The CEO's Reluctant Bride

Chapter Four: The Day She Wore White

Six weeks was both too long and not long enough.

Too long because Adaeze had to live inside the waiting had to wake up every morning knowing what was coming, had to sit across from her father at dinner and pretend the silence between them was normal, had to answer her friends' questions about why she suddenly looked like someone carrying something heavy in her chest.

Not long enough because six weeks passed the way all dreaded things pass faster than they should, faster than felt fair, until suddenly it was the morning and her mother was at her bedroom door at five-thirty AM with red eyes and a cup of tea she had no appetite for.

She had passed her cardiovascular exam.

Seventy-eight percent.

She had sat in the examination hall three weeks ago, pen moving across paper, and thought whatever else happens, whatever the next months look like, this is mine. This grade. This knowledge. This is something no contract can touch.

She held onto that thought now.

Standing in front of the full-length mirror in her childhood bedroom, wearing a dress that had not been her choice.

It was beautiful. She could admit that honestly, even through everything.

Ivory silk, fitted at the bodice, falling in clean elegant lines to the floor. No excessive beading, no dramatic train just precise, quiet luxury. The kind of dress that said money without shouting it. A single strand of pearls at her throat. Her hair pinned up with a few loose pieces framing her face.

Damien's stylist had sent it three weeks ago, along with a note.

She had read the note once. Put it away. Not thought about it again.

Until now.

She retrieved it from her bedside drawer.

Miss Okonkwo — I was given no specific instructions regarding the dress beyond your measurements. I chose based on what I thought suited you rather than what suited the occasion. I hope that was the right choice. K.

She had no idea who K was.

But K had chosen well.

She folded the note. Put it back.

"Ada." Her mother appeared in the mirror behind her. Ngozi Okonkwo, in her burgundy aso-oke, eyes already glistening. "You look" her voice broke immediately.

"Mama, please don't cry or I will also cry and then my face will be a disaster."

Her mother laughed through the tears, pressed a hand to her mouth.

"You look like my mother," Ngozi said softly. "The way she looked on her wedding day. Beautiful and terrified and completely determined not to show it."

Adaeze looked at herself in the mirror.

Terrified. Yes.

Determined not to show it. Also yes.

She turned from the mirror.

"Let's go," she said.

The wedding was small.

That had been one of her conditions one she had added in a follow-up email to Damien's lawyers two weeks after the meeting in his office, because she had thought of it on the drive home and hadn't wanted to forget.

No large ceremony. No spectacle. No more than forty guests. This is a legal arrangement, not a celebration.

His lawyers had responded within the hour.

Mr. Blackwood agrees to the guest limitation. He requests only that the ceremony be conducted with appropriate dignity.

She had stared at the word dignity for a moment.

Then typed back: Naturally.

So it was forty guests in a small, beautiful hall on Victoria Island. White flowers everywhere — she hadn't chosen those but she didn't hate them. Soft music from a string quartet she also hadn't chosen. Forty people she mostly didn't know, with the exception of her immediate family, her two closest friends from medical school Chisom and Bimpe who sat in the third row looking simultaneously supportive and completely overwhelmed.

Chisom had cried when Adaeze told her.

Bimpe had asked seventeen questions in rapid succession.

They had both promised to be there.

They were both there.

Adaeze stood at the entrance of the hall with her father's arm in hers and felt the particular unreality of the moment the way everything looked slightly too sharp and too slow at the same time, like a dream the brain was trying to convince itself was real.

Her father's arm was trembling slightly.

She noticed that.

She said nothing about it.

The music changed.

The doors opened.

And Adaeze Okonkwo walked toward the man waiting at the end of the aisle.

Damien heard the doors open.

He turned.

And something happened in his chest that he had no ready category for.

She walked slowly, deliberately, her chin lifted at the particular angle he had already filed away as distinctly hers the angle that said I am here on my own terms even when I am not. Her eyes moved down the aisle without rushing, taking everything in, and when they found him they stayed there, steady and unblinking, the same way they had been steady and unblinking across his desk six weeks ago.

She looked extraordinary.

He had known the dress would suit her he had told his stylist nothing specific because he had no specific instructions to give, only the memory of a woman in a burgundy dress who stood when everyone else sat, and some instinct that she would know how to wear whatever she was given.

He had been right.

She reached him.

Her father placed her hand in his with the careful movements of a man performing an action he couldn't quite believe he was performing.

Her fingers were cool.

His were he noticed this with mild surprise not entirely steady.

The officiant began to speak.

Adaeze kept her eyes forward, on the officiant, through the opening words, through the brief reading, through the moment when the words do you take this man hung in the air between them.

"I do," she said.

Her voice was clear and even.

No tremor. No hesitation.

He watched her profile while she watched the officiant.

"And do you, Damien Reece Blackwood, take this woman"

"I do."

The words came out of him with more certainty than he expected.

He wasn't sure what to do with that.

The rings came next.

His lawyers had handled the rings. Simple, precise, appropriate. A diamond that was neither ostentatious nor understated on her finger, a plain platinum band on his.

He slid her ring on.

Her fingers were still cool.

She slid his on.

Her hands were completely steady now.

You may kiss the bride.

Silence.

