The Last Time You Chose Her novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Irene First
Marta is shot on the way to her wedding, and her mother orders her sister's scratch stitched first. She leaves with her groom and lets the family think she died, and her mother's answer is that Irene will wear the ring.
The bullet came through the car window ten minutes before I was supposed to marry Pietro Calderara.
I didn't hear it.
I felt a hard shove under my ribs on the right side.
Then my lap was wet, and the white satin of my gown was turning dark red.
"Marta!" Irene screamed. "Marta, look at me!"
My little sister was pressed against the opposite door with her hands over her head.
That morning she had pinned my veil and told me nothing could go wrong today, because she had checked everything herself.
It was her idea to take the river road, to dodge the crowd on the cathedral steps.
It was her idea that I sit on the right, so I could wave at the street.
She took the left.
The guards dragged me out of the car and ran.
I remember the sky going by, very blue, and a man saying "stay with us, Signorina" over and over.
Our family clinic sits behind the Sartorelli bakery on Ferry Street.
They laid me on the steel table and cut the gown off my side.
The doctor pressed both hands down on me and swore.
"Through and through," he said. "She needs blood and a surgeon, now."
The door banged open.
My mother came in still wearing her cathedral hat.
Rosalba Sartorelli has run this family for eleven years, and in that time I have never once seen her run.
She walked.
Everyone in the room stepped back to make her a path.
She stopped beside the table and looked down at me.
I had blood in my hair, and I was shaking so hard my teeth clicked.
I held out my hand.
She looked at it for one second, and then she looked away.
"Irene," she said. "Where is she hurt?"
Irene had followed the guards in.
She sat on a chair by the wall with a tissue pressed to her temple.
"It's nothing, Mamma. It's only glass."
My mother crossed the room.
She took Irene's face in both hands and turned it to the light.
"There's a cut. Doctor, look at this."
"Signora, I need to," the doctor said, and he lifted his hands from my side. Blood ran out between his fingers. "Marta is losing blood fast."
"Irene's face is her whole future," my mother said. "Stitch her first."
"Mamma," I said.
My voice came out small.
"Hush," she said, without turning around. "You're strong, Marta. You have always been the strong one. You can wait."
Nobody moved.
The doctor looked at her, and then at me, and he went to the sink and washed his hands.
He stitched a cut about as long as a fingernail on my sister's forehead, while I lay there and the table turned warm and slippery under my back.
A nurse held gauze against my side.
She wouldn't look at me either.
I counted the ceiling tiles.
Somewhere around forty, the door opened again, and Pietro walked in.
He was still in his wedding suit, with the white flower pinned to the lapel, and he had run the whole way from the church.
He looked at the table.
He looked at the floor under it.
Then he looked at my mother, who was smoothing Irene's hair.
"Whose order was that?" he said.
"Signor Calderara," my mother said. "This is a family matter."
"She was about to be my wife." He had stopped being polite. "Doctor, how long can she wait?"
"Not long," the doctor said quietly.
Pietro came to the head of the table and bent down until his face was level with mine.
He had a white scar through his left eyebrow that I had stared at across a hundred negotiating tables, and he had never once looked at me this closely.
"I have a surgeon twenty minutes from here," he said. "My car is at the door. You choose, Marta. Nobody else."
I turned my head.
My mother was holding my sister's hand.
She still hadn't looked back at me.
"Take me," I said.
My mother's head came up at last.
"If you leave this room," she said, "don't come back to this house."
"All right," I said.
Pietro lifted me, and the table let go of me with a wet sound.
He carried me through the hall between the guards, who stepped aside one by one.
In the back of his car, with my head on his knee, I heard him speak to his driver.
"Whoever sold the road to those men is somebody who knew it was changed this morning," he said, very low. "Somebody inside your house."
"Then let them think I'm dead," I said.
He went still.
"Are you sure?"
"Call her," I said.
He dialed and put the phone on speaker.
"Rosalba," he said. "I'm sorry. She didn't make it."
For five seconds the line was silent.
I heard my mother breathe in once.
"Then the pact doesn't die with her," she said. "Irene will wear the ring."
Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend