ARRANGED

by R. K. Lilley

  I met my new assistant, Sara, a few days after I returned home. She was a petite, brown-haired girl in her mid-twenties. She was pleasant but no nonsense and a vast improvement over Asha. She quickly got my schedule in hand. I told her to start booking me again as soon as the bruises and swelling went down enough to be covered by makeup.

  Outnumbering the job offers were calls and inquiries for interviews. Everyone wanted firsthand scoop from the mouth of the mail-order bride herself. Pasco set me up with specialized PR coaching before I answered even one question. Part of me just wanted to tell the world, ‘Yes, I did everything you’ve heard, and I don’t regret one thing. It’s my life and my business. Get over it,’ but Pasco talked me down. I was told to categorically deny everything. Rumors were being spread that Asha was just a bitter ex-employee looking for a paycheck. The allegations were so outrageous that it just might work. Why would anyone think that a rich, gorgeous young thing like Banks would ever have to pay for a bride?

  I wasn’t the only one being questioned and coached. We caught a clip of Banks and one of his brothers being called out by TMZ as they left an uptown office building together.

  A mike was thrust into Banks’ face as a bored sounding voice called out, “Will you comment on the rumors about your wife? Did you really pay an extra five mil to pop her cherry?”

  Banks paused, glared. “That’s a ridiculous rumor,” he said stiffly.

  His brother even stepped in. They made a striking pair, of a height with the same dark coloring and light eyes, though to my besotted gaze Banks was better-looking. “Because young, rich, good-looking men often have to pay for sex,” his brother remarked scathingly.

  “Who is that?” Jovie asked. She was deep in the sofa to my right, eyes glued to the screen.

  “Banks’ brother, Kingston.” I thought for a moment and answered, “He’s the second oldest.”

  “I hate him,” she said with rueful smile. She couldn’t take her eyes off him. “He’s just my type. I can’t resist beautiful, sarcastic men. Keep me away from that one, Duchess.”

  For the first time in days, I laughed. “No problem. He’s too old for you.”

  She sent me sly smile. “I won’t be underage forever.”

  I rolled my eyes.

  “How many brothers does he have?” Santi asked. “And are any of them gay or undecided? Or hell, a little bit curious. I can’t resist beautiful, sarcastic men either.”

  I laughed again. It felt good. “He has five and I have no clue. Want me to ask?”

  “Yes, please,” he said cheerfully.

  The next breaking news that rocked my world was perhaps the most predictable and by far the most painful.

  The attack didn’t kill me, and being dragged by the internet didn’t break my spirit, but the third blow nearly did.

  New rumors started that Banks had gotten back with his ex. And they came with receipts.

  A disheveled, smiling Fatima was photographed on multiple occasions leaving Banks’ apartment building. And headlines such as: Fatima Leaves her Husband for Banks Castelo, Two Marriages on the Line as Banks and Fatima Reconcile, Castelo Leaves his Supermodel Wife for His First Love.

  Piled onto that was the fact that I hadn’t seen him since the hospital.

  It all painted a dark picture for the future. A picture I didn’t want to see because every time I glimpsed it, it felt like daggers in my heart.

  When I entered into this, I was unfeeling. There were things that I wanted that made me willing to put up with the conditions of a marriage of convenience.

  But that had changed. Now I felt too many things. I’d have gone back to unfeeling if I could have. Especially as time passed and still he stayed away.

  When I finally saw him again, I wished he’d stayed away longer.

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY-FOUR

  He hadn’t called or paid a visit for weeks when he suddenly showed up at my door. No one else was home for once. It was a mercy. We needed to have this out in private.

  He looked like hell. He was wearing a suit like he’d come directly from work, but it was wrinkled, tie gone, half the buttons undone. His hair was wild like he’d dragged his hands through it. I thought at first that he was drunk, but when he spoke I realized he was instead hungover.

  Or perhaps, like me, he’d just been hung out to dry.

