MARRIED TO THE DEVIL CEO

CHAPTER SIX: ONE YEAR

The reception ends sometime past midnight, though I couldn’t tell you exactly when.

The hours after the vows blur into a smear of handshakes and forced smiles, of guests who keep telling me how beautiful I looked, how lucky I am, how perfect Damien and I seem together, as if any of them actually looked closely enough to see the truth sitting right under the surface of it all.

Nobody looks closely. That’s the thing about a wedding this big. Everyone sees exactly what they came to see.

By the time a driver takes us back to the estate, I’m running on nothing but adrenaline and the last hour’s worth of politeness. I keep telling myself the same thing on repeat, like a rope I’m holding onto in the dark.

Tonight is the hard part. Tomorrow I go back to looking for Amelia. Tomorrow this stops being my life and goes back to being a favor I did for one very long day.

I actually believe it, right up until we’re standing in the hallway outside two separate bedroom doors, and Damien says the sentence that ends that belief completely.

“You should know the rest of the arrangement,” he says. His tie is already loosened, his jacket gone, and somehow he looks even less approachable like this than he did in the tuxedo. “Before you get too comfortable with whatever version of tonight you’ve built in your head.”

“What version.”

“The one where this ends tomorrow.” He says it flatly, like he’s reading off a report. “It doesn’t.”

Something cold moves through me. “What are you talking about. We got married. The merger’s saved. The will is satisfied. I did what everyone needed me to do.”

“You satisfied the marriage clause.” His eyes hold mine, steady, giving nothing away. “There’s a second clause. The board requires proof of a genuine marriage before the transfer of full control is finalized. Twelve months of cohabitation. Public appearances. A marriage that looks real to anyone checking.”

I stare at him.

“Twelve months.”

“Yes.”

“You knew this. This whole time. While I was standing at that altar thinking this was one night, you knew it was a year, and you let me say I do without telling me.”

“I told you what mattered in the moment it mattered.” His voice doesn’t rise, doesn’t soften either. “You needed to marry me tonight. You didn’t need the rest of it weighing you down while you did.”

“That wasn’t your decision to make.”

“It was exactly my decision to make. It was my company. My grandfather’s will. My board.”

Something sharpens in his tone, the first real edge I’ve heard from him all night. “You think I enjoyed watching you say vows to a stranger without a full picture. I did what was necessary. Same as you did.”

“Don’t you dare compare this to what I did!” My voice cracks despite everything I’m doing to hold it together. “I said yes to save my family. You let me say yes without telling me what I was actually agreeing to. That’s not the same thing. That’s a lie with better lighting.”

“Careful,” he says quietly. “You’re starting to sound like someone who thinks I owe her an apology.”

“You do owe me one.”

“Then you’ll be waiting a long time.” His voice is cold now, colder than I’ve heard it all day. “I don’t apologize for decisions that were mine to make. Get used to that. You’ll be living with it for a year.”

“I already can’t stand you,” I say. “That should make the year go quickly.”

“Good,” he says. “Mutual.”

The word lands harder than I expect it to. I don’t know why. I already knew he felt nothing for me. Hearing him say it plainly still finds a way to cut.

“You’ll have your own room,” he says, nodding toward the door on the left. “Mine is down the hall. I don’t expect anything from you beyond what the board requires to see. Appearances. Nothing more.”

“Good,” I say, because it’s the only word I have left that doesn’t come out as a scream. “I wasn’t planning on giving you anything more.”

“Then we understand each other.”

“We understood each other the moment you decided not to tell me the truth.”

I don’t wait for him to answer. I walk into my room and shut the door hard enough that the sound of it follows me across the space, hard enough that I hope he feels it on the other side.

The room is beautiful in the same cold way everything in this house is beautiful. Big windows. A bed twice the size I need. Someone has already unpacked a small bag of my things, sent for sometime during the chaos of today, and the sight of my own worn out sweater sitting folded on someone else’s expensive dresser nearly breaks something in me that the entire day hasn’t managed to break yet.

A year.

A year of this house. A year of that man and his flat voice and his eyes that give away nothing. A year of pretending, in public, to be something we already know we aren’t.

I sit on the edge of the bed and try to picture it, three hundred and sixty five mornings waking up under his roof, and I can’t. My mind simply refuses to hold the shape of it.

I pick up my phone instead, because it’s easier than thinking.

I call Amelia. It rings twice and goes to voicemail, the same as every time today.

“Please,” I whisper, once the beep sounds. “Please just call me back. I don’t even care what you tell me. I just need to know you’re alive. I got married today, Mel. I got married in your dress, in your place, to your fiancé, and I don’t even know if you know that, wherever you are. I don’t know anything anymore.”

I hang up before my voice can break completely.

I text her too, even though every message today has vanished into the same silence.

Where are you. Please. I’m scared.

No delivered. No read. Nothing.

I sit there a long time, staring at the two words she left me eighteen hours ago like they might rearrange themselves into something that makes sense if I look hard enough.

I’m sorry, Ava.

“I don’t understand what you’re sorry for,” I say to the empty room. “I don’t understand any of this.”

Nobody answers. Nobody ever does anymore.

I don’t remember deciding to cry. It just happens, quiet at first, then not quiet at all, my hands pressed hard against my mouth so the sound won’t carry down the hall to the man who cost me a year of my life without once asking if I could spare it. I cry for Amelia, wherever she is. I cry for the life I had yesterday, ordinary and mine, before any of this happened. I cry because somewhere between this morning and tonight I became someone’s wife, and I don’t recognize a single piece of the woman standing in for that role.

I cry until I don’t have anything left to cry with, and somewhere in that exhausted, empty space after, sleep finally takes me, still in my clothes, still holding my phone, still waiting for two words that never come.

I don’t hear the footsteps in the hallway sometime past three in the morning.

I don’t hear them stop outside my door, pause a long moment, and move on.

I sleep through all of it, and in the morning, I won’t know to ask anyone if they heard it too.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​