AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He takes my arm and says nothing else. I can hear him breathing with little grunts of pain. It’s still hurting him to walk, I can tell. He doesn’t show it much on his face though.
He walks me down the aisle. I don’t know anyone in the crowd. Men in suits. Women in dresses. All of them more glamorous than me. I’m guessing I’ll get introduced to them all soon enough.
Ricardo appears at the front when I’m halfway down. He nods at me but doesn’t smile. When I get to him, my father glares at him and for a moment I think it’s going to kick off but then he walks away, leaving us alone with the priest.
“You all right?” Ricardo whispers to me as the music comes to a finish.
“I don’t know if we should do this,” I reply.
“It’s a business transaction,” he says softly into my ear. “No affection. No emotion. Don’t overthink this. You’re doing it to keep safe, that’s all.”
That wasn’t what I meant but I can’t talk to him. The priest is standing there, smiling at us like we’ve been in love for years.
“We’re gathered here today,” he begins. I listen as the words come out but it’s like I’m not really in the room.
I’m floating somewhere up near the ceiling, watching all this, feeling dazed or maybe drugged. When I was fifteen I tried a couple of pills with my friends and that felt a lot like this. Like I’m not in my own body. Turns out you don’t need drugs, you just need to get married with twenty-four hours notice to a man you hardly know. Also, maybe it helps if he’s the father of your unborn child.
I come back down with a jolt when the ring is slipped onto my finger. I hear the words. “With this ring.” I look down and there it is. Confirmation that we’re married.
I look up at Ricardo and there’s a hint of a smile on his face at last. It’s a smile of satisfaction like he’s tricked me into this, like it’s all a game to him. I get a sudden urge to slap him but I manage to resist. It would make no difference. I would still be married to him. It’s the only way to keep me safe.
I’m a prisoner now. It has all been arranged. He told me before we set off for the church. I’m not to leave the house without guards by my side. I’m to get permission to go anywhere I want to go. He’s given me a new cellphone which he says is untraceable except by him so he can find me if I go missing.
I’ve had to take time off work to do this. I have no income. My things have been brought to his house. For all intents and purposes, I’m now his possession.
One month, I think as I slip the ring onto his finger. I can do this for one month.
When he’s told he can kiss me, he grabs me and embraces me so passionately, I forget what my own name is. I melt in his arms as his tongue probes my mouth, his body pressed to mine. All too soon, it’s over and he’s standing there like nothing happened. I feel like I need a cold shower. How can he go from kissing me like that to indifferent? What the hell is wrong with him that he can just turn off his emotions like that?
I tell myself I don’t need to know the answer. I’ve only got to last a month.
In the end, of course, it turns out to be for far less time than I expect.
When the ceremony finishes, we go to his house for the wedding breakfast. My father doesn’t come. I last saw him in the church. I’ve no doubt he’s gone home and I just hope he’ll be able to come to terms with this. I could do with my parents onside while I’m in the most bizarre situation of my life.
Is this a real marriage?
The kiss seemed so real. It didn’t seem like a business transaction. It didn’t seem like a wedding ceremony purely for show. There was something in his kiss, an ownership of me, that I really wished was real. I hoped was real. Now I don’t know what to think. I’m too busy trying to come to terms with who I am now.
I’m officially part of a mafia family. We Fletchers had a distant and ancient link to the Colombos but this is different. I’m having a Bianchi child. I’m married to a Bianchi. For the next month, I am a Bianchi.
You’d think I’d married into royalty by the way people keep coming up to me and giving me money. Couples are dancing around the room and I’m sitting being bathed in banknotes. It’s an odd feeling. Names are said to me but I forget most of them. I’m back floating above the room.
It’s while I’m up here that I hear Ricardo talking to his enforcer. The two of them are at the edge of the room and their conversation coincides with a lull in the music. “A week,” Ricardo is saying. “You’re sure?”
“He’s moved it forward. Wants this over and done with.”
“I’m guessing he’s heard about the wedding then.”
“What do you want me to say?”
“Make it his restaurant near the club. He’ll feel safer on his own turf.”
“You got it.”
The music picks up again, drowning out their voices. Ricardo is walking over to me, sitting down next to me, the smile I saw earlier is broader now. “I have good news,” he says.
“Oh?”
