"What kind of insult is this? I've stood in the back of a hundred alliance unions and I've never once seen a family steal the bride's own artist out from under her. Have they no shame before the Families?"
The clock on the wall of the Vitale estate ticked on, each beat too loud in a room gone tense. Two and a half hours until the Caruso party came to fetch me.
The videographer hovered at the edge of it all, weighing his words the way a man weighs them near people who could end him.
"We really need to get the makeup started, Miss Vitale, or there won't be time for the morning-robe photos."
The photographer spoke up too, careful and quiet, the way men grow quiet in this house.
"Do we keep filming?"
I was so furious I almost laughed. My nails bit into my palm.
"Film. Film me. I'm calling Lorenzo Caruso again right now."
He picked up, and it all came out of me in one breath, hurt and rage.
"Lorenzo, my mother paid a hundred thousand in tribute for Ottavia Marchetti. She called in every favor the Vitale name is owed and reserved that honor a full year ahead."
"This is my alliance union. The most important day of my life. Today, the most beautiful woman standing before both Families has to be me. You know what this union means to me."
"Do you know your precious little Gemma has her locked up, refusing to let her come? Tell them to send her over right now, and the union can still go ahead."
For this day, my mother and I had begun a year and a half in advance. My gown was a custom piece a designer had spent six months making by hand. We'd secured an entire photography team to record it. I'd even gone through ten sets of favors, one by one, until they were right.
Lorenzo soothed, slow and easy. Down the line I could almost hear him rub the back of his neck, that soft laugh already forming.
"Okay, okay, baby, don't get worked up. I'll go tell Gemma to hurry, all right?"
My voice cracked.
"No. I said now. The artist has to come now. Do you understand me? Not one more minute."
Lorenzo let out a sigh.
"Baby, be reasonable. She's almost done over here. I'll be quick, all right?"
Something went slack in me, the helpless feeling of a fist that can't punch through a phone.
I hung up. Tears fell in fat drops onto the back of my hand, and I twisted the diamond on my right hand inward, hard, its edge biting my palm.
Gemma was the adopted daughter who had to be indulged, so Lorenzo always made me give way. At Sunday dinner I had to let her be served first. When the cars pulled out, she rode first. And now, at the one union I would ever have, I was supposed to surrender the artist too.
Seven years bound to him, a man I had chosen for myself, and on the most important day of my life, before my closest friends and every made man of my father's house, he was tearing the dignity off my face and grinding it into the floor.
I finally broke and sobbed into Bianca's shoulder. Without a word she reached over and pressed a fresh cup of coffee into my hands.
Francesca and Bianca started crying too, but they held me and comforted me, telling me a bride mustn't cry on the day her Family's honor is on display.
My father, Don Vitale, who had stayed up all night without sleep, heard me and set down the double-happiness cutout he'd been pasting to the door. The whole room seemed to still as he moved.
He came in and calmed me himself.
"Don't cry, tesoro. Your father is here. No one bullies a daughter of mine."
Just then my mother's phone rang.
Ottavia Marchetti's voice came through, a little bewildered.
"So, the thing is, I've finished the girl's face, but they won't let me leave."
"They say since I'm already here, I should do the mother of the house too."
"You're the one who reserved me, signora. The honor you secured covers only one matron's look. Do you want me on hers?"
"No." My mother said it before she'd even thought.
"Ottavia, please. Come to the address I gave you for the Vitale house, and hurry. You owe no work to anyone outside this Family."
"Understood." Ottavia gave the short reply, but she didn't hang up. She left the line open.
There was a stir on the other end, and Gemma's soft voice came through. I could picture the hand pressed flat to her chest, the tears arriving a half-second too soon.
"Lorenzo, I'm fine, really. Ottavia can go do Adriana's first."
"But your mother watched me grow up, and she cares so much about this union. She only wanted her face done so she'd look worthy standing before both Families."
She must have been on the line with Lorenzo.
Before I could say a single word, the artist's line went dead.
