Page 136 of Ruthless Vow
I stare at my reflection.
My breath stutters. My fingers grip the sides of the silk.
This woman in the mirror. She’s not hiding. She’s standing in the spotlight and refusing to apologize for taking up space.
She looks like a bride. She looks like a Donna.
She looks like someone worth choosing.
“That one.” Giada’s voice comes from behind me, thick and low. “That’s the ceremony dress.”
I can’t speak. Just nod. My throat is too tight for words.
The attendant takes it for alterations, and I’m left standing in my slip, skin prickling under the boutique lights. My pulse hammering at the base of my throat. Goosebumps climbing my arms. The mirror still holding the ghost of the woman I just saw.
“Ready for the reception dress?” Giada asks.
I take a breath. “Ready.”
She’s been saving it. I can tell by the way she disappears into the back room, by the way she returns carrying a garment bag like it contains a relic.
She unzips it, revealing the fabric inch by inch.
Champagne gold. Not yellow, not cream. The color of candlelight. Of firelight. Of every fairy tale I stopped believing in when I was twelve years old.
“Try it on,” Giada says.
I do. The fabric slides over my body like it was made for me. Form-fitting through the bodice, flaring at the hips. A slit up onethigh that shows leg without being vulgar. Cap sleeves that leave my shoulders bare.
And the color. God, the color. It catches the boutique lights and throws them back, warm and alive and impossible to ignore.
I turn to the mirror.
And I don’t recognize myself.
Not the way I didn’t recognize myself in the ivory gown. That was becoming someone new. This is becoming someone I forgot I could be. Someone bold. Someone who walks into a room and owns the air she breathes.
“You walked into his study in that burgundy dress,” Giada says, her voice hushed, “and changed everything. You didn’t know it then. But you did.”
I remember that dress. The only nice thing I owned. I wore it because I wanted him to see me, even though I’d never have admitted it. Even though I told myself it was about duty, about family, about saving Elena’s place.
It was never about Elena.
“This is who you are now,” Giada continues. “Not the replacement bride. The woman Dante fell in love with. The Donna.”
My vision blurs. I blink hard, but the tears come anyway, tracking down my cheeks before I can stop them. Involuntary. My body deciding before my brain catches up.
“I don’t know why I’m crying over a dress,” I whisper.
Giada’s hand finds mine, squeezes tight. She doesn’t explain. Doesn’t need to.
I never thought I’d be someone who cried over a dress. I never thought I’d have a sister who looked at me like this.
“Mama would have loved you.”
The words level me.
“She always wanted a sister for me,” Giada continues. Her voice wavers. “I was the only girl. Surrounded by brothers. Sheused to say, ‘One day, Gia, one of them will bring home someone who sees you. Someone who stays.’” She swallows hard. “She would have loved that it was you.”
