17
CORA
I lean against the dressing room wall and watch the bubbles float to the surface of my champagne flute.
A stack of dresses in every imaginable cut, shade, and material are piled on the bench next to me. Looking at it makes my eyes cross. My mother and a pair of her friends are hunting down more things for me to try on from the showroom floor, so I close my eyes and try to absorb the peace and quiet while I can.
It doesn’t last long.
I hear the gaggle of voices drawing closer and I toss the rest of my champagne back. Mom told me I shouldn’t partake when we arrived, so I’ve been drinking a bit every time she’s out of the room. There’s a healthy buzz percolating under my skin now. It’s better than the fear and uncertainty that has been stabbing at me since the moment I woke up in that dank basement with my wrists bound.
“Here we go!” Mom sing-songs, pushing back the curtain so the attendants can cart in another metric fuck-ton of fabric. “More options.”
“Every option,” I correct. “This has to be most of the store.”
A blonde woman Mom introduced as her “dear friend” laughs from the hallway. “If you want the store, you can have it. God knows Alexander can afford the bill.”
My mom chuckles, but it doesn’t reach her eyes. Pink rises in her cheeks.
I take her blush as confirmation that I was right about the four staff members serving us breakfast this morning: Alexander doesn’t have the money for them or any of this. It’s why he needs me to marry Mikhail.
“If Alexander won’t buy you what you want, ask Mikhail,” a dark-haired woman suggests. Her name rhymed with Stella or Stacy or something like that, but her coiffed updo looks like devil’s horns so I’ve been calling her “Satan” in my head.
“That’s true,” the blonde woman agrees. “Mikhail isn’t lacking for anything, either. I can’t believe he hadn’t been snatched up yet.”
Satan elbows Blondie, who seems to realize what she said all at once.
“But obviously, it’s because he was waiting for you,” she adds quickly. “True love is worth waiting for.”
Looks like I’ll be waiting forever, I think miserably.
Still, Ivan’s face flickers in my mind. I see him every time I blink. Haunting me with what I can’t have.
My mother has kept herself busy since the moment we arrived at the store. Now is no different. To avoid looking at me, she occupies herself by hanging each item of clothing from a bar on the wall. But she glances over at her friends. “Mikhail is very patient. And generous. I couldn’t be happier with the match.”
Right on cue, her friends ooh and aww over this make-believe version of Mikhail. “Much better than that awful Pushkin brute—” Satan starts to say before realizing she’s crossed a line and clapping her hands over her mouth.
My mom’s hands go perfectly still over the linen dress she’s holding. She’s so pale I think she might pass out.
Then she quickly spins to me, her gaze fixed somewhere over my shoulder. “Here, Cordelia. Try this on.”
It’s an order. Change the subject. Now.
While the women quickly launch onto the safer ground of floral arrangements and color themes for the ceremony, I try on ten more outfits that I don’t even see. It wouldn’t matter if I did—before I can even attempt to form an opinion, my mom or one of her ridiculous friends makes up their minds for me and then I’m being unzipped and shoved into the next thing.
This is how they break you, I think. They make fighting back and having your own opinion so exhausting that it’s easier to let them have control.
By the end of it, we have a tidy stack of things laid up in the back corner that are Alexander-approved. My mom hands them to Satan and Blondie to take to the front of the store.
“If it had been me, I would have done a lot more damage,” Blondie says with a wink. “There’s always time, though. We’ll come back later and I’ll teach you my ways.”
“Not if I can help it,” I mutter.
They don’t hear me, but I catch my mom’s eye in the mirror and I know she did. She turns away and starts gathering all of the rejected clothes into a pile.
It’s strange to watch her move around me. Both so familiar to me and completely unrecognizable. I’m standing one foot away from her and yet I miss her more than I have in years.
“Mom.” My voice cracks. I know she hears it.
She stiffens but doesn’t turn to me.
“Mom, just… just let me go,” I whisper. “Tell Alexander that I got away. I slipped through an emergency exit and you lost me. I’ll disappear.”
I can’t do any of that. Alexander still has Jorden. If I run, they’ll kill her. It’s why there aren’t guards with us right now. He doesn’t need them.
But it’s a test. What will my mom choose? Will she try to protect her daughter from the horrors headed my way?
Or will she drag me along and toss me into the flames?
Her jaw flexes as she stands tall and turns towards the doorway. She checks to make sure her friends aren’t nearby before she looks over at me. “That isn’t what Alexander wants.”
“Yeah, I know,” I snap. “Because what Alexander wants is insane.”
“Being taken care of by a good man is not insane.”
“Thinking Alexander is a ‘good man’ is, though. He’s a monster!”
She shakes her head. “You’re only saying that because you don’t know what it’s like not to have a safety net. Even when you left, you knew you could always come home.”
“Home?” I spit. “His house was never my home. I can’t be safe with a man who treats me like cattle. Like a bartering chip.”
I can practically see my words bouncing off the shield Alexander has built around her. “He takes care of us, Cordelia. Alexander is doing what is best for us—for both of us. Without him, we’d still be on the streets.”
There isn’t a single part of her that thinks she can take care of herself. Jorden always waxed on about wanting a sugar daddy, but it’s because she wanted a break. Not because she wasn’t capable.
But Alexander has fooled my mom into thinking she can’t do a single thing for herself.
“I’d rather be on the streets than in prison,” I hiss. “That’s what this is for me, Mom. A prison.”
She lifts her chin. “I’m sorry you feel that way.”
I pause, waiting for her to say something else. Waiting for her to show some kind of concern for her only daughter. Even just a tiny little smidge of sympathy.
But there is nothing.
I knew a long time ago that my mother was brainwashed, so I’m not surprised. But that doesn’t make her response any less painful.
Hat the Brat pokes her helmeted head of hair into the dressing room. “They are ringing you gals up. Someone better get out here and pay before I throw a few things for myself on the pile.”
“Right? If I was twenty years younger and twenty pounds lighter, I’d steal all of Cordelia’s clothes for myself!” Mom laughs giddily and turns to me, no sign of our previous conversation on her face at all except for the slightest glimmer in her eyes. “Never forget how lucky you are, darling. It all fades in an instant.”
Go ahead. Fade.
I won’t complain.