Page 106 of Shâhzâdeh

“It was! The black and white themes. The play on light and dark and moonlight and stars.” She looked star-struck again and I wondered if she was going to break out in song or if I’d misjudged her a little.

“Because he calls herreul? That is so romantic.”

Frankie scoffed as she removed her filled breast pump to place the bag in the cooler. “Cause y’all know I didn’t care about that wedding.”

“Which was understandable, but still I was glad we went as grand as we did. Even when he was being a fuck boy he couldn’t help but ensure everything was perfect. The Halfraican could never deny his love for you. You, however, are getting romance and opulence. You and the prince of Arabia gotta step it up. I mean I’ve planned like four of these by now in case you needed to check my credentials. I’m fantastic at this wedding thing. Your theme is phenomenal and Ms. Babette relayed some of the ideas you had and they’re perfect.”

“So you’re the planner or—”

“No, I’m theimplementor. I tell her what to do.” She emphasized implementor so hard I knew she was going to run that poor woman ragged.

“So you threaten the planner.”

“Yeah. If she’s trying to do something shitty or cheat you guys out I help keep her in line. You get to stay the good guys and I take the stress off of you and put it on her. That way everybody wins.”

“Except the poor wedding planner, it sounds like.”

Jada rolled her eyes un in exasperation because the questions were clearly getting on her nerves. “She’s getting paid. That seems fair enough. I mean the way this wedding is turning out to be the wedding of the year…yeah she’s going to be begging for you all to let her use pictures.”

“And we can’t do that because…”

“Did you miss the whole secret murdery organization thing we have going on here? Or did you think that was just like for funsies?” She waved her finger loftily toward Frankie, Ms. Babette, Navi and herself before looking back at me.

“My mistake I thought since they were publicly businessmen it wouldn’t be unusual for them to be connected.”

“That’s true for some of them, but there are rumors. And rumors, when confirmed with evidence lead to investigations and we can’t have that. I mean think about Ori. He works for the damn government. If his pictures were to pop up with some people there might be questions. We can’t have that.” Jada was running all of this down like she was the secretary of the organization and I was once again impressed.

“You’re really knowledgeable about this.”

She double blinked like she was trying to determine if I was really this naïve or just saying this stuff to get on her nerves. “It just makes sense.”

I had to sigh because God knows I was exhausted. “If you say so, Jada.”

“Yes, I say so. Now you’ll have all the pictures and video in the world and as soon as it is in your possession all of it will be erased from their hard drives.”

“And we know this for sure because?”

“Because we have a billionaire hacker as our tech support. I really need to create a flowchart for you so that you’re aware of who all is involved and how we all fit together.” She was tapping her chin like this flow chart was going to be something else on her list of things to do.

“Is this why you behave how you do?” I looked at Frankie wondering why she wasn’t jumping in the middle of this but it was like she was having too much fun watching us talk. Or fuss or bond or whatever the hell this ritual was.

“I need you to elaborate on that because I’ve been a brat since I came out of the womb.” Jada spoke with such aplomb that made it obvious people just acquired to her mindset of not giving a damn.

“You walk around and say and do whatever you want.”

“Well, I’ve always done that. Is this why I know I can do it more often and with far more important people? Hell yes. But you know the beautiful thing about that, Vanya?” She leaned toward me conspiratorially and I was actually interested in what her answer would be.

“What is it?”

“That now you can too. See, you strike me as a woman who has had to toe the line a lot in her life and frankly, we aren’t women who toe the line. We are women who push the boundaries. Matter of fact there are times we’re the women who have to fuck shit up. Create a little hell and be just as ruthless, if not more than the men. I need you to embrace that. Because there is gonna come a time where you can’t be the weak bitch. You can’t be the damsel in distress. And you’re going to have to show that you can absolutely nut the fuck up with the rest of us, okay? So think about that, darling. You had no issue with going up against all of this, for Frankie’s sake. We know you can do it because you threw yourself in the line of fire to protect Xerx when he was down, and now it’s about to get your ass an even better title than my sister. She’s a countess, by the way. But now we need to know that Vanya can do it for Vanya. You were a woman that was once afraid of her own shadow but you got away from a damn cult. That’s big brass balls. That’s the Vanya you should always want to be. Now, I need my first Smoke break for the day so we gotta get started on this dress.” She ran her mouth a mile a minute undulating from one topic to another and I was left feeling like I was falling down the rabbit hole again trying to figure out which end was up. I knew she was done being serious when she started singing Blarabian Nights to the tune of Arabian Nights. Jada had clearly used up her allotment of good sense for the hour and I wasn’t going to press my luck.

She was right though, we’d been sitting here for a while and I needed to get started. I’d asked Xerxes if there were any specific rules I needed to follow. I didn’t want to step on anyone’s toes and break any specific rules that the church might have. Embarrassing Xerxes or his family as I represented them in front of a bunch of people was not what I wanted.

He told me that there were no rules and for once he wanted me to do what I wanted. His exact words were:“Vanya I do not want you to get bogged down in making others happy with our wedding. I have two requirements of zhis day of ours: zhat you are zhere to be my bride and no pork. Zhat is all. No, I’m wrong, zhree. I want you to have fun. It is like I said, I know zhat before you had to do zhat you had to. But now you get to do zhat you want to. Zhe feelings in my heart for you are genuine. My friends and zheir wives are more zhan happy to accompany you where you need to go. We are a family and I want you to pick what makes you feel beautiful.’

And that was exactly what I planned to do.

We got ourselves up from the lounge area and walked into the main salon where Navi and Ms. Babette were.

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