Married To The Devil's Son

The dress was white. Sienna Cole had always imagined that when she wore white on her wedding day, she would be smiling. She was not smiling. She sat at the edge of her childhood bed, hands folded neatly in her lap, back straight, eyes fixed on the wall across from her. The dress hung on the back of her door like a ghost — ivory silk, fitted, expensive. She hadn't chosen it. It had arrived in a box three days ago with no note, no explanation, just a small card printed with a time and an address. (Seven o'clock. Saturday morning) Today was Saturday. Her best friend Nora Walsh sat cross-legged on the floor beside her feet, red hair piled messily on top of her head, green eyes red-rimmed from crying she was trying very hard to pretend she wasn't doing. Nora had arrived at midnight when Sienna called her. She had not left since. She was holding a cup of cold tea she kept forgetting to drink. "You don't have to do this," Nora said. It was the fourteenth time she had said it. Sienna turned to look at her. "My father's life or my freedom," she said quietly. "Those are the options, Nora." "That's not a choice, Sienna. That's a threat." "I know." "Then fight it. Call someone. There has to be a lawyer, a —" "With what money?" Sienna asked?, and her voice was so calm it made Nora go quiet. "My father borrowed from the Voss family. Do you know what that means?" Nora swallowed hard. Everyone in the city knew what the Voss name meant. "Then come stay with me," Nora whispered. "Just disappear. Don't show up. What are they going to do?" Sienna looked at her really looked at her and Nora saw it in her eyes. "The answer". The thing Sienna already knew and had already made peace with in the long, silent hours of the night. "They will go to my father," Sienna said simply. "And my father will not survive that conversation." The room went very quiet. Nora set down her cold tea. She pressed her lips together hard.Then she stood up crossed to the door, lifted the white dress from its hanger,and brought it to Sienna without another word. Her hands were shaking. Sienna's were not. The car arrived at six fifty-five. Black, Long. The kind of car that didn't have a brand name you could read from the outside — simply expensive in the way that didn't need to announce itself. A man in a dark suit opened the door without speaking. He didn't look at Sienna's face. He looked somewhere past her left ear, professional and blank. Sienna's father, Richard Cole, stood at the front door of the house in his best shirt — the grey one he wore to important meetings. His hair was combed. His eyes were devastated. "Sienna —" he started. "Don't," she said. "I'm sorry. I need you to know that I am so —" "Dad." She stopped walking. Turned to face him fully. Her dark eyes were steady, her voice low, and every word landed carefully. "I need you to be okay. That is all I need from you right now. Be okay. Stay safe. Don't borrow anything from anyone ever again." His face crumpled. She hugged him — quick, tight, real — and then she pulled back before either of them could fall apart. She got into the car. She did not look back at the house. She did not look back at Nora, who was standing on the pavement with her arms wrapped around herself, red hair bright in the grey morning light, watching the car pull away with an expression like she was watching something being taken from the world. Sienna faced forward. Her hands were folded in her lap. Her back was straight. I will not be destroyed by this, she told herself. I will not be destroyed by this.She kept repeating it in her head, like a shield she didn’t fully believe in yet. The car moved through the streets she knew — the narrow ones with the coffee shop where she used to study, the bookstore that stayed open too late, the bridge she crossed every morning on her way to campus. One by one they fell away behind her. She didn't look back at those either. She kept her eyes forward and her breathing steady and she said it over and over in the silence of that expensive, unfamiliar car — I will not be destroyed by this. The city disappeared. And somewhere ahead, at the end of a road she had never travelled, a man she had never met was waiting. Her husband.