I am being married to a mafia boss. This is not a matter I have much choice in. My hands are very literally tied. After several rounds of standing up and sitting back down on church pews through the pre-wedding service, the small derringer pistol hidden in the back of my dress falls out. The woman who is supposedly my handler to make sure I don't cause problems merely slips the gun back into pce with a smile.

  The mafia boss – my husband-to-be – walks down the central aisle towards the altar. An angry woman whose name I do not know stands up from her pce in the pews and shoots him. She is shot by his bodyguards in return.

  Frankly, I had pnned to shoot the man myself as we were making our vows, but now, seeing him desperately stumbling towards me as he bleeds out, I am moved by something like pity and go to him. I allow him to slip the silver ring with its art deco design and blue gemstone onto my finger and I return the gesture. But then he takes his ring back off and puts it onto my other hand.

  He manages to gasp out his vows before he dies.

  My brothers arrive and a gunfight breaks out. One of my brothers reaches me, and hustles me outside to the waiting car. My hands are no longer tied and my briefly-husband's ring keeps threatening to slide off my finger. I move it onto my thumb where it will stay put.

  I wind up in the driver's seat of the car. I ask my brothers if they would like to stop to pick some oranges from the nearby trees since we won't be able to come back here for a long time, if ever. My absurd question is met with the incredulity it probably deserves.

  My phone begins erupting with incoming messages. It seems that as the mafia boss's widow I have been added to the various chat groups that he was using to manage the organization. It occurs to me that there is power to be found in the position I am now in.