Chapter Four: After the Vows
1164 Words
Gabriel took her hand as if she might slip away and guided her out of the church with the same smooth, sure motion he had used all day.
“Congratulations, Mrs. Gabriel,” he said with a slow smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes.
Isabella stopped, the weight of the name sitting heavy on her tongue. She turned to face him, every muscle suddenly alert.
“I have a question,” she said.
He c****d his head. “Ask.”
She forced her voice steady. “Are you, by any chance related to the CEO? Sebastián Álvarez?” The surname rolled off her lips like an accusation.
Gabriel’s throat cleared, quick and practiced. For a heartbeat his face tightened, then smoothed. “I get asked that a lot,” he said. “No. No connection. Nothing attached to him.”
She let out a breath that she didn’t know she’d been holding.
“Do you hate him that much?” he asked after a moment.
“Yes,” she answered, blunt and small. The word surprised her with how natural it felt.
He blinked. “But how can you hate a man you’ve never met?”
She gave him the answer she’d carried for weeks. “Because everyone talks about him. They say he’s proud, cold—like a puffy, untouchable man with the world at his feet. They call him ruthless. Cruel. If anyone deserved an arrogant match, it would be girls who run away for nothing.” She laughed then, bitter and incredulous. “Imagine leaving a good man like you for that.”
He made a small sound, half a cough, half a laugh. Her description grew heated—she painted the CEO in broad strokes: the sharp suits, the steel eyes, the way people wilted under his name. As she spoke, Gabriel’s attention flickered strangely; he shifted beside her, the light catching at angles of his face she had not noticed before.
“Enough,” he said finally, and for the first time his voice held an edge. “We should get some rest.”
Then he took out his phone.
She watched him speak.
“Boss, where are you? You haven’t been picking up.” A faint voice answered at the other end; she caught only bits as he lowered the speaker. She heard, clear as day, the humor in the other voice, someone teasing him for not answering—then Gabriel said, “Well, I’m a married man now. I want a place for me and my wife. Something nice.” His tone was casual, almost playful. Then he ended the call.
Isabella’s fingers dug into the thin cloth of her dress. “Are you… joking?” she asked. She rummaged in her backpack and pulled out a small, folded bundle of notes. It was all she had saved—an amount that felt like a fortune to her and a pitiful sum to someone else.
“Here,” she said, thrusting it forward. “This is all I have.”
Gabriel looked at the little pile. Then he laughed, sharp, surprised, not unkind.
“Seriously? 10 dollars? That’s all you have?” He let the laugh hang there, his expression incredulous. “Who survives on this?”
She reddened. “Well, coming from a cab driver, I’m shocked,” she shot back before she could stop herself.
Something in that jab hit. His jaw tightened for a breath, then he rearranged his face into something calmer. “I’m joking,” he said quickly. “I barely have enough either. But—” His tone shifted, practical. “We’ll put the money together. We’ll find a decent place. Don’t worry.”
He slipped the notes into his pocket as if he had accepted them as a joke between them. The gesture felt both intimate and transactional.
Isabella kept stealing looks at him as he walked around to the driver’s side, testing a new image in her head—brave, irritating, strangely protective.
“Hi,” he said as he slid into the seat. “If you keep staring, at least do it properly, I'm your husband now.”
She stammered, heat flooding her face. “No way. I wasn’t staring.” She laughed, the sound small and embarrassed. “You’re not my kind of man.”
He gave her that almost-smile again, the one that looked both amused and a touch dangerous. “Is that a declaration or a threat?” he teased.
She crossed her arms like a child demanding respect. “Declaration.”
He started the engine. The car moved away from the church and into the town, lights blinking by in slow procession. Isabella watched the skyline and tried to stitch together the impossible: the day's events, the paper with her name on it, the man who said his surname and laughed about her small stack of cash.
They drove in silence for a while. The road led out of the old square and up toward a stretch where the streetlights were newer and the houses bigger. Isabella forced herself not to imagine mansions or velvet curtains, she knew better. But the way Gabriel handled the wheel, the steadiness of his movements, the calm certainty, those things built stories in her head against her will.
She tried to push her confusion away by watching him—really watching. He had the hands of someone who was used to having things done for him; the cuff of his shirt was neat, his shoes were polished, and there was a small glint at his wrist where she could have sworn there was a gold watch. He noticed her glance and casually tucked his hand away.
Isabella’s mouth went dry. A small, ridiculous, furious thought rose in her, how dare he smile like that when she had nothing to give but hope and a few crumpled bills.
As they turned a corner, a flash of metal caught her eye—an embossed cufflink, barely visible as his sleeve shifted. The symbol stamped into it was tiny but familiar in the way that a memory is familiar before you name it: a crest she had seen once in a magazine her cousin had brought home. A crest rumoured to belong to the Álvarez family.
Her breath hitched. She forced her gaze back to the street, but her fingers tightened around the seat as if trying to hold herself in place.
He glanced at her, and for the first time since the vows, his expression shifted—not amusement, not boredom, but something almost like curiosity. “You look like the world has just flipped,” he said softly.
Isabella swallowed. The name on the register in the church burned behind her eyes. The cufflink glimmered in her mind like a key she couldn’t yet fit into a lock.
“Just—tired,” she said, though fatigue alone did not explain the cold prickle running down her spine.
- Writer