Damien looked at her for the first time fully since she had reached him at the altar. She was already looking at him. Those calm dark eyes, the faintest tension at the corners of her mouth, something in her expression that said I know this part is coming and I have already decided how I feel about it.

He leaned forward.

Pressed his lips to her cheek.

Brief. Appropriate. Respectful.

He felt her exhale very quietly.

The room applauded.

He straightened.

She turned to face their guests with a smile that was composed and gracious and gave absolutely nothing away.

He had shaken hands with diplomats who were less composed.

The reception was two hours.

She had negotiated that too no more than two hours, I have a clinical placement Monday morning and so at exactly the two hour mark, Adaeze set down her glass of water, touched her mother's hand across the table, kissed Chisom and Bimpe on their cheeks, and stood.

Damien was beside her before she had fully risen. She wasn't sure when he had moved.

"Ready?" he asked quietly.

The word ready felt enormous and wrong in her chest.

"Yes," she said.

They said their goodbyes. Her mother held her for a long time and whispered something in Igbo against her hair a prayer, an apology, a love, she wasn't sure which or if it was all three.

She held her mother back.

Just for a moment.

Then she let go.

The drive to his house her house now, she supposed, their house, the language of it was all wrong took forty minutes through Lagos evening traffic.

They sat in the back of the car in silence.

Not uncomfortable silence. Not comfortable either. Just the particular silence of two people who have run out of negotiating language and haven't yet found ordinary language to replace it with.

She watched the city move past the window.

He looked at his phone twice. Put it away both times without doing anything with it.

Eventually she said, without turning from the window:

"Your stylist."

"Mm."

"The note she sent with the dress. She said she chose based on what suited me, not what suited the occasion."

A pause. "Yes."

"Did you tell her to write that?"

Longer pause.

"I told her," he said carefully, "that the dress was for a woman who would notice the difference."

Adaeze turned from the window and looked at him.

He was looking at his phone again. Or pretending to.

She turned back to the window.

Something small and complicated moved through her chest.

She did not examine it.

The car turned through tall gates, up a long driveway lined with lights, and stopped before a house that was she had expected large, she had braced for large even larger than she had braced for.

The driver opened her door.

She stepped out.

Stood in the warm Lagos night and looked up at the house that was now, contractually and legally, also hers.

Damien came to stand beside her.

"The east wing is yours," he said. "Your things were moved in this morning. If anything is missing or wrong, tell the housekeeper her name is Mama Titi, she's been with me six years and she runs the house. If you need anything she can't provide, tell me."

Professional. Precise. Exactly as agreed.

"Thank you," she said.

They walked inside.

The interior was all clean lines and dark wood and carefully chosen light beautiful in the way that expensive things were beautiful, but quiet. Very quiet. The kind of house that had never had noise in it that wasn't intentional.

Mama Titi appeared in the hallway a round, warm-faced woman in her fifties who looked at Adaeze with an expression of genuine welcome that was so unexpectedly human in this precise, controlled space that Adaeze almost reached for it like water.

"Welcome, madam," Mama Titi said, and her voice was the most normal thing Adaeze had heard all day.

"Thank you," Adaeze said. And meant it.

Mama Titi showed her to the east wing.

Large bedroom. Private bathroom. A sitting area with bookshelves already partially filled she moved closer and saw that someone had placed medical textbooks on the second shelf. Arranged carefully. Spines outward.

She stood very still and looked at those books.

She hadn't mentioned medical books to anyone.

She turned slowly and Mama Titi was already gone and the room was quiet and outside the window the Lagos night spread in every direction and somewhere on the other side of this very large house Damien Blackwood was in his own wing doing whatever controlled, unreadable men did at the end of days like this one.

Adaeze sat on the edge of the bed.

Reached into her bag.

Pulled out her phone.

There was a message from Chisom: You were so brave today. I'm so proud of you. Call me when you can. I love you.

There was a message from Bimpe: Okay but he is FINE Ada. I'm just saying. As your friend I am obligated to tell you the truth.

There was a message from an unknown number: The wifi password is BlackwoodG32. The kitchen is fully stocked. Mama Titi leaves at ten but her number is on the refrigerator if you need anything overnight. Sleep well.

She stared at the last message for a long time.

Then she saved the number.

Damien, she typed as the contact name.

Put her phone down.

Looked at the medical books on the shelf.

Lay back on the bed still in her wedding dress, staring at the ceiling of her new room in her new house in her new life, and thought about a man who told his stylist to choose a dress for a woman who would notice the difference.

And put medical books on a shelf without being asked.

And sent a wifi password at the end of a wedding night to make sure she was comfortable.

She thought about all of that.

Non negotiable, she told herself firmly. Remember the contract. Remember the plan. Two years. Clean exit. Back to your real life.

She believed herself.

Mostly.

She got up. Changed out of the dress. Hung it carefully in the wardrobe.

Opened her anatomy textbook.

Clinical placement. Monday morning.

Life went on.

It always went on.

In the west wing, Damien sat at the edge of his own bed in the dark.

He had not changed yet.

He was still in the suit.

He looked at his phone.

Her contact name in his phone was: Adaeze East Wing.

He stared at that for a moment.

Then he deleted "East Wing."

Just Adaeze.

He wasn't sure why.

He told himself it didn't matter.

He almost believed it.