I Woke Up at the Altar and Said No to the Mob Heir Who Let Me Die, but He Remembers Too novel · Chapter 1 of 40
Chapter 1: No
Orla wakes in the bride's room twenty minutes before the wedding that ended her first life, says no at the altar in front of three hundred guests and walks out, and on the church steps Cormac tells her to stay away from the Chelsea yard: he remembers too.
The last time I wore this dress, I married the man who later told my kidnappers to keep me.
Now a hairdresser was pushing a pin into my scalp to hold the veil.
"Sorry, hon. Almost done."
I looked at the mirror.
A girl of twenty-four looked back at me in white silk, with my red hair piled up and my mother's pearl drops in my ears.
My hands were warm.
That was the first thing I noticed.
The last thing I remembered was cold so deep my fingers stopped being fingers.
A steel box in the Chelsea yard. The smell of rust and diesel. My own breath freezing on my lips in the dark.
And before that, a phone on speaker, held to my face by a man in a ski mask.
"We've got your wife, Devane. Let's talk numbers."
Then Cormac's voice, tired and flat.
"Keep her."
The click when he hung up.
I had died two days later. I was twenty-nine.
"There," the hairdresser said. "You look like a princess."
The clock over the door said 10:40.
The wedding was at eleven.
I knew this room.
It was the bride's room at St. Columba's in South Boston, with the cracked radiator and the saint's picture in a boat.
I had sat in this chair once before and been so happy I couldn't eat.
Through the wall I could hear the organ warming up and three hundred people finding their seats.
The Devanes had invited everybody. Bookies, aldermen, a priest from every parish in Southie.
My stomach turned over.
I stood up and went to the window.
The hairdresser fussed behind me about my train.
Outside, a line of black cars sat along the curb, and the drivers leaned on their hoods and smoked.
I could still walk out the back.
I could be on the Red Line in four minutes, in a wedding dress, and never come back.
And every one of those people would tell the story wrong.
The rat's daughter ran off. Took the old man's charity and spat on it.
I had been called the rat's daughter since I was fifteen, the year my father's car went off the Neponset bridge.
The Devanes said he'd been talking to the feds.
The old man took me in anyway. People called that generous.
Then he decided his son should marry me, to give me a name.
And his son gave me five years of silence and a phone call.
No.
If I was going, I was going through the front door.
Somebody knocked.
"It's time, Orla," said one of the cousins, a girl in lavender.
I picked up my bouquet.
The church was packed to the back wall.
Every head turned when the doors opened.
I walked down the aisle alone, because my father was dead and the old man couldn't stand anymore.
He sat in the front pew in a wheelchair, with an oxygen tube under his nose.
Philomena Devane sat beside him in gray silk and pearls, watching me.
Uncle Senan was behind them, smiling and dabbing his eyes.
At the altar stood Cormac.
Thirty years old. Tall, broad, black hair cut short, a boxer's crooked nose.
In my first life, he hadn't looked at me once during the whole Mass.
This time he was looking at me.
He was looking at me.
I reached the altar.
The priest smiled and began.
I didn't hear most of it.
I watched Cormac's hands. They were shaking.
"Orla Kilbride," the priest said at last, "do you take Cormac Devane to be your husband?"
The church went quiet.
Somebody's baby fussed in the back.
"No," I said.
The priest blinked.
"I'm sorry, dear?"
"No," I said again, louder. "I don't."
A sound went through the pews.
I slid the engagement ring off my finger.
I walked down the two steps to the front pew and held it out to the old man.
His eyes were wet and confused.
"Thank you for taking me in," I said. "I'm not paying for it with my life."
He took the ring because I put it in his hand.
Philomena rose to her feet.
"Sit down, you ungrateful little..."
"I'm done," I said to her. "I'm done mending your husband's shirts and your son's suits and pouring your tea. Find another girl."
"Your father would be ashamed of you."
"My father," I said, "is the only one in this family who has nothing to be ashamed of."
I turned around.
Three hundred faces stared at me.
I lifted my skirt and walked back up the aisle, alone, the same way I'd come.
Nobody stopped me.
The doors were heavy. I shoved them open with my shoulder and stepped into June sunlight.
The drivers by the cars straightened up and stared.
I was halfway down the church steps when I heard the doors bang behind me.
"Orla."
I didn't turn.
He came down the steps two at a time and stopped one step above me, not touching me.
He was breathing hard.
"Go back inside, Cormac. Your mother needs you."
"Listen to me." His voice was very low. "You can go wherever you want. I won't stop you."
"Good."
"But stay away from the Chelsea yard, Orla. Not ever. Not for any reason."
I went cold from my scalp to my heels.
Nobody in this life had ever taken me to the Chelsea yard.
I turned and looked up at him.
His eyes were red.
He knew.
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