“No train, no boat, no bicycle.” Oria’s line is so low I barely hear it.
“Just two feet and… I’m sorry. I should have listened to you.”
“… some snacks for the ride.” She’s crying, mumbling something that could be the rest of the Junktown song or the national anthem.
I let her go on, apologizing in my own murmur, but I can’t forgive myself.
“People abandoned their cars back there. Or maybe it was the only parking spot. We used to break the windows with this brick. And then one day the brick was gone.” I tuck the razorblade under my waistband. I can’t conceive of using it on myself right now. Not when there’s the slightest shard of hope.
“Ladder, stairs, and fences riding hard going…” Oria answers.
“And Nico who was so fucking smart. Do you remember how smart that little fucker was?”
“… where no buffalo roam, just big iron beasts.”
“So we had no brick and he said, ‘Just a pebble and enough pressure,’ and he was right. But a few days later, we couldn’t find a pebble. That’s how much they cleaned it out to stop us. Can you believe…”
There’s a circle in a streak of stew. A very different shape from the right angle of the razor blade, but the same geometry.
“With big toothy buckets…”
Crawling on my hands and knees, I reach for it.
It’s her Tiffany ring. The diamond is covered in oily brown sauce, and a lentil is stuck between a prong and the stone… which is perfect, like the woman I gave it to.
“Can you believe,” I say to Oria, but not loud enough for her to hear, “she sent me a pebble.”
I didn’t believe him. That first brickless day, I threw a little piece of broken concrete at the windshield, which did nothing.
Standing by the wall, I put the ring halfway down my forefinger while Oria sings our Junktown song.
“He called me a fucking genius at being an idiot.” I continue a story I didn’t start out loud and push my fist against the corner of the glass, where it’s weakest. “Then he found a real pebble.” I push the stone against the window. Diamond vs. glass. No contest. But nothing happens. “Not concrete. Too many flaws, he said. Cracks inside. Tempered glass is so hard they slide against each other. The rock breaks or absorbs the energy.”
I push harder, all the weight I have left in my body and all the strength I have left in my muscles.
“Come on,” I grunt, fist to glass. “You were right about this, Nico. You knew. You did things I never could.”
Nico was the one who could shatter the window by pushing a pebble into the corner. The pop was silent, and the web of cracks appeared all at once, corner to corner.
“Holy shit!” I shouted back then in Junktown—a bored and angry little shitstain—placing my hands on the curved surface and pushing so the rounded, blue-tinged shards dropped gracefully into the car, making the passenger seat look like an oversalted pretzel.
“Come on!” I grunt in a prison cell, fist to the glass that keeps me. “Just break!”
Every second that goes by is closer to her wedding ceremony, to new cuts on her fingers, to him touching her.
He could be doing it already.
He could be reaching under her dress as she looks away from him the way she looked away from me when I touched her without affection. He could be bending her over the table just to test her the way I did. He could be spanking her just to dominate her the way I did. And she’s being strong. She’s going to fight through it because I didn’t fight hard enough for her.
Tiny cracks grow around the ring.
“Dario?” Oria calls from the hall. “I heard something.”
The net of cracks expands, filling half the pane. It’s enough.
“Thanks, you smart little fuck.”
With a bare foot, I kick the window and it surrenders.
CHAPTER 25
SARAH
Surrounded by armed men, big cars, and women close to me, I am escorted to Precious Blood like fully veiled royalty. I check to see if Timothy is driving this time, and he is. Denise holds my arm so I don’t trip getting in the back seat.
Back when I did what I was told without question, Dario dragged me here. If he did it now, I’d do everything in my power to kill him. Teeth. Nails. Random sharp objects.
But I didn’t know my capabilities then. He was the one who taught me to fight, and now I’m forced to be here all over again. I’m not fighting this time around either, because he taught me that it’s my life to take and mine to make. He wouldn’t have let me believe that that if he knew I’d trade my life for his.
Daddy is dead, so Massimo will present me into marriage. Even through the white veil, he looks tired. Good. He should be up all night figuring out how to kill the man at the other side of this aisle.
We’re set apart from everyone else in the vestibule. He’ll bring me to the center in silence, and the domed ceiling echoes even the lightest whisper. This is our last chance to talk.
“You ready?” Massimo asks.
“Set him free.”
“It’s being done.”
“I want to see a video of Dario smiling and waving or I’ll kill Sergio in his sleep.”
“Good plan.” He gets behind me, as he’s supposed to.
“Massimo,” I hiss over my shoulder.
“Look.” From behind me, he takes my face and forces me to look forward. “I’ll keep my promise or you can kill me in my sleep.”
“I don’t need your permission.”
“My leg knows that. I never should have tried to find you. You want out? Go. Just go. I’m not looking for you next time. Once this shit is over, you and Lucari can both go your own fucking way. Now just walk. Do your part and I’ll do mine.”
He can’t walk forward until I do. That must be the point of it. The bride has to appear willing.
I take a deep breath. The way into the Dome has a twenty-foot arch. One step from the vestibule and I’ll be in the light of hundreds of candles, among a hundred of us—the same people who watched as I was forced into marriage the first time.
I step forward into the stone chamber.
Dario will be free.
Forward on bare feet. A bride’s connection to the earth should be uninterrupted by a sole or heel. Hands at my side. A bride does nothing in command or submission until her husband instructs. When I’m halfway to the center, I can see over the heads of my community.
Sergio’s fidgeting with his black bow tie. Father Martino stands behind a low table designed to hold the ceremonial knife vertical, blade pointing to the center of the dome.
When Sergio looks my way, it’s with a type of appreciation I can’t bear. I turn away under the veil. Though I’m sure Sergio lusts for nothing but power, there’s only one man I want to remember looking at me with desire.
“Hello, little wifeycake,” he whispers when I’m beside him. “You ready to get cut again?”
“Nice of you to ask.”
“Does it hurt?”
“Yes.”
The Dome is so silent, my whisper sounds like a scream in my head. I look down at the bloodstains on the center stone. Some of that is mine. Some is Dario’s. A marriage created in violence that grew into love. This marriage today will be forged in peace, but there will never be love in it.