Marriage Of Convenience

Chapter 8

Clara Diaz

To me marriage has never symbolised love. At least not in my world.

"My world" I think to myself. As if the other world doesn't coexist with us. As if we don't breathe the same air or reside on the same piece of land.

But the other world, as I like to think, is so different from ours.

Where there is no murder or mayhem.

Where the families actually love themselves and their children.

Where the same children fall in love again and the cycle repeats until they spread love throughout the world.

I spend hours and hours losing myself in reading about that world until I start getting the most dangerous feeling in our world.

Hope.

My reading sessions involve a mandatory dark romance trope which have many stories about a mafia princess like myself arranged to the cold, cruel Capo. The leads fall in love and they live happily ever after with their children and family.

But what really is a happily ever after?

One of them could die any day leaving the other torn.

Maybe they could cheat, lie, manipulate and the whole side they've shown the other is just a façade.

You could never really know.

Ella says that we should never give others that kind of power over us. That love is for fools and we can't afford to be foolish in our world. That there should be no weakness. And love? Love id the biggest weakness of them all.

"You're the wife of the Capo, love." She said. "Their Capo Donna. Make sure they respect you for you. As their queen to their king. As a women it is going to be a challenge, bella. They will take your kindness as your weakness, but you're not weak. Just because you choose to be kind doesn't make you anything other than the powerful, fierce lady you've now are."

Her words ring in my ears as I look at myself in the mirror.

My hair is curled into beautiful waves that almost reach my waist. The makeup crew spent almost two hours for my face which looked almost divine. Exactly like I wanted it.

I went with the natural glam look without any bold shades. My cheekbones were highlighted and my blush looks seductive as much as it looks innocent. My eyes were soft and my lips a few shades darker than my natural one.

And my dress? Oh god my dress. I sigh internally as I smile down at it. It was a ballgown type of dress that looks like it came out from a fairytale. It is a fitted bodice with a full skirt, the dress creates a dramatic and fairy-tale-like silhouette It was worth every dollar in the twenty million dollars the dress has cost.

It took me four hours of the perfect wedding dress search with Ella to find this one and fall in love with it at first sight. Ella said that I was perhaps the only bride who was happy with an arranged mafia marriage.

And perhaps I was.

The mythical butterfly flutters turned into soaring dinosaurs with every passing second. Just at that thought there was a knock at the door and the door was opened revealing two Hernandez brothers.

Vittorio Hernandez and Riccardo Hernandez were rocking the whole black tux look that clung to every muscle of their body with similar bow ties. Whereas Vittorio was holding a box and wearing a usual no nonsense look, Riccardo was grinning ear to ear as he stepped inside.