The Rose He Killed novel Chapter 163

Chapter 149: The Wedding Day

Bella POV

I woke up before my alarm.

Clam

Six o’clock had been the plan. My body decided five-forty-seven was close enough and that was the end of sleep. I lay there in the quiet for a moment, taking stock-heart rate elevated but not panicked, the fear I’d been half-expecting nowhere to be found. Just the still, certain feeling of a day that had been coming for a long time finally arriving.

From down the hall came the sounds of several women who had drunk too much and slept too little attempting to be functional. Something dropped. Someone said ow. Someone else said shhhh in a voice that was louder than whatever it was shushing.

I smiled at the ceiling.

Maya appeared in my doorway approximately minutes later in last night’s makeup and the robe she’d produced from nowhere, her hair in a state that suggested the dancing had ended up being vigorous and prolonged.

“You’re awake,” she said.

“I’ve been awake.”

“How long?”

“Thirteen minutes.”

She came and sat on the edge of the bed and looked at me. “How are you?”

“Good,” I said. And then, because it was Maya: “Actually good and I am not faking it.”

She nodded slowly. “You look calm.”

“I am calm.”

“That’s either very healthy or very suspicious,” she said, and stood up. “Coffee. We need coffee before I can process anything this morning.”

The kitchen was a gentle disaster. Priya was at the counter eating toast with the focused energy of someone refuelling after significant exertion. Adaeze was at the table with both hands around a mug, staring at nothing in the peaceful way of someone whose body was present but whose mind had not yet arrived. Two of my other staff were on the sofa under a blanket sharing a bottle of water.

“Good morning,” I said.

“Is it,” Adaeze said, without inflection.

“Maya’s making coffee,” I said.

Adaeze’s expression shifted fractionally toward something more optimistic. “Okay,” she said. “Okay, I can work with that.”

Chapter 149 The Wedding Day

Priya looked up from her toast. “You look very awake for someone getting married today.”

“I slept well.”

“I did not,” she said. “Maya.

“You’re welcome,” Maya said, from the kitchen, entirely unapologetic.

“I didn’t say thank you.”

“You will eventually.”

Claim

Priya looked at me with the expression of someone who had worked for me for years and understood that the women in my life were not deterrable. “She’s always like this, isn’t she.”

“Always,” I confirmed.

Maya set a coffee in front of me and one in front of Priya and stood back with her own mug looking at the room with the satisfaction of someone surveying something they’d built. “Right,” she said. “Everyone has two hours to be human again. Diana is bringing Tom at nine. Hair and makeup at nine-thirty. We are not rushing, we are not panicking, and nobody is allowed to make the bride cry before the ceremony.”

“What about after?” Adaeze asked.

“After that it is fine,” Maya said. “After I fully encourage it.”

The doorbell rang at eight fifty-eight. I heard Tom before I opened the door – his voice in the corridor, explaining something to Diana with the intensity of someone who had been saving this information for the entire journey and could not wait one more second to deliver it.

I opened the door and he stopped mid-sentence and looked at me and said “Mummy.

I crouched down and he came into my arms and I held him as I pressed my face into his hair and breathed him in.

“Were you good?” I asked.

“I was excellent,” he said, into my shoulder.

“Diana?”

Diana appeared behind him in the doorway, composed as always, a small overnight bag over her shoulder and Tom’s dinosaur backpack in her hand as she looked at me.

“He was excellent,” she confirmed. “He also narrated the entire flight, reorganised the hotel minibar by size, and informed room service that his mother was getting married today and he was the ring bearer.”

“Did they respond well?”

“They sent up a congratulations card,” Diana said. “And extra biscuits.”

Tom looked up at me with enormous pride. “I got biscuits,” he said.

24

Chapter 149 The Wedding Day

+heard.”

Maya appeared behind me, took one look at Diana, and said, “You made it.”

“I said I would,” Diana said.

“I know, i just” Maya stopped then looked at Tom then at Diana. “Right. Come in. There’s coffee and

controlled chaos.”

Claim

Diana stepped inside and looked at the assembled women in various states of recovery and said, with the dry intensity that was entirely her own, “I see the bachelorette was a success.”

“We don’t need your commentary,” Maya said, handing her a coffee.

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