Cellie's POV
The dress was perfect and I hated it.
I hated it specifically because it fit correctly and the neckline was appropriate and the twenty-five stones on the sleeve were giving my anxious hands something to count and none of those things were problems and yet the woman in the mirror looked like someone who had been assembled to attend a funeral and had not quite managed to hide the guilt underneath the assembly.
Manuel DeLeon was dead.
He was dead and I had been a factor in the sequence of events that produced his death, and whatever version of that I chose to carry, the stone of it was real and permanent and not going to be solved by the correct dress.
A knock.
Dominic.
I stared at him.
He looked at the hallway behind him rather than at me and said: "The car is ready. Demetrio is waiting downstairs."
Then, before I could move, he said: "I owe you an apology."
I waited.
