Chapter 3 - THE NAVY DRESS WITH POCKETS
Sunday arrived with a gray, heavy sky that threatened snow.
Amara stood in front of her full-length mirror in her small apartment in South Boston, staring at herself. The dress she had bought three months ago at a department store clearance sale was a deep navy blue, made of a heavy, comfortable jersey knit that draped over her hips and hit just below her knees. It wasn't silk. It didn't have crystal beads like the dresses the women in the wedding magazines wore. But it had deep, practical pockets, and it made her feel grounded.
"You are insane," she told her reflection. "You are going to a high-society mafia wedding because a man with a gun gave you an invitation while covered in blueberry filling."
Her cat, a fat orange tabby named Barnaby, meowed from the bed.
"Exactly," Amara agreed. "It’s ridiculous."
Yet at 3:30 PM, she found herself walking up the wide stone steps of St. Aurelia’s Cathedral.
The street was lined with black limousines, sports cars, and private security guards wearing dark suits and earpieces. Wealthy women in mink coats and men with diamond pinky rings filed through the massive bronze doors, exchanging tight, fake smiles that looked like business transactions.
Amara slipped through the entrance, keeping her head down. She didn't check her coat. She kept her hands tucked into her dress pockets, feeling the cold weight of her keys and her phone.
She found the back pew on the left, right beneath the shadow of a dark marble statue of St. Jude holding a wooden staff.
The cathedral was packed. Three hundred people sat in silent, tense rows divided down the center aisle: Morettis on the left, Rinaldis on the right. The air was thick with expensive perfume, cigar smoke lingering on wool coats, and the low, dangerous hum of two rival armies sitting in the same church.
Across the aisle, in the front row, sat Isabella Rinaldi.
She was twenty-four years old, thin as a willow branch, and dressed in a white lace gown that looked like it had been spun from silver thread and diamonds by Italian nuns. Her dark hair was piled high beneath a crown of pearls, her face pale and immaculate. She looked like a porcelain doll designed to be displayed behind glass.
Beside her sat her father, Dominic Rinaldi—a heavy, brutal-looking man with a thick neck and a deep scar running through his gray mustache.
Then the organ roared into life, playing the opening chords of the bridal processional.
Daniel Moretti stepped out from the side altar.
Amara’s breath hitched.
He was wearing a custom black tuxedo that fit his broad shoulders perfectly. His dark hair was brushed back, his face clean-shaven, his jaw set like an iron mask. He looked like every terrible story she had ever read about the men who ruled the city's shadows.
He stood beside the priest, looking down the long center aisle.
Isabella took her father's arm and began her slow, graceful walk toward the altar.
The priest raised his hands, beginning the Latin invocation.
"Dearly beloved," the priest began, his voice echoing off the high stone vaults, "we are gathered here today in the presence of God to join this man and this woman in holy matrimony..."
Amara watched Daniel.
He wasn't looking at Isabella. He wasn't looking at the priest. He wasn't looking at the three hundred guests holding their breath in the pews.
His eyes were scanning the back of the church.
Row by row. Column by column.
Then his gaze hit the shadow of St. Jude’s statue.
His eyes locked onto Amara’s navy dress.
Amara felt a jolt run through her spine, as if an live electric wire had touched her ribs.
She shook her head slightly, her heart hammering against her ribs. Don't look at me, she thought desperately. Look at your bride. Look at your mother. Look anywhere else.
Daniel turned his body away from the altar.
He looked at the priest.
Then he looked at Isabella, whose fake smile was starting to fracture around the edges.
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"Daniel Moretti," the priest said, reading from the heavy leather book in his hands, "do you take this woman—"
"I can’t do this," Daniel said.