  His eyes were all over me, hungry, wary and worried all at once. “You look much better,” he noted.

  “You don’t,” I shot back, arms folded over my chest. I wanted to ask him a million questions and slam the door right in his face. The two instincts were warring manically inside me.

  He ran a hand through his hair, looking absolutely miserable. “Let’s go to your room. We need to talk.” It wasn’t a request.

  When we reached my room, he sat on my bed. He was looking down at his hands like he couldn’t meet my eyes.

  This was going to be bad.

  “I have to tell you something, but I really don’t want to,” he told his lap after a drawn-out, frustrating as hell pause.

  “You’ve gotten back with Fatima,” I said coldly. It took a lot to say the words with composure. They were ripped out of the darkest recesses of my soul, but at least they came out sounding matter-of-fact.

  His head shot up, his eyes wide with shock. “What? No. Fuck no.”

  Relief flooded me, but not for long.

  “It’s worse than that,” he continued.

  My chest started aching again. “What?”

  “She’s the one who hired those men to hurt you.”

  “To kill me,” I corrected before the thought even fully connected. I wasn’t altogether surprised. The idea had been floating on the edge of my brain somewhere since I’d woken up in the hospital bed, especially with the cold way Pasco had been treating his son ever since.

  He flinched. “Yes. That. It’s highly doubtful we can ever get enough proof together to trace it back to her directly in a legal sense, but I’m certain of it.” He took a deep breath. “She’s not even bothering to deny it, in fact, she’s proud of it.”

  It took me a long time to respond, and when I did, even I was surprised by what came out of my mouth. “How could you have loved someone like that?”

  His face twisted up in anguish. “I didn’t know she was capable of—”

  “Liar,” I said softly, the word filled with venom. “You looked scared every time she and I exchanged words.” The words seemed to come together in my mind even as I spoke them. “You always suspected she’d try to hurt me.”

  He still couldn’t look at me. “I was worried she’d do something malicious, something to fuck with your head, but please believe me when I say that I never knew she was capable of this.” He sounded like he was choking on the words when he added, “My father was always right about her.”

  I had no reason to trust him or my reactions where he was concerned, but somehow I could taste his sincerity in the pain etched all over him and I did believe. It help eased at least some of my pain. Enough that I could catch my breath enough to say, “I guess that’s why she’s been leaving your place at all hours lately.” I paused. “To discuss my attack?”

  He looked like he was about to be ill. “In part. Listen, she won’t hurt you again. I have a lot of dirt on her, things she’d never want to get out. And if there’s one thing I know about her, it’s that she’s self-obsessed enough to keep quiet when her vanity’s on the line.”

  Well, that, coupled with my doubled security, was at least somewhat reassuring. The fact that she’d never face real justice? Less so.

  “There’s more,” he said suddenly in a stricken voice.

  I felt the blow coming like a shift in the air. It was heavier with his grief. Even so, I still wasn’t braced for what he said next.

  “She’s pregnant.”

  “She’s what?” My mind couldn’t deal with what had just come out of his mouth. It took a while for me to grasp it, for my brain to absorb it.

 
I studied him, feeling a little numb.

  As with any fresh, deep wound, there was too much blood to see the cut.

  He looked so wretched that I almost wanted to comfort him. Almost. That instinct battled with something building inside of me, something stronger than the urge to nurture.

  It was the urge to hurt.

  No. I didn’t want to comfort him.

  I wanted to hurt him.

  And I never wanted to touch him again.

  I took three steps back.

  He stood, and took one step forward, but the look on my face stopped him there. He took a very deep breath. “Fatima’s pregnant,” he said the words like a sickness being purged out of him.

  “Is it yours?” I barely choked the question out.

  He flinched and shrugged. “We don’t know yet. There’s a chance that it’s mine, and a chance it’s her husband’s. Either way, he’s left her. God, I don’t know why she wasn’t on the fucking pill. She’s never wanted kids. It makes no sense.”

