Breaking The President’s Rule: The Devil’s Choir MC

Zendaya The veil felt like a spiderweb across my face. Sticky. Suffocating. Something I should have been able to tear off with one hand, and yet, couldn't. I stared at the mirror in my bedroom and didn't recognize the girl in it. Zendaya Rossi. Twenty-four years old. The Police Chief's youngest daughter, the one who was supposed to be the jewel of the family. She looked like something being prepared for an altar in the old sense of the word. The door opened without a knock. "Still sulking? You'll ruin your face. It took Camille two hours to cover those circles under your eyes." My sister stood in the doorway in a violet silk dress, arms folded, looking at me the way you look at a stain on an expensive rug. "I'm not sulking, Sarah." My voice came out flat. "I'm grieving. There's a difference." She laughed—short, dry, nothing in it. She crossed the room and started adjusting a pin in my hair, pulling harder than she needed to. "You should be thanking me. I'm the one who told Dad you'd be better for Julian's image than I would." A tug. "Call it a wedding gift. You've always been so good at taking things that belong to me." My scalp stung. "It was one kiss. Liam kissed me first, Sarah. I pushed him off. I told you that night, I told you the next morning, I've told you every month for two years—" "And Liam never said a word to back you up, did he?" She met my eyes in the glass. "Funny, that. He got on a plane instead. You assaulted him, you threw yourself at him!" That was the part that still took the air out of me. Not Sarah's face in the pool house doorway. Not the three seconds of silence before she started screaming. It was the phone call four days later—Liam saying I can't get in the middle of this, Zee, my father would kill me—and then nothing. Not only did he take my first kiss, he let me wear the humiliation that should’ve been his. Two years of being the sister who couldn't be trusted around a man. Two years of my father watching me across the dinner table like I was something that needed supervising. "He was a coward," I said quietly. "That doesn't make me a liar." "It makes you alone, baby sis." Sarah stepped back and smoothed her dress. "Which you are. Look around." "Sarah." I turned, finally, to face her instead of her reflection. "You know what he did to me in the library. You saw me after. You saw my wrists." Something moved behind her eyes. For half a second it was there—the sister who used to climb into my bed during thunderstorms. Then it was gone, shuttered, locked. "I saw a girl who wanted attention," she said. "And now she's getting a Senator's wedding. Congratulations, Zee. Honestly? You two deserve each other." She walked out. The door clicked shut with a sound like a lock turning. I stood frozen, staring at it as tears rolled down my cheeks. I pressed a hand over my mouth to keep the sob from escaping, but it broke through anyway—small, helpless, and humiliating. I had wanted her to believe me. I had wanted my sister to look at me and see the pain I had spent so long hiding. Instead, she had looked at me and decided I deserved it. --- Julian came nine minutes later. He didn't knock either. Nobody in this house had knocked on my door in two years. Senator Julian Kane filled the doorway in a charcoal suit, forty-one years old, handsome in the specific way that polls well—strong jaw, good hair, a smile he could turn on and off like a lamp. There were two hundred people downstairs who thought he was the future of this state. "There she is." He shut the door behind him. "The future First Lady of this state." The title made my stomach turn. I glared at him, my hatred burning hotter than the anger I could no longer hide. “I’m not marrying you. I would rather die than become your wife.” He crossed the room without hurrying and stopped behind me. His hands settled on my waist. His thumbs pressed in just above my hipbones, finding the bruises from last Thursday, when I'd locked my bedroom door and he'd made me open it. I went rigid, disgust twisting through me as his breath brushed my ear. Every instinct screamed to pull away from him. “Say that louder,” he murmured. “Go downstairs and say it in front of the cameras. There are four news crews on the lawn. I’ll stand right beside you.” The smugness in his voice made my anger flare. I clenched my fists, refusing to let him see how badly I wanted to tear myself free. “Get off me.” He tightened his hold, and I turned my head just enough to glare at him. "And then I'll explain, very sadly, that my fiancée has been struggling." His grip tightened. "Exhaustion. An episode. The family's known for a while. We've been so worried about her." He straightened my veil with something almost like tenderness. "Your father already signed the paperwork, Zendaya. Thursday. Greenhill has a bed waiting with your name on it, and all it takes is my phone call." I couldn't breathe. "He wouldn't—" Julian stared at me for a beat, then he burst out into laughter. Like I had just told him the funniest joke he’d heard all night. My confidence began to crumble. Julian stepped even closer and gave my cheek two light, almost affectionate pats. “Poor little Zee.” His smile made my stomach twist. “You really still believe your father would choose you over his interests?” I didn’t answer, I couldn’t. Something in my face must have given me away because Julian’s expression softened with satisfaction. “There it is,” he said quietly. “Good girl. You’re smart. That’s what I like about you. Sarah would have cried by now.” He gave my cheek another two gentle pats, as if rewarding a child for finally understanding something obvious. “Ten minutes. The processional’s queued.” Then he walked out, the door shutting behind him. I stood there staring at it, barely breathing, until something in me simply stopped negotiating. For two years, I had told myself to wait. And what had it gotten me? The threat of being confined to a psychiatric facility if I refused—and a forced marriage waiting on the other side. I wasn’t waiting anymore. I tore off the veil and let it fall to the floor. Then I dropped to my knees and dragged the backpack from beneath my bed. Inside were three weeks’ worth of stolen cash, a hoodie, my mother’s bracelet, and a bus schedule I’d memorized so many times I could probably recite it in my sleep. It wasn’t much, but it was everything I had. I crossed to the balcony doors and pulled them open. The old hinges shrieked, but no one downstairs heard them over the string quartet. Rain was falling. I climbed over the railing and grabbed the trellis, bunching my dress in one fist as I lowered myself down. Ivy tore at my arms, and one of the nails caught the back of my right hand. A bright flash of pain shot through me, but I barely noticed it. My foot slipped. I hit the ground hard, rolled, and lay there for half a second, staring up at the balcony I’d just escaped from. Then I got up and ran. Through the roses. Past the pool house where Liam Brooks ruined my life in three seconds. Into the treeline, where the manicured world stopped and the real one started. The dress fought me every step of the way. Soaked through, it must have weighed thirty pounds, catching on every branch as if the woods were working for my father, too. Thorns raked open my arms. Mud sucked at my bare feet, and a hidden root tore the skin from my heel. I fell twice. I got up twice. I didn’t stop. Two miles east through the trees was the river. Beyond it stood the old iron bridge, and past the bridge, the city’s maps practically gave up. That was Devil’s Choir territory. Everyone in the city said the same things about them: that they controlled everything moving through the north corridor, that there were cops who wouldn’t cross that bridge in daylight—not even in a marked car. My father had said the name of their president exactly once at our dinner table, and my father was not a man who feared much. I was counting on that. Behind me, a long way back, a dog started barking. Then another. Floodlights snapped on across the entire east lawn. A moment later, I heard my father’s head of security speaking through a megaphone, calling my name in the same voice I’d known since I was six years old. I ran harder than I had ever run in my life. I burst out from the trees onto the access road, and the bridge was right there—rusted, narrow, and gleaming silver beneath the storm. I was already on it, my bare feet slapping against the wet iron. Forty yards from the far side. Thirty. Twenty. Then a hand closed around the back of my dress.