“I need your help,” Lora said, as she stood in the middle of the living room in Aaron’s and my house. Aaron had just returned from the Viteris’ residence where Sebastian had announced that there would be co-leadership.
I still hadn’t had the time to hear how that had gone, and Aaron and I also had to decide if we’d keep living at this house or move somewhere else. I’d joked that our perfect living space would be right on the Viteri-Ferrara border, so that half of the rooms belonged to one area and the other half to the other. Even though we’d been working together, our families weren’t ready to accept any kind of a merger, but merely a peace treaty.
“I’ve already sent people to check if they can get to Yvette,” Aaron said.
“The Norwoods know she’s in their area.” Lora wasn’t her usual calm, collected self. Her black hair was in disarray, her eyes red-rimmed.
“Did they contact you?” There was an edge in Aaron’s voice.
“No. I tried to reach out to them. As far as one of my most loyal men was able to find out, they won’t allow us or anyone else into their area, and they don’t seem to care about my sister, which means she should be safe for now.”
“But they’re still going to prevent us from getting to her?”
“Yeah, it would seem so. I believe they’re hoping we’ll go there without their permission so they can hunt us down. We’d be their entertainment.” She curled her lip.
Aaron looked up at me. “Any news from your family about Yvette’s whereabouts?”
Tony was still our best choice for tracking down Aaron’s mother. I checked my phone again to make sure I hadn’t missed any updates, but there wasn’t anything showing up on the screen. “The last update from Tony said Yvette was staying at a hotel.”
“If we can’t go there, can she come to us somehow?” Aaron asked Lora. “Are you sure she wouldn’t answer to a call from you or a message to meet with you? Doesn’t she have some lucid moments too? Or did the Norwoods forbid you from contacting her too?”
“I don’t know.” Lora started to pace. “I don’t think she’d respond to my messages, and I don’t know what the Norwoods would do. They’d probably attempt to intercept our calls or anything we sent, and my sister is sometimes extremely difficult to find.”
“So what they really want is to force us to violate their rules so they can have some fun hunting us down. Does that mean they’ll stop Yvette from coming to us too even if we succeed in luring her out somehow?” I asked.
“I don’t know. There’s a small chance they would let her go if she chose to do so herself, as they already made it clear they aren’t interested in her. They wouldn’t go back on their word. It’s how they function.”
“Yvette joined the Ferlantes because she thought she would get close to Aaron that way, right?” I said, and Lora nodded. “Would she come here if she knew where to find Aaron?”
“If she wanted to find me, she wouldn’t have gone far away from here,” Aaron said.
“Are you sure? What if she’s confused? What if she doesn’t really know where you are?” I looked from Aaron to Lora.
“She used to think of this city as Roberto’s,” Lora said. “It’s possible she believes Aaron is someplace else, especially if someone told her something she found confusing.”
“Okay.” I clasped my hands. “So how do we let her know Aaron’s here?”
“It’ll be difficult,” Lora said. “I could find a way to sneak a message to her, by someone the Norwoods wouldn’t see coming, but I think we can pull that only once, so that means we have to be certain our message would work. And it could take a while for the delivery if my sister gets spooked.”
“Could we send an image of Aaron to her? Maybe with a landmark that she can easily recognize? All we need is for her to leave the Norwoods area and nothing else,” I said.
“I don’t believe that would work.” Lora had a pensive expression on her face. “She confused Aaron with Roberto before.”
“Should I send her a message that I know the truth and wish to see her?” Aaron asked. “Or a voice message, perhaps?”
“She doesn’t know your handwriting or your voice. It’s very likely she’d believe it was a trick from Roberto, and then we’d never get her to come to us.” Lora slumped into one of the chairs, letting out a long sigh, then her body went rigid. “I have an idea.”
“You do?” Aaron asked.
“You two need to throw a wedding.” Lora’s lips spread into a wide smile as she looked at Aaron and me.
“What?” I gaped at her.
“Just think about it. If you announce you’re getting married, the news will travel fast and will be easy to verify. We can make sure the message gets to my sister. She’ll come for Aaron because she’ll know exactly when and where he’ll be.”
I blinked. “How on earth did you come to that idea? Aaron and I...”
“You don’t really have to get married.” Lora waved her hand. “All we need is to lure my sister here. You can say later that you had a costume party. Nothing will matter as long as she’s with us again.”
“I’m not sure that’s such a good idea,” Aaron said. “A wedding, even a fake one, is a huge security risk.”
“No one will dare to attack any of us now. Not yet,” Lora said.
“We don’t want to cause riots among the Viteris and Ferraras now that things are falling back in place.” A lot of people might be okay with us allying to fight against our enemies from time to time, or not starting wars among ourselves, but a wedding and a potential merging of the families would cause unrest again.
“Then tell your men it’s a fake wedding. It doesn’t matter. My sister’s too far away. We should be able to get her as soon as she leaves the Norwoods area, and if she somehow reaches this city without us catching her, she’ll still come to see what’s going on and to check if Aaron’s going to show up,” Lora said. “If you throw a regular party, she might think Aaron won’t come, but she’ll want to see this.”
“I don’t...” I shook my head, not even able to wrap my mind around that.
“I’ll leave you two to discuss this.” She hopped to her feet. “I’m going to find someone who can deliver the invitation to her.”
When she was out of the room, I turned toward Aaron. “Do you think we should really go forward with Lora’s plan?”
“I don’t know,” Aaron said. “If it can lure Yvette out of the Norwoods area, it’s worth a shot.”
“I guess it can’t hurt since it would be fake and all, but...” I hooked my finger into the collar of his shirt and pulled him closer to me. “Are you sure we should do it? Those who aren’t close to us could assume the whole thing’s real, and I don’t know how they’ll react to that.”
Aaron shrugged. “Who cares? It’ll only make them think we’re a force no one can contend with.” A slow smile curved his lips. “Are you getting cold feet before we even announce our fake wedding?” He lowered his head, his mouth brushing mine.
“That’s not funny. We don’t know what kind of repercussions that would have on everything. And yeah, it’s a bit weird to plan a fake wedding.”
“Why? Too much commitment for you? I’d love to be your fake husband.” His arms snaked around my waist. “Will you be my fake wife?”
“Fake yes.” I winked at him, wondering just how much fun it would be to go around the house the whole day and keep saying the word fake to describe pretty much anything. I was sure it would drive everyone crazy and I already liked it.
“I don’t have a ring.”
“Fake ring.”
“Yeah...” He looked around the room, but there wasn’t anything that even resembled a ring or that could serve as one. “I’ll have to buy one.”
“How about you get me a plastic one from a toy store? No, wait. A fluffy one.”
“I’m not sure I know what you’re talking about.”
“Doesn’t matter. I don’t like rings that much anyway.”
“I can still get you one.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “You’re taking this whole fake wedding thing pretty seriously, aren’t you?”
“If we want Yvette to believe us, then we have to make it look as realistic as possible.”
“Do you really think she’s going to come all the way here just to check if I have an engagement ring on?”
“Of course. She’ll hire a detective.” Aaron was doing his best to keep his face expressionless, but amusement sparkled in his eyes.
“You’re teasing me.” I slapped him on the shoulder.
“Yeah, I am.”
I pressed my lips against his and gave him a scorching kiss. “Okay, fine. We’re getting fake married.”
“Stop calling it fake.”
I stuck my tongue out at him. “Never.”