Chapter 3 Talk of marriage.

Kimora

I should have known something was wrong the moment my stepmother served dinner herself. 

Rosalind hadn't lifted a finger in a kitchen since the day she married my father, insisting that was what staff were for, and yet there she was, gliding into the dining room with a tray of my favorite lemon chicken balanced in her manicured hands like she'd suddenly discovered domesticity at fifty-two years old. 

She set the tray down in front of me with a smile so warm it should have set off every alarm bell I owned. 

My sister Bianca, seated across the table, wouldn't meet my eyes, which was the second alarm bell, since Bianca had never once in her life failed to meet my eyes when she was about to enjoy something at my expense. 

“Kimora, darling," Rosalind said, folding her hands beneath her chin like she was posing for a portrait titled Woman About to Ruin Someone's Life. "We need to discuss the wedding."

"Bianca's wedding," I said, spearing a piece of chicken with more force than strictly necessary. "Yes, I'm aware. I already picked out a dress that doesn't make me look like a lavender cupcake, so we're ahead of schedule."

"About that," Rosalind said, and there it was — the tone. The specific, honeyed tone she reserved for moments right before she detonated something. "There's been a small change of plans."

"Define small."

"Vittorio Moretti has requested a different bride."

I set my fork down very slowly, the way you'd set down a weapon in front of someone who might mistake you for a threat. "Right. And Bianca said no, so now we're all going to sit here and pretend that's a tragedy instead of the best news anyone's told me all year?"

"Bianca isn't the one he's requesting a replacement for," my stepmother said, and smiled the way people smile right before they hand you a bill you didn't know you owed. "He's requesting you."

The silence that followed had depth to it, I looked at Bianca, who was suddenly fascinated by the tablecloth. I looked at my father, seated at the head of the table, who had gone very still, And then I looked back at Rosalind, waiting for the punchline, because surely, surely, this had to be a joke, the manner of joke my stepmother liked to make at my expense right before dessert.

"I'm sorry," I said, very calmly,. "Could you repeat that? I think I misheard you, because it almost sounded like you just said the sixty-three-year-old man engaged to my sister wants to marry me instead, and that you're bringing this up over lemon chicken like it's a scheduling conflict."

"He's fifty-eight," Rosalind corrected primly, as though five years made the concept remotely more palatable.

"Oh, well, in that case," I said, spreading my hands wide, "let the wedding bells ring. I was worried for a second there that this was insane, but knowing he's only thirty-three years older than me instead of thirty-eight really does put my mind at ease."

"Kimora—"

"No, genuinely, thank you for clearing that up. I feel so much better." I picked my fork back up, mostly so I'd have something to do with my hands that wasn't reaching across the table. "Let's discuss logistics. Will I be wheeling him down the aisle, or is that considered forward for a first date?"

Bianca, at least, had the decency to make a small, strangled sound that might have been a laugh she was trying very hard to swallow. My father did not find it funny. My father, in fact, appeared to be studying the tablecloth with the same rapt fascination Bianca had shown a moment earlier, which told me everything I needed to know about how much say he'd had in any of this.

"This isn't a joke," Rosalind said, her smile finally slipping at the edges. "This is an enormous honor. The Morettis are one of the most powerful families in the country, and Vittorio has personally requested you."

"He's met me twice," I snipped. "Once at a gala where I spilled wine on his shoes, and once at a funeral where I definitely wasn't wearing anything flattering enough to inspire this level of devotion. What exactly is he basing this enormous honor on? My ability to ruin footwear?"

"He was impressed by you," my stepmother corrected, in the tone of someone explaining something very simple to someone very slow.

"Impressed. Right. That's certainly one word for it." I set my fork down again, harder this time. "Let's talk about the other things people say about him, shall we, since apparently we're being honest tonight. I've heard he's had three fiancées before Bianca, and none of them are exactly rushing to write him thank-you notes. I've heard the last one left the country. I've heard the one before that doesn't leave her house anymore. Are we just going to skip past all of that, or is there a section of this dinner reserved for the part where somebody explains why I should be thrilled to marry a man with a body count of ex-fiancées who all seem to have fled the continent?"

