Married To The Man Who Ruined Me

The Eyes Do Not Lie

Beatrice's POV

The wedding venue was on Victoria Island, a white building with tall ceilings and glass doors that opened out to a garden. Four hundred people were seated by the time Beatrice stood at the entrance in the dress Folake had chosen for her. Ivory, fitted to the waist, simple at the top, and full at the bottom. Heavy enough that she had to breathe carefully.

She held her bouquet in both hands and fixed her eyes in the center of the room.

She had told herself, for three weeks, that the man she was marrying was a stranger. That she would look at him the way she looked at any business arrangement. With clear eyes and no extra feeling.

She walked down the aisle.

People stood, music played, and someone near the front was already crying, one of those guests who cried at every wedding regardless of who the couple was.

She reached the front. The officiant spoke a few opening words. Then he nodded at her.

She lifted her veil, and the ground seemed to disappear under her feet.

The man standing across from her was tall and lean in a dark suit. His jaw was sharper than she remembered. His hair was cut close. He carried himself differently, straighter, more contained. However, none of that mattered because she was looking at his eyes, and his eyes had not changed at all. They're still dark brown and slightly uneven with a small scar near the left brow from the day he fell out of the mango tree in her father's backyard when they were twelve years old.

The man is no other person than Joel

The name hit her chest like a stone dropped from a height.

Joel Adeyemi. Her best friend from the age of nine until the age of nineteen. The boy who used to read her father's engineering manuals just to have something to talk to her about. The boy who taught her how to ride a bicycle in three days because she refused to give up. The boy whose funeral she attended on a grey Tuesday, had a closed casket because the body was never recovered from the water.

He was dead. She watched them lower an empty casket onto the ground. She cried until her throat hurt and then went home and packed away every photograph she had of them together because looking at them stopped her breathing.

The truth of the matter is that he was not dead.

He was standing four feet in front of her in a suit that probably cost more than her mother's first three surgeries combined, and he was looking at her with absolutely no recognition in those familiar eyes.

The officiant said her name.

She breathed in and smiled.

It was the best performance of her life. She held out her hand and let him take it. His grip was firm, warm, and the same as she remembered, and she stood there holding it while every part of her screamed, but she said nothing. Not a word…not a flicker.

When it was time to say her vows, she said them in a voice that did not waver once.

He said his too. His voice was deeper now and much more controlled. Meanwhile, underneath it, if you listened to it the way she had listened for years, there was still the same careful way he paused before the last word of a sentence. That characteristics of him hasn't changed.

After the ceremony, at the reception, a man appeared at her side. Tall, polished, with a smile that was a fraction too wide and stayed a fraction too long.

"Beatrice." He extended a hand. "I am Simeon Braide. Daniel's CFO. Welcome to the family."

She shook his hand. His grip was too firm, the kind of handshake that wants to establish something.

"Thank you," she said, smiling back with the same fraction of warmth. "I am happy to be here."

They looked at each other for exactly one second longer than necessary.

Then he moved away to talk to someone else.

Beatrice stood with a glass of water in her hand, watching the room, watching Joel across the space as he spoke to his guests, and she thought about everything she now knew and everything she still did not know and what the safest next step was.

She did not rush to a conclusion. She let it settle.

That night, in the car on the way to the residence that would now be her home for the next year, Joel sat beside her in silence. He was looking out the window. She was looking at the road ahead.

"You look calm," he said, without turning.

"I am calm," she answered.

"Most people are not calm on their wedding day."

She turned to look at him. He was still watching the road. "I am not most people," she replied.

He turned then and looked at her for just a moment. Something moved in his eyes, brief and unreadable, before it was gone.

"No," he said quietly. "I do not think you are."

When they arrived at the house, a housekeeper showed Beatrice to her room. It was large and clean and had its own sitting area. On the dressing table was a small card with her name on it, placed there like a welcome gift. She opened it. Inside, in handwriting she did not recognize, were five words: "How much do you know?" She turned the card over, and it was blank. She looked at the door. She looked at the card again. Her heart was hitting her ribs one at a time.