Bound to My Mafia Stepuncle novel · Chapter 4 of 32

Chapter 4: The Fitting

I watched the clip nine times.

Every time, the C caught the light.

My sister had stood in that room while a dying man slept in the garden.

She had taken away the only thing that let him breathe without screaming.

It was Friday.

My mother's deadline for my money was today.

And the final dress fitting was at four o'clock, at the bridal shop in Bryn Mawr.

Corrine had texted me the address three times, in case I forgot to be useful.

I didn't wake Domenic.

I didn't find Angelo.

I put on jeans and my good jacket and drove.

The bridal shop was all white carpet and gold mirrors.

Mom stood on a little round platform in ivory silk while a seamstress knelt at her hem with pins in her mouth.

Two of her realtor friends sat on a velvet couch with champagne.

Corrine was in pale blue, turning in front of the three-way mirror.

The bracelet was on her wrist.

"Oh, look who remembered," Corrine said. "Did you bring the seating chart?"

"No."

"Then why are you here?"

I walked up to the mirror and held out my phone.

"Because I wanted you to see something first."

I pressed play.

The cabinet.

The hand.

The bottle going out and the other one going in.

I froze it on the gold C.

Corrine's face did something I had never seen it do.

It went blank.

Just for a second.

Then her eyes filled up, perfect and shining, the way they had filled up her whole life whenever she needed them to.

"Mom," she said. "Mom, what is she doing?"

"What is that?" Mom stepped down off the platform with pins still in her hem. "Riley, what is that?"

"That's Domenic's medicine cabinet. Yesterday afternoon." I kept my voice level, the way I talk to families in the hallway. "Somebody's been swapping his pain pills for sugar. He's been lying in that bed in agony for two weeks. That's her hand."

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