Page 40 of Rent a Mob Boss

Is this how I sound when I’m talking to Lillie?

The dress is white, obviously, because my mother would have disowned me if it wasn’t, and it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever worn—more beautiful than the green dress, which I didn’t think was possible. It’s simple. That’s what I wanted. No beading, no train that requires its own zip code. Just silk, fitted through the body, with a neckline that shows a tasteful amount of skin but no more. “Your father is going to lose it,” Mom says, stepping back to look at me. Her eyes are already welling with tears she’s fighting to blink back. “Oh, honey. Look at you.”

“Mom, don’t.”

“I’m not crying,” she insists before sniffling.

“You’re literally crying right now.”

“These are champagne tears. They don’t count.” She fans her face with both hands and takes a breath that shudders on the way in. “My baby is getting married to a man who owns a—what is it he does again? Acquisitions?”

“Something like that.”

“Acquisitions.” She says it like she’s tasting it. “Very fancy. Very mysterious. Your Aunt Linda thinks he’s a spy.”

“He’s not a spy.”

“I told her that. I said, Linda, the man is not a spy, he’s just very private and very rich, and has a lot of security because of the—what was it?”

“High-profile clients.”

“High-profile clients.” She nods, satisfied. “That’s what I told her. She didn’t believe me, but she also thinks the moon landing was staged, so.”

I look at myself in the mirror and think about the things my mother doesn’t know. I think about how she never will, and I feel the weight of that, and the lightness of this dress, and the fact that in approximately thirty minutes I am going to marry a man who runs a criminal empire and loves me like I’m the only clean thing he’s ever touched, and I am at peace with every single part of it.

“Oh, sweetheart.” She presses her forehead against the back of my head, careful not to hurt the veil. “I’ve been waiting for this since you were three years old and told me you were going to marry a dinosaur.”

“He’s not a dinosaur.”

“No. He’s much better-looking.” She straightens up and squares her shoulders. “Let’s go get you married.”

The estate has been transformed.

I don’t know how else to say it. The back lawn—the same lawn where Poptart grazes, Lillie runs, and the security team does their morning sweep—is covered in white. White chairs, white flowers, white fabric draped between the trees, catching the late-afternoon light like sails. There’s an arch at the end of the aisle made of roses and wisteria, cascading down in pale purple and cream. Beyond it, the paddock fence, and beyond that, the tree line, and beyond that, the wall, and somewhere past the wall there are men who watch the road, but in here, right now, it looks like something out of a story.

Lillie is waiting for me at the back door in a white dress with a tulle skirt so enormous she looks like a very small, very aggressive cupcake. She’s holding a basket of rose petals and vibrating.

“Quinn.” She gasps dramatically, eyes perfectly wide. “You look like a princess.”

“So do you, baby.”

“I know!” She does a spin. The tulle takes out a potted plant. Ms. Beaumont catches it without looking up from her clipboard. “I practiced throwing the petals. Watch.” She grabs a fistful and hurls them at the ground with the force of a person throwing a grenade. “See?”

“Maybe a little gentler,” I suggest as I take hold of my bouquet of white roses.

“Daddy said to throw them like I mean it.”

How do I argue with that?

The music starts—something with strings, something that makes my throat close. Lillie takes off down the aisle at a pace that can only be described as aggressive. She throws petals like she’s sowing a field in a windstorm, and the guests laugh, and I watch from behind the door with my hand on my father’s arm, and my heart in my mouth.

Then it’s my turn.

Dad walks me down the aisle, and I don’t see the guests. I don’t see the flowers or the arch, or the chairs. I see Dorian. He’s standing at the end of it in a black suit, and he’s watching me come toward him, and his face is doing something I’ve never seen it do. It’s open. No flat expression, no carefully managed stillness. He looks like a man seeing something he was afraid to believe in, and I watch him press his lips together and blink hard, and I realize, halfway down the aisle, that Dorian Moretti is trying not to cry.

I almost trip. I don’t, because my father is holding me up, but I almost do, and Dorian sees it, and the corner of his mouth moves, and there he is. There’s my guy.

Dad puts my hand in his, and Dorian’s fingers close around mine, and he leans in and says, very quietly, “Delicious.”