  My hands were tingling, but my body felt a little numb. My mind was following suit. “It makes perfect sense. She did it to keep you.”

  He blinked rapidly, like he wanted to weep.

  “How far along?” I asked.

  “Three months.”

  I hadn’t realized until just that moment what a fool I was. I’d always been aware that it was very unlikely he was faithful to our sham wedding vows, but right then, I realized that I’d always had some kind of pitiful, ridiculous, hopeless wish that I was wrong. I’d been shooting for the moon with that one.

  “How likely do you think it is that it’s yours?” My voice came out surprisingly composed for that bit of desperation.

  “Frankly not very. I always used condoms. She claims that one of them broke. I don’t remember it, but I was very drunk that time, so it isn’t impossible.”

  All my mind snagged on was the fact that it had happened more than once, had happened so often that he’d forgotten the time in question.

  I took another step back.

  I never wanted look at him again.

  Never wanted to breathe the same air.

  It’s funny how all of your priorities can change in a moment. I wondered, somewhat idly, if they’d been changing for a while and I just hadn’t been willing to acknowledge it.

  I shook off the thought. None of it mattered.

  I’d never agreed to this. This was not in the contracts.

  I had sold myself; my body, my face, my time.

  But I had never agreed to sell my heart. To have it ripped from me. To have it stomped into the ground under his heel.

  I didn’t care about the money anymore. Simply did not give one single fuck about it.

  This hurt too much. No fucking thing was worth this kind of hurt. Certainly not money.

  I didn’t just have regrets. I had every regret. I regretted every moment I’d ever wasted on my despicable, faithless husband.

  I regretted it enough to walk away from every single thing I’d been promised.

  “Were you sleeping with her the whole time she was married?” I asked him.

  He didn’t have to say the words, the guilt was painted all over his face.

  “Look I was not a good guy for a while there,” he said haltingly. “But I can be better. I want to be better. I will be better.”

  So many years they’d played this disgusting little game with each other. Adultery must get them off. As disgust mixed into my bloodstream, it helped to mitigate some of the pain. “You’ve been carrying on with her all along,” I told him in a hollow voice. “We haven’t had one moment together that wasn’t tainted by her, have we?”

  He shook his head, but his eyes were too desperate to trust anything about to come out of his mouth. “That’s not true. I swear—”

  “Don’t swear to me. Don’t swear anything to me.”

  His eyes were wide and wild, and his hands kept reaching toward me. Every time he did it I flinched, but though he kept checking himself, he couldn’t seem to stop. “Look, I messed up. I messed up bad. But I thought I hated you then. It was only during that first month after the wedding. I was a mess, and I did all kinds of messed up shit right after, more than I can even remember or name, but I’ve never lied—”

  He was right. He hadn’t lied to me. He hadn’t needed to. I had done all of that work for him.

  As soon as I’d started falling for him, I’d started deluding myself without him ever having to utter one deceit. It was no consolation at all.

  “I don’t fucking care!” I was mortified that it came out as a rabid snarl. There was so much venom in that it made him gasp. “Lies. Truth. Nothing you could say or have said makes any difference. You fucked another woman after you fucked me. You fucked her.” That. Right. There. Her. That was the part that hurt the most. No. Not quite. Her having his baby. Them being tied together forever. That hurt the most. “Nothing else matters. We’re finished.” I laughed bitterly. “We never started. This was never a love story, but whatever it was, I want out.”

  I didn’t have anything else to say. I tried to walk out of the room without another word.

  He tried to stop me. The second he grabbed me, I screamed bloody murder.

  He recoiled. “Don’t. Please. Don’t let her do this.”

  My eyes narrowed on him malevolently. It was only as my vision blurred through narrow lids that I realized tears were running out of my eyes, down my cheeks unheeded. “She’s not the one who did this,” I told him quietly, every syllable vibrating with my hatred. With my pain. “This was always a mistake.” The words held as much undiluted ache as they did truth. “All of it. I have so much more to offer than this.”

