The Billionaire's Bride: A Fake Marriage Romance

by Nikki Chase

  I walk down the hospital hallway, so familiar now from my frequent visits to Seth’s room.

  The beige tiled floors, the wooden railings on the beige walls, the beige doors, the lines of plastic chairs for friends and family of the sick people. You get the idea; the place looks like it was designed to make sad and scared people more depressed.

  I narrow my eyes as I get closer. There’s someone sitting on one of the chairs along the wall outside Seth’s room. A big man. Raphael.

  I stop right in front of him. He looks up.

  “Is something wrong? Is he okay?” A painful lump forms in my throat. I wonder if he’s taken a turn for the worse. If he’s doing fine, why isn’t Raphael in there with him?

  “He’s fine,” Raphael says with kind eyes. “He’s actually doing really well.”

  I heave a relieved sigh. “I thought he’d…” I let my voice trail off, unable to bring myself to say the words. I’ve been so scared because they told us there was still a small chance he might not make it.

  “Why don’t you sit down?” Raphael gestures at the chair beside him.

  “Actually, I want to see Seth,” I say, starting to walk toward the door.

  Raphael takes my hand. “That’s what I want to talk to you about.” He’s different from how he usually is. His gaze is solemn, serious.

  I take a seat, my head filled with questions. “What are we doing here, Raphael? Can’t we go inside? He’s really okay, right? You’re not lying to me?”

  “No, he’s doing well, I swear. Don’t worry about him,” Raphael says.

  My chest fills with dread as Raphael takes a deep breath. What’s bothering him then, if Seth is fine?

  “Alejandra has gotten you a place in downtown San Francisco. We’ve paid the rent for a year. You take as much time as you need to start looking for a job, okay? I know you’d probably want to start working again right away, but don’t. Just don’t worry about anything for now,” he says.

  “San Francisco? What are you talking about? I don’t need an apartment in the city. Why would I visit the city so much I’d need one?”

  “No, you’re not getting this.” Raphael takes another deep breath. “You’re not staying here. You’re going back to the city.”

  “What? I’m not… But I… I work for Seth,” I stutter, not understanding what’s happening.

  What does he mean, I’m not staying here? I’m going back to work with Seth. I’ve thought all about it. We’re going to be happy. I don’t even care anymore about opening a restaurant. I just want to be with Seth.

  “You know he doesn’t really need a chef,” Raphael says. “Ana has been taking care of all the cooking there for years. You were only hired because Seth got so obsessed with you, Walter’s men got a whiff of it. They found his weakness. He knew you were in danger. He felt responsible. That’s why he hired you.”

  “Well, yeah, I know that. But Seth wants me to cook for him. Just ask him. I mean, Ana’s cooking is great, but she doesn’t know what Seth likes. Not really.” I get up from my chair. I need to talk to Seth because I can tell, from the way Raphael is looking at me, that he doesn’t get it.

  Again, he grabs my hand. He looks up at me and gives me a sad smile. “Alice, I’m sorry. But Seth doesn’t want to see you. That’s why he told me to sit here and wait for you.”

  My blood runs cold. That can’t be true.

  “That’s not true,” I say.

  “It’s true, Alice. I’m sorry. Seth wants you to go back to the city and rebuild your life. Forget everything that has happened here.”

  “No, you’re wrong. He wants me close so he can protect me. That’s what he’s always told me.”

  “It’s safe now, Alice. Because you got kidnapped, the cops finally had to go there and see what was really happening. They shut down the whole illegal operation and freed the people Walter was forcing to work for him.” Raphael stares right at me, trying to convince me he’s speaking sