Getting Back At My Vengeful Billionaire Husband

SOPHIE I’m about to throw up all over my couture wedding dress. I stare at the girl in the mirror and barely recognize her. She has my eyes, my nose, the same small scar above my left brow from when I fell off my bicycle at seven, and yet she feels like a stranger wearing my face like a costume. Her eyes are dead—empty in the way that comes after you’ve already cried everything out, after the grief has settled into something quiet and permanent. Today is supposed to be one of the happiest days of my life. I’ve been told that since I was small enough to sit in my mother’s lap and flip through her wedding album, her fingers smoothing over the glossy pages with something close to reverence. One day, my princess, you’ll fall in love, she’d say. You’ll have a day like this and live happily ever after. And I’d believed her, the way children believe everything they’re told—without questions, without the faintest idea that happiness comes at a cost. The cost of my family’s happiness was my freedom. A team of stylists arrived hours ago to work their magic. They moved around me like I was a mannequin, speaking directly to me only to issue instructions like tilt my chin, lift my arm or the most embarrassing of all, suck it in. I stood where they put me and let them work, and the result of all that effort is, I have to be honest, literal perfection. I look like a work of art. The white couture gown fits me like a second skin, even though I’d never set eyes on it until this morning. The fabric clings and releases in all the right places, structured at the bodice, soft at the hem. The makeup is heavier than I’d have chosen for myself but applied so expertly it looks like I’m wearing nothing but the pink gloss on my lips. My hair has been twisted into a complicated updo, small wisps left to curl at my temples, tickling the sides of my face every time I move. I look like a dream in the middle of a f*****g nightmare. My bedroom door creaks open and my mother steps inside. I avoid her gaze in the mirror, turning to busy myself with removing invisible lint from my gown. It’s been days since I’ve looked my mother in the eye. The last time I did, I was screaming at her until I lost my voice—because she let my father trade me to a monster for the greater good of the family. Her reflection appears beside mine, her appearance so like my own it’s like looking thirty years into my future. Her hair is still raven-black, but instead of making her look young it ages her, too stark against her pale skin, playing up the deep lines under her eyes. Evidence that she hasn’t slept in a while. Now that I think about it, neither have I. “Soph,” she says, and even that one syllable carries the weight of everything she doesn’t know how to say. “Are you ready?” Am I ready? I breathe through the absurdity of it and remind myself she isn’t asking to be cruel. She’s asking because she loves me in her own twisted way, and because there’s nothing else left to ask. I still haven’t officially met my fiancé. Damian Moreau isn’t only famous—he’s notorious. The sole heir of the Moreau empire, a name I’ve heard my father speak with a particular kind of reverence my whole life, the kind reserved for things that are both admired and feared. Damian Moreau is one of the wealthiest men in America, not the kind of wealthy that means nice cars and good restaurants, but the kind that distorts reality, that sits in rooms where decisions are made and leaves with everything he came for. After his father died, he took the business and rebuilt it into an empire, and he didn’t do it cleanly, but rather off the blood and sweat of people who had no real choice and the silence of people who did. He doesn’t forgive. He doesn’t forget. And he’s made no secret of wanting a wife to give him an heir to carry on what he’s built. That’s where I come in. It was only two weeks ago that my father sat my mother and me down and explained what happened. How he’d made the worst possible mistake with his most dangerous associate. I’ll never forget the image of him—my father, who has never once looked small in my entire life—sitting there with his face in his hands, tension clouding his eyes as he admitted what he’d done. A debt so deep that even if he called in every favor, took out every possible loan, sold everything we owned down to the last piece of furniture, it still wouldn’t be enough. When the options dried up, my father looked at me and made a calculation I will never fully forgive him for. Offered me up without a second thought, like settling a tab. I could have said no. But the alternative was my mother, my sisters, or my father’s life paid in something worse than money, and I couldn’t live with any of those outcomes. So I made my choice and I’m standing in it now, in a dress I didn’t pick, for a wedding I didn’t want, about to belong to a man I’ve never met. My mother crosses the room and when she gets close enough to really see my face, her own crumples briefly before she pulls it back together. She rests her hand on my shoulder, warm and familiar, and for a second I almost break. “Oh, my baby,” she says softly, her voice trailing off into everything neither of us has words for. I cover her hand with mine. Her fingers are cold, or maybe mine are. “I’ve made my peace with it,” I tell her, and it’s almost true. I’ve built a sealed room inside myself, put all of this in it, and locked the door. “I’ll be fine, Mum.” My mother swallows hard. “If I could trade places with you, I would.” The words hit me somewhere deep in my chest. The worst part is that I believe her. I really do. She opens her mouth, and I can already see the shape of another attempt forming—another round of words that won’t change a single thing for either of us—when a strong, efficient rap at the door cuts through the room like a knife through silk. My heart seizes. My mother dabs quickly at her eyes, careful not to ruin her mascara, then shakes her head in that dramatic way of hers that tells me she hasn’t quite given up yet. “There has to be something we can do,” she says, more to herself than to me. “There just has to be.” Whoever is on the other side doesn’t wait for us to answer. The door swings open, and a man I’ve come to recognize over the past two weeks as Marcus, Damian’s cousin, fills the frame completely—broad shouldered, impeccably dressed, with the kind of presence that doesn’t ask for a room’s attention so much as simply take it. He doesn’t look like he’s in the mood for dramatics, so I suppose begging for my life is off the table. His gaze moves through the room once, efficient and unimpressed, before settling on me. “Two cars are waiting outside,” he says, his voice low and unhurried. “Mr. Moreau won’t be happy if we’re late.” My mother straightens immediately, grabbing her purse and reaching for my hand in the same motion. “I’ll ride with Sophie,” she tells him. “I’d like to spend the time with her on the way to the chapel.” He looks at her with a frown. “Mrs. Sinclair.” His tone is even, not unkind, but carrying the quiet finality of someone who won’t take no for an answer. “Miss Sinclair rides alone. You and your husband are welcome to follow in the second car.” My mother’s grip tightens on my hand. “That’s not—” “It wasn’t a suggestion.” The words land softly, which somehow makes them worse. My mother closes her mouth. Her hand loosens around mine by degrees, like she’s making herself let go one finger at a time, and I turn to look at her fully for the first time since she walked in—at the lines under her eyes and the careful way she’s holding herself together and the love that has always been there, even when it wasn’t enough, even when it failed me completely. “I’ll be fine,” I tell her again. This time I almost mean it. Marcus leads me out of the room without ceremony, his hand a light but absolute presence at my back, guiding me down the corridor and out through a side entrance where a sleek black Mercedes sits waiting at the curb, its engine running, a driver motionless behind the wheel. He opens the rear door and steps back. “Get in.” I look at the open door for a moment—at the dark interior and the tinted windows and the particular quality of finality that seems to radiate off the whole scene—and then I get in, because there is nothing else to do. The door closes behind me. Soft and certain, like a coffin being sealed. The engine pulls away from the curb. And just like that, I’m on my way to marry the devil.