How I became the billionaire’s surrogate

Chapter Eleven.

Aria didn't wear a white dress on her wedding day.

The family heirloom dress that Morelli's grandmother had passed down, the kind that was kept in a cedar chest and required three people to button was offered to her by Elena, but she admired it and then calmly declined it in a firm manner. She went with a dress she had originally conceived in a fashion school application sketch in a margin, and then a seamstress in the Garment District who works at fair prices and asks no questions turned it into the real thing. Silky champagne. A combination of a structured and fluid one. A neckline that is very simple and sophisticated, without the slightest attempt to be something else. On her wedding day in the morning when she looked in the mirror she saw the woman reflected, and that sufficed for her.

The wedding took place at the Morelli mansion. There were one hundred guests, family and friends, the two old-money worlds' social architecture were set up in the garden amongst the three generation roses. Elena was sobbing Marco who was squeezing her hand, obviously unconsciously but had the same effect as if he had been doing it for years. Adrian was at the end of the aisle in a dark suit. He was not smiling since he never smiled at ceremonies; however, his face was full of joy when he saw her coming to him, which was so pure and disengaged that even the thought of Aria, who was half way down the aisle, stopped them both from breathing.

He was looking at her the same way people look at the objects they are very scared of losing.

She set that information aside. She was not sure what to do with it yet. The vows were quite typical the civil wedding they had both agreed upon, both formal and impersonal. When the minister asked Adrian to put the ring on her finger, his hands were so steady that she even thought: why not, of course they are. He has rehearsed this, like everything else. He has made himself steady by sheer, grinding will. His thumb briefly pressed her knuckle while he slid the ring on her finger. It may have been an accident. She almost certainly thought it was not. The reception was when Christiana's present was delivered. It came to Aria courtesy of a server who looked at her as if puzzled about the person who gave him the gift,ma tiny, chicly wrapped box with a card in Aria's name in a handwriting she didn't recognize. She decided to open it during the toasts at the table while Adrian was standing and answering a question from his father's business partner. What was inside the box was a single photograph. Aria. It was taken from a distance, through a long lens. She was outside the storage facility in Greenpoint. Written on the back, in the same handwriting unknown to her: Have a great wedding night. Enjoy it to the fullest. They hardly ever last. Aria put down the box and set her champagne glass which was sparkling water in fact,right in front of it so that any passersby would see only a drink and a smile. It was beating so hard that she was afraid her heart would come out of her throat. She kept breathing in and out to calm herself down.

Someone had been observing her. In fact, since even before her engagement. The photo implied the person was aware of the storage unit or, at the very least, that she went to a place where she had not told anyone. It was a threat of sorts. However, it was also an error. If these people were keen on turning the contents of the safe against her, they would have simply stolen it. They had no idea what was inside. After this, she put the box into her bag. Her next smile was directed at the person who was toasting her health. She did not speak to Adrian about it. Not yet. First, she had to figure out who was the watcher and for what purpose before she could decide what to equip him with.

They boarded a plane to Seychelles next morning. Their honeymoon had been arranged by his parents with the same joyful, completely one-sided gladness with which Elena appeared to arrange most things, and Adrian had made an effort to turn it down once, in a conversation which by the way, Aria had overheard through the study door before Marco made a quiet and final statement that ended the dispute. They were not talking much on the plane. Aria was absorbed in the pages of a book. Adrian was zoning out into his laptop as he made his away through documents with that essentially angry, very intense kind of focus of a man who secretly uses productivity as a kind of substitute for the one thing he simply cannot quite bring himself to feel. But at some point above the Atlantic, she nodded off, andwhen she woke up a couple of hours later stiff, somewhat bewildered she saw that someone had merited her with a light blanket. It was stranger who had put it on her.

She turned her gaze towards Adrian. Even though he had fallen asleep, he was still a very young man. In sleep, the relentless force of control dissolves, and what's left is something very young, very quiet, and very sore in a way that even he is probably unable to put into words. She admired him for a while. After that, she pulled the blanket tighter around herself and staring at the dark and starless sky, she thought: what are you afraid of, Adrian Morelli? It seemed to her that she was, at last, getting an idea.