forward, grabbing my upper arm. His fingers dug through the wool of my sweater, pressing hard enough into the bone to guarantee purple bruises by midnight. "You walk down that aisle. You stand there. You keep your mouth shut until the contracts are signed and the vows are registered with the clerk downstairs."

"He will kill me!" I gasped, twisting in his grip, but Arthur had the frantic, desperate strength of a drowning man. "Let me go!"

"If you don't put that dress on, Eloise," Arthur hissed, bringing his face inches from mine, his breath sour with stale scotch and panic, "I won't wait for Dante Valerius to pull the trigger. Do you know where your grandmother’s specialized hospice care is funded from? The Oakridge account. My account."

My breath seized in my throat. "Arthur, don't you dare..."

"One phone call," he whispered, his eyes wild. "One signature on a transfer stoppage, and they roll her bed out onto the curb before sunset. You think you’re so righteous? You think you’re above this family? You exist because I allow you to eat at my table! Now you save this family, or you watch that old woman suffocate in a public ward!"

"Arthur, the dress!" Helena hissed, pulling the heavy gown off the cedar hanger with frantic, clawing motions. Silk hissed against the plastic wrap. "Hurry! They’re lining up in the narthex!"

"Put it on," Arthur growled, shoving me toward the mirror. "Or so help me God, Eloise, I will strip you myself."

I looked at my mother. She wouldn't meet my eyes; she was already unzipping the back of the dress, her hands trembling with feverish adrenaline. In their eyes, I wasn't Eloise. I had never been Eloise. I was just the spare tire they kept in the trunk in case the golden child went flat.

My fingers shook so violently I could barely unbutton my cardigan. Helena shoved me into the heavy silk. The boning of the corset dug mercilessly into my ribs, cold and rigid like an iron cage.

Zip.

The sound was a guillotine dropping.

Helena pulled the back laces with brutal efficiency, yanking until the air caught in my lungs, constricting my diaphragm until every heartbeat pounded in my ears like a war drum. She pinned the heavy diamond combs into my dark hair, not caring as the metal scraped my scalp.

Then came the veil.

Three yards of heavy, antique Belgian lace dropped over my face. The world blurred into a white, suffocating fog. I could barely see the outlines of the room—only shadows and the pale glare of the vanity lights.

"Remember," Arthur whispered, grabbing my trembling jaw through the lace and squeezing until my teeth clicked. "Head down. Walk slow. Do not speak. If you flinch, if you utter a single word before that ring is on your finger, your grandmother dies."

The grandfather clock in the corner struck twelve.

Downstairs, the massive pipe organs groaned to life. The vibration traveled up through the stone floorboards, straight through the soles of my satin shoes, rattling the marrow of my bones.

The bridal march.

The heavy double doors of the bridal suite were thrown open from the outside.

Framed in the doorway stood Marcus, six-foot-four of solid muscle, his hands folded across the front of his jacket, his dark eyes sweeping the room. They landed on me—swathed in white, shivering beneath the lace.

He didn't ask where Seraphina was. He didn't comment on the shredded lace on the carpet. He simply stepped to the side and bowed his head with chilling precision.

"It is time, Mrs. Valerius," Marcus said. "The groom is waiting."