"Those are rumors," Rosalind dismissed, waving a hand like she was swatting away a particularly persistent fly. "Jealous women spreading stories because they couldn't hold his attention."

"Sure," I muttered dryly. "Or maybe they held his attention a little too well and that's exactly the problem."

"Kimora." My father' said, finally, low and warning, the first thing he'd said since Rosalind dropped her little announcement over the lemon chicken. I turned to him immediately, some small, foolish, hopeful part of me already composing the speech where he stood up, said absolutely not, and reminded his wife that neither of his daughters was a chess piece to be traded across a dinner table. That part of me was, as it turned out, wildly optimistic.

"Your stepmother is right," he said instead, not quite meeting my eyes either, apparently a family trait tonight. "This is a significant opportunity for the family. Vittorio's alliance would settle a great deal for us."

"Settle a great deal," I repeated slowly. "You mean the debt."

Guilt flickered across his face, a quick, ugly thing, his jaw tightening and his eyes dropping to the tablecloth a half-second too late to hide it — there and gone so fast I might have written it off as nothing if I hadn’t spent twenty-five years learning exactly what my father looked like when he was ashamed of himself. “That isn't the only consideration."

"But it's a consideration."

He didn't answer, which was, in its own way, an answer.

I looked between the three of them, my stepmother, satisfied and smiling like she'd just closed a very profitable business deal; my sister, silent and guilty and clearly relieved beyond words that this hadn't landed on her instead; my father, unable to look at either of his daughters directly, which told me more about how this decision had actually been made than anything anyone at that table was willing to say out loud. 

And somewhere underneath the sarcasm I'd been throwing around like confetti, something colder and much less funny settled into my chest. 

This wasn't a discussion. It had never been a discussion. It was an announcement, dressed up in my favorite food and my stepmother's best hostess voice, and every single person at this table had already decided how it would end before I'd even sat down.

"No," I said.

Rosalind blinked. "Excuse me?"

"No," I said again, more clearly this time, "I'm not marrying a fifty-eight-year-old man with a graveyard of terrified ex-fiancées because it's convenient for whatever arrangement you've all apparently already made without me. I don't care how significant the opportunity is. I don't care what it settles. The answer is no."

"Kimora, be reasonable—"

"I am being reasonable," I roared, standing up so fast my chair scraped hard against the floor. "I'm being extremely reasonable, considering I just found out over dinner that my own family already sold me to a man I've spoken to twice, and everyone at this table seems to think the appropriate response is passing the potatoes."

Nobody said anything to that. Bianca stared at her plate like it might rescue her. My father stared at the wall behind my head like it had suddenly become fascinating. 

And my stepmother simply watched me with that same maddening, patient smile, the manner of smile that told me, more clearly than any words could have, that my "no" had never actually been a real option in this conversation. 

It had only ever been a formality, something to be endured, politely, before the decision that had already been made got carried out anyway.

I left the dining room without finishing my dinner, my appetite gone along with whatever illusion I'd been holding onto that my family might, occasionally, choose me over convenience. 

Behind me, I heard Rosalind's voice pick back up, light and unbothered, already moving on to some detail about venue availability like I hadn't just stood up from that table. Some detail about spring being a lovely season for weddings. I didn't slow down long enough to hear the rest of it.

I made it exactly as far as the hallway before the anger cracked, before something underneath it — something smaller, and far more frightened than I wanted to admit even to myself — pushed its way up instead. I thought of the rumors again, the ones I'd rattled off so easily at the table like they were punchlines instead of warnings. 

The fiancée who'd left the country. The one who didn't leave her house anymore. I thought about what kind of man earned that particular reputation and still managed to get an entire family to hand him a twenty-five-year-old like she was a line item in a business deal.

Whatever happened next, I decided, standing there in that hallway with my hands shaking at my sides, I was not going to be the next name on that list.

I held out for exactly twenty-four hours.