Page 2 of Velvet Cruelty

Chapter One

January Whitehall

It’s my wedding day.

I’ve thought it a hundred times since I woke up, but it still doesn’t feel real. Maybe it never will. Maybe I’ll float from the cathedral to the reception to my new married life without having to do anything at all.

Anita’s brush sweeps lightly across my closed eyes. “Okay, January. Open.”

I look at myself in the special dressing room mirror and see my eyelids are now peachy pink. “What a beautiful color!”

“Well, you’re a beautiful bride.”

Anita’s trying to sound happy but the skin between her eyebrows is pinched. She’s done my stepmom’s makeup for years. I’m sure it’s strange that the first time she’s doing mine, it’s for my wedding. I wish I could talk openly. If I could, I’d tell Anita that what’s happening isn’t so strange, that arranged marriages are still common in other places. But I’m not allowed to talk openly. My marriage is family business and Anita isn’t family.

I watch as she puts away the eye brush and selects a pot of shimmering powder from the dozens lining her flat leather satchel. “Highlighter,” she explains. “Let’s make those cheekbones pop.”

My sister, Margot, shakes her empty glass at me. “JJ, have some champagne…”

She’s been drinking since we arrived in the suite to get our hair done. That was five hours ago. I take her glass and put it on my side table. “Maybe you should have a Coke?”

“Maybe you should have a drink?”

“I’m only eighteen.”

“Yeah, and you’re getting married. You can have one glass of fucking champagne.”

I look around, praying no one heard her curse. “Margot, please chill?”

She sticks her tongue out at me but doesn’t say anything else. Margot is braver than I am—and tipsy—but she knows about family business too.

She yawns, stretching her arms over her head, and her platinum bangle tumbles down her wrist. She catches me looking. “As soon as the wedding’s over, I’m selling it.”

Anita moves in front of me, blocking Margot from view, and I’m glad I don’t have to answer. The bracelets are Mr. Parker’s gift to my bridesmaids. Around the hotel suite, identical bangles are sparkling on the wrists of my cousins Sadie and Penelope and my school friends Giuseppina, Darcy, and Quinn. All of them are getting their makeup done, sipping champagne, and having a far better time than Margot.

When Anita is done highlighting my cheeks, she moves back to my eyelids and applies black winged liner and false lashes. “You sit like a statue, January.”

I look at my hands. “Thanks. It’s probably because of ballet.”

“Half the girls I work with wriggle more than you. You should be a model.”

I smile. I’m sure Anita is just being nice but the idea of me being a model is crazier than me going to the moon. I get overwhelmed when two people speak to me at once. I can’t imagine going down a runway with hundreds of cameras flashing in my face.

Kurt, my bodyguard, barks out a laugh that makes everyone in the room jump. “…I said, ‘Go fuck yourself, Hardaker!’”

Theodore, my other bodyguard, slaps his thigh. “Fucking asshole. You should have done it again.”

The two of them are tucked away in the corner of the suite, a bottle of Glenfiddich on the clear coffee table in front of them. I’m sure mom wouldn’t like them drinking on the job, but in a few hours, they won’t be my bodyguards anymore.

Margot bends her head toward me. “At least after today, you won’t have to deal with those chucklefucks.”

“Shhh!” I say, suppressing a smile. Kurt and Theodore are nice, but they’re also loud and kind of rude. It’ll be good not to worry about what they’re saying to the girls at ballet anymore. A clock on the wall chimes, announcing midday. There’s less than an hour until the ceremony. My nerves sizzle like strip steak.

“Nervous?” Margot asks.

“A little. But I bet Mr… I mean Zachery, is nervous too.”

Margot scowls. “First of all, who cares? Second of all, you still call him ‘Mr. Parker?’”

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