Page 1 of Stolen By the Mafia King
1
JESSA
I really think at your wedding rehearsal dinner there should be one person who loves you.
Doesn’t have to be more than one, I’m not greedy. But as I look around the table, there isn’t anyone who cares about me, never mind love. Surely impending nuptials should not be so entirely devoid of affection, even for a mafia princess?
The whole thing is bleak. The private dining room in an expensive London hotel is very old-world money. Shiny brown wood, red velvet, paintings of horses. I’d suggest updating it, if they asked for my professional opinion. Keep the dark luxury, since that’s their brand, but simplify. Get rid of the judgey stag head staring down and the curtains with a busy pattern that is giving me a headache. Or maybe it’s my nerves.
There’s subtle and tasteful piano music and the plates are warm. The food is probably identical to what rich people ate in the 1890s. Same date my fiancé wishes he had been born.
David Bree-Fogg has a thin, gaunt face, a spindly physique, neatly combed dark blond hair, and wears a black double-breasted suit with a spotted scarlet cravat. He’s like if a Chucky Doll was haunted by a Victorian man and stretched until he was six foot tall. And I’m supposed to be marrying him.
I have a white dress on and everything. Two white dresses for a wedding seems excessive, but the symbolism isn’t lost on me. I am a virgin sacrifice to my brother’s greed and stupidity. This colourless dress is slinky and evening-ish, clinging to my curves, whereas there’s a stiff, corseted meringue lined up for tomorrow. An engagement ring is on my finger, too. It’s so “tastefully” modest, from a distance you’d think there was no stone in it at all, just a plain band.
Tonight is for our two families to have dinner together and get to know each other. What a joke. We’ve already done the walk through at the church, complete with formal group photographs with false smiles for posterity. But despite us now eating the main course, there’s little more conversation than dusty comments about the food and weather. This marriage has nothing to do with the people involved. It is a financial and power transaction.
My fiancé raises his hand and clicks his fingers. One of the servers comes running. “More wine. And replace my fiancée’s glass. There’s a smear on it.”
“Of course, sir.” The waiter, in his late teens I’d guess, only a few years younger than my imperious fiancé, doesn’t even justify a turn of David Bree-Fogg’s head.
And though there is nothing wrong with my glass—looks perfectly clean to me—I murmur, “Thank you,” and meet the boy’s eyes with a tiny smile as he removes it. I stab a pile of French beans with my fork with more violence than necessary and they squish like overcooked watery green jelly. Gross.
At midnight I turn twenty-one and inherit a small fortune from my dead parents. Half of their ill-gotten mafia funds. My brother, Colin, thinks I don’t know what happened to his half.
Ha.
I might be innocent in one way, but I’m not naive about his gambling debt. And my wannabe-mobster brother has a plan to pay David back: me.
Or rather, my inheritance, via marriage. He assumes that since he’s my guardian, and I’ve had no control over my life for twenty-one years minus one day, that I’ll be the banknote to settle what he owes David Bree-Fogg.
At first I argued. He lost the argument but wouldn’t concede. Then he locked me in the house. I still argued. Then he hit me, and I realised he wasn’t my big funny brother anymore. Finally, I pretended to accept his decree like a dutiful sister should.
He’s the only family I have and he has traded me in for gambling chips.
But he doesn’t know my plan.
“You really shouldn’t be so familiar with the staff, Jessica. You’ll give the boy ideas,” David Bree-Fogg says, looking down his nose at me.
Jessa. And accurate ideas like, I’m not posh and rude? I bite my lip. I don’t correct him, because none of it matters. The only reason I’ve acquiesced to this marriage is that tonight I am gettingout.
“You’ll be my wife tomorrow,” David continues. “Everything you do and say will be a reflection of my taste and judgement.”
I just have to hold on until five past eight. Then escape. Freedom. A waiting black cab taxi will have a bag containing my new identity. A ride to the airport, and when Colin’s guardianship is over and control of my finances flips to me I’ll be on my way to Australia. A country where I know no one, on the other side of the world. It cannot be any lonelier than I am now.
I’ll start a new degree there with a new name—no point in crying that I won’t graduate after over two years of study, there’s no way David would have allowed me to finish—and launch an interior design business. I’ll spend my life creating cosy, pretty, practical spaces. And even if it’s a disaster, it will be on my terms. I won’t have David Bree-Fogg telling me off for being polite to a kid who got shouted at earlier for bringing the wine two degrees too cold.
“What we do in private is different,” David adds, grabbing my thigh under the table.
Grabs. Like my leg is a shopping bag. He’s bought me and he’d delight in grinding me down in public and spitting on me at home. I’m nothing but a fleshy bank balance to David.
To either side, there is the gentle clink of silver knives and forks on bone china plates.
I look up into David’s face and what I see there… My chest threatens to explode with anger even as disgust slides across my skin. I will never marry this man. He revolts me in every particular.
There’s a bang and everyone’s heads snap up to find Grant Lambeth strolling into the room, the door swinging on its hinges where it has splintered from the force of him slamming it open against the wall.
His titanium eyes glitter furiously as he takes in the scene, perusing us in a leisurely way like we’re the statues we’ve become at this shocking intrusion.