  “Please, don’t do this,” he said. “Can we just talk about it some more?”

  I hesitated. Even after everything that had happened, I fucking hesitated. When I realized that, it made me so angry that I didn’t bother to answer him. He’d see. “Get out.”

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Life is full of giving, taking, borrowing, and moving on.

  And balance. For the first time in my life, I meant to find mine.

  I filed for divorce as soon as possible. It was ugly and messy. It was as distressing as it was essential to my peace of mind. It was both easier and harder than I could have hoped.

  There was also some healing in it all. That I had not anticipated.

  I hadn’t expected it, but I’d needed it.

  His family had always been kind to me, but through the divorce they were the kindest of all.

  “We understand why you need to do this,” his mother told me. She was crying. It broke my heart. “We don’t blame you. But please, never hesitate to ask us for anything at all. We’ve come to see you as our daughter, marriage or no.”

  “We still consider you family,” his father told me gruffly. “We always will. Nothing will change that. Your security team will stay with you. You’re too high profile to even consider going without, and after everything that’s happened . . . They’re clearly a necessary precaution.”

  I wasn’t sure if I should have protested that co-dependent measure, but I didn’t. I needed my team, literally and emotionally.

  “And you can say no, it’s your choice of course,” his mother said, “but we’d like to maintain our weekly Sunday Mass and family dinner with you. We’ll dine with Banks on a different day to avoid any discomfort for you both.”

  “And there will be no fight over any of the financials,” his father assured me. “We’ll treat you right, I promise.”

  I didn’t know what that meant, but I just nodded. I was the one backing out of the agreement, and even if it was unfair, I knew I had no right to fight them on any of it. Getting weekly business guidance from one of the wealthiest men in the world would be more than enough to keep me afloat.

  “And aside from any other issues, you’re keeping the apartment.” Pasco’s firm voice was brooked no argument. “That part is nonnegotiab
le. You’re still a Castelo.”

  Well hell. I felt tears fill my eyes.

  The divorce was supposed to hurt bad, but I was braced for the pain, the swift sting of a Band-Aid ripped off clean.

  It was the extra blows I wasn’t expecting. The slowly festering wounds. The ones that weren’t allowed to heal neatly.

  I hadn’t expected the added ugliness of divorcing someone who’d never really wanted to be married to me, but also wasn’t willing to let me go easy.

  At first Banks just refused to sign anything, maintaining that he wasn’t agreeing to the divorce.

  Eventually it came down to a few strange, arbitrary conditions on his part. They were so unexpected and frankly cruel that at first I outright dismissed them.

  Finally, just wanting it finished, I agreed to two of them just to get him to sign.

  One was a one hour meeting with him each week, a sort of public check-in. The place and time were completely at my discretion. He didn’t care if we met for coffee, a meal, or drinks. He just wanted an hour out of every one of my weeks for an entire year after the divorce.

  It was a little thing, small enough to seem almost reasonable and big enough to devastate me.

  It was as unfair as it was unexpected and something he wouldn’t budge on, the spoiled, entitled asshole. Only a rich man would come up with such an outrageous condition.

  The second was that I be there when he signed the divorce papers. He wanted to have it out again face-to-face. It was cruel, but I was determined to survive it with grace.

  We met at his place. Alone with our paperwork. I hadn’t seen him for months by this point. I’d flat out refused to be in the same room with him, because I’d known how it would go down.

  It was bad.

  That thing between us, the one that had shown itself in barest glimpses of touch, pleasure, addictive sensation, raised its ugly head, and it was worse than even my razor sharp memory’s endless replays of it.

  And I wanted it. Wanted time to roll back and pause just there, with him heaving over me, his ragged breaths puffing against my face, his flesh gliding into mine. His gruff voice calling my name.