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Chapter one: Lyse
I should have insisted on lower heels. If I made it to the end of the night without losing my toes, I would call it a success. A warm hand touches my bare back, and I did what I could to suppress the shudder that ran up my spine. “Lyse, love,” my fiancé, Felix Suarez, said, “come meet Dr. and Mrs. Fitzgerald.”
They donated a ton of money to his city comptroller campaign, I thought as he steered me towards a table full of wealthy, elderly people. While planning the engagement party, he had given me an extensive rundown of the guest list, and I painstakingly memorized each one. I fixed my face into a smile before we reached the table. “Myra, Harold,” Felix said in what I liked to think of as his “politician” voice, “I’d like you to meet my fiancée, Lyse Rojas.”
Myra’s eyes widened when she took me in. Harold’s traveled the length of my body and back up, but he hid the smirk that played at the corners of his mouth by forcing himself to frown slightly. I did what I could to keep my face pleasantly arranged. It was the same reaction all night long.
Did Felix not realize what it looked like? Having me on his arm? Felix was a handsome man, to be sure, but he was going on fifty this year, and I was twenty-five. I couldn’t decide whether he was ignoring the looks or if he truly didn’t realize it. “It’s very nice to meet you,” I said cheerfully. “Thank you for coming to celebrate with us.”
It was the same thing that I’d said to dozens of people tonight, and while most people had done their level best to be pleasant in return. Myra Fitzgerald, I could see, was not going to do that. “How old are you, Ms. Rojas?” she asked. Her tone was snide.
I thought Felix would jump in, but he was already chatting to other doners at the table. “I’m twenty-five, ma’am,” I said.
She huffed. “I didn’t imagine that Felix would fall for such a thing.”
She was calling me a gold digger, or worse, and a part of me wanted to lean in and whisper that her old pal Felix had made a deal with my father ten years ago. Back when I was fifteen and gangly and hadn’t caught up with my own looks. They were planning this big wedding before I ever graduated high school; my father had been ready to sign me over on the day that I turned eighteen. It was only Felix’s insistence that we wait that had saved me…for a little while longer, anyway.
I wanted to tell her all of that and watch her eyes go round with the shock and disgust that would surely follow. I wanted the gossip to spread through the ballroom and fall down around both my father’s and Felix’s shoulders like iron weights.
Instead, I just smiled more brightly. The stretch was starting to ache. “Felix has always been so kind,” I said. “It’s no wonder that I fell in love with him.”
Myra scoffed. “I’m sure,” she said without an ounce of the pretend civility that the others had managed.Fucking bitch, I thought.
Before I could think of something to say, dinner was announced by the harried wedding planner that my father hired, and Felix excused us and led me, hand still on my back, to our table. He pulled out my chair and waited for me to sit before he pushed me in.
Across from me, my parents sat side-by-side, looking every bit like a king and his most faithful lapdog. Would I look like that in fifteen years? Cowed and beaten down by years spent with a man whom I didn’t love? It was too depressing to even comprehend.
The waitstaff came around with plates laden with steak, twice-baked potatoes, and steamed vegetables, but the moment I picked up my fork, my father’s eyes were on me, glaring. My stomach twisted and grumbled - with all the preparations this morning, I hadn’t had time to eat — but I dutifully went into “demure” eating mode, which meant mostly pretending to eat so that no one caught me in an “undignified” moment. My mother had taught me at a young age what it meant to be always on display: I could always eat later when no one was around to watch me.
Felix, meanwhile, was chewing a hearty piece of his steak with gusto. “This is delicious, isn’t it, love?” he asked without so much as glancing in my direction.
“It is,” I agreed, and in my voice, I heard my mother. For my father, she was always pleasant and agreeable; she never had a cross moment. In private, I knew how much she sobbed and begged God to visit her with “the cancer” so as to end her suffering sooner.
I managed to finish the steamed vegetables on my plate — they were bland and tasteless — without anyone else glaring at me, and I moved enough of everything else around so that my plate looked finished enough by the time the waiter came for it.
As the plates were being cleared, Felix stood up, friendly politician grin firmly in place. “Ladies and gentleman,” he announced, pitching his voice so that it would reach all corners of the room without needing a microphone.Are politicians taught how to do that?I wondered. There had to be a class or something like that. “I wanted to thank you all for coming to celebrate my upcoming wedding to this wonderful woman.” He looked at me. “Stand up, Lyse, love.”
I pushed myself up and tried not to wince as my shoes tightened painfully across the top of my foot. “Thank you, everyone,” I said and leaned into Felix’s side, the picture of happiness.
Felix beamed at me. “I know Lyse and I aren’t the most traditional couple, but I have always been blown away by this smart, caring, beautiful woman, and I was never more happy than the day that she agreed to be my wife.”
I remembered that day well. Felix and my father went into his office and came out two hours later with the announcement that I would be marrying the politician. There had been no beautiful proposal; Felix hadn’t even spoken to me. I didn’t receive a ring until I was twenty years old, and it was brought by a courier with the instruction that I should wear it from now on.
Felix continued to talk about our phony courtship, mentioning the innocent dates we never went on and how we circled each other for months before making anything official. Like the information on his political constituents and donors, it was information that I also memorized before tonight. The story of our relationship was of utmost importance; Felix couldn’t come across like a predator.
His speech would end with a kiss; I had already been warned. It would be our first, my first, and I had been dreading it since my mother told me about it a week ago. I didn’t have to do anything beyond stand here and not look disgusted, but there was no way to prevent it.
Felix turned to look at me, and my muscles went rigid. His smile hadn’t slipped an inch, but his eyes were dark in a way that I’d never seen before. I had never been the most excited about my upcoming marriage, but I’d also never been afraid of Felix before.
I couldn’t say that anymore. Not when he was looking at me like he wanted to possess me, body and soul.
My eyes slipped closed as he leaned in.Just get through it, I told myself.It’s just a kiss; if a sixteen-year-old can handle it, so can you. I felt his breath brush my face, felt his heat coming closer…and then the world exploded around us.
The door of the ballroom burst open, and the room filled with the sound of gunfire and screams. “Get down!” my younger brother, Matteo, yelled out, and the members of the Rojas family dropped, covering our heads like we’d been taught all of our lives.
I tugged Felix down with me. He let out anoofas he hit the ground. “Stay down,” I hissed at him and pointed towards the exit that was away from the bulk of the noise. “Head that way.”
