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"Six months, three days by my reckoning, sir.”
Most of Alex's houses were basically places for fortunate servants to live. She wondered if the butler had spent the last few hours frantically cleaning up after some kind of butler party. It’s what she would have done if she were left to her own devices in a massively cool house that wasn’t hers.
"This is Sophie,” Alex introduced her. “She is my…”
He paused for a moment, and Sophie waited with bated breath to find out what he was going to describe her as. Fuck Toy? Captive? Criminal Lover? So many colorful options existed.
“Wife.”
“Congratulations, sir, and to the both of you.”
Sophie stared at Alex with her jaw dropped.
“Uhm. Excuse me. Since fucking when?”
Alex scowled at her, as if he was less than impressed with her response. The butler, Smithers, more or less evaporated in a cloud of cloth and avoidance.
“We’ve been married since you had your surgery.”
“Excuse me, fucking what? How did I not know that? How did I miss walking down the aisle? How did I miss taking my vows?”
“Remember when you insisted you were fine after the surgery, and I told you there were some forms that needed to be completed, and you insisted on signing all the documents there and then?”
“No.”
“Precisely.”
"Well, that’s not a real marriage, Alex. What the absolute literal complete fuck!?”
She was outraged and shocked, though really she knew she shouldn't have been shocked. This was the sort of clandestine bullshit Alex loved.
"And that reaction is why I didn't mention it earlier. I wanted it to be a surprise.”
“Alex, you dick!”
“Enough, Sophie," he growled. “You already knew you belonged to me. This makes no difference to our lives. It gives us formal and legal protections. It also allowed me to waive the visa issues for re-entry into the country, and it gives you rights to my estate.”
She got it. She was rich now. Like, billionaire rich. That part was actually pretty exciting and cool. The part where she had no idea she was married was much less exciting and cool.
“You didn’t tell Christo I was your wife. Or Indigo.”
“I try not to give my enemies information they don’t already have. Indigo knew. Christo would have if he'd bothered to look it up. Marriages are public record.”
“Maybe I should look up the public records and see what else is going on. Have I had a baby I didn't notice?”
“Enough with the sarcasm,” Alex said. “I’ve told you now. I wanted it to be a more romantic occasion, but then you tried to murder someone and got yourself kidnapped.”
"That's not an excuse for not telling me that we're married. God, Alex. You fucking suck. Did it occur to you that maybe I wanted to be romanced? That maybe I wanted my marriage to mean something when it happened? Or just to fucking know about it? Maybe I didn’t want to find out when your goddamn butler did?”
“I should have told you earlier," he admitted. “I suppose I am too used to keeping my secrets.”
“You think!?”
She was furious.
“Why marry me? Why not just fake the documents?”
“Because I love you and want to spend the rest of my life looking after you.”
“Oh, you are such a huge fucking dick.”
“Not the response I expected to me telling you I love you for the first time.”
“That’s because it should have come before the secret wedding. Seriously. Have you knocked me up too? What the fuck!?”
She was on the verge of throwing a tantrum. She’d never felt so helpless and powerless. Well, she had, but not in this way. He’d taken away the memory of being married. She already didn't know who she was, and now it was as if all the milestones of her life had been stolen from her.
Sophie burst into tears. “I wanted a wedding. Why can’t I have anything?"
Alex let out a sigh and drew her into his arms.
“We can have a wedding, Sophie. You can have the biggest, most fabulous wedding anybody has ever had.”
“We can?” She sniffed and looked up at him. “You promise?”
“I promise. But first, we have matters to attend to. Like your disobedience.”
Her tears, and his comfort only went so far. The revelation of their marriage was obviously of no great significance to Alex. He'd known all along. After a brief hug of comfort, he led her to his bedroom where he made her wait on the bed while he went and cleaned up.
Sophie listened to the water run in the bathroom, and tried to come to terms with all that had happened, and all that was going to happen. She was married. That knowledge filled her with a nervous kind of happiness. She belonged to a billionaire, legally, or at least as legally as anybody living under an assumed identity could be married.
Everything in her life was a lie, but nothing that had happened before she met Alex Roth felt as real as this. She'd never sat nervously in a strange bedroom, waiting for discipline to be meted out by her husband. She’d never done anything besides dream of a future which now seemed pedestrian and boring compared to the reality of her life.
