Submitting To The Devil - The Devil's Snare - Book 2

Chapter Fourteen

Bianca

I have dragged my feet at every opportunity since my eyes flung open at silly o'clock this morning, but the time came that Emma and her men drove me to my death sentence.

I haven't seen Niko since the meal yesterday evening, and I've had to put up with a team of people pruning and making me over to get me ready for this sham of a fucking wedding all morning.

I'm in a foul mood, and I look fucking ridiculous with far too much skin on show for someone who hates being the centre of attention.

The wedding dress in question is a delicate white A-line dress featuring a plunging beaded bodice with spaghetti straps, a tulle skirt underlaid, and a sparking underskirt featuring blood-red tulle scalloping the edge.

I think Anna asked for red because I joked that it was my favourite colour and that if I chose alone, the whole dress would be red. If I were any average human, I would thank her for trying to make this day memorable for me, but I'm not normal, and I'm not a decent person.

"Stupid," I mutter aloud as I stare at myself in the mirror. "I look stupid," I reiterate.

Anna and Emma both look at me with horror. I can see the pair holding back their remarks, which I'm sure mirror something like, at the very least, I should have chosen the dress myself or tried it on when it arrived a few days ago. I can also hear that the time has come and that we must leave within the hour to arrive on time so I'm not late for my own wedding.

It's not that I hate the dress; the dress is beautiful. It's the person inside of it that I hate.

Turning from right to left and back again, I try to find it within myself to enjoy this moment, to give myself even a slither of happiness amid the stupid task ahead.

"You're breathtaking; Niko won't be able to take his eyes off of you," Emma tries to reassure me as she places the veil that weighs down the intricate plaited bun that Anna just finished pinning like a cushion.

"That's what I'm afraid of," I mumble too quietly for Emma to hear.

Thirty minutes later, I'm being helped into the back of one of the cars as I struggle to fit the whole dress in the back seats with me. Eventually, I lean back, closing my eyes as I suffocate in the tulle's heat as Emma and Mass ride up front. Luckily, the ride over to Dimitri's home isn't all that far away, yet it seems to close simultaneously.

My heart thumps to an unusual rhythm as we exit the car into the overly packed front drive, which proves the number of visitors that await me.

"Are you okay?" Emma asks me, her silver dress glittering in the mid-morning sun. She wore a dress similar to a wedding we attended a few months ago, although that one was shorter, and she didn't have a noticeable roundness to her tummy as she does in this one. Perhaps that's why she has a shawl around her arms and why she has it draped over her front.

"I'm good," I lie.

"Come then, we haven't much time to get you out there to Niko," she worries, which is warranted considering we're already thirty minutes past our due.

I walk behind her, holding as much of the dress as I can in my hands to free my feet to move at a regular pace. I'm wearing Ugg slippers, brown ones that certainly do not look like the part of a bride, but in honesty, I hate heels, and no one's going to see my feet below this contraption of material.

Emma leads me into the kitchen, where she turns to me, checking over my face and repining loose tendrils of hair from my face.

"You look beautiful. Mamma would have been so proud of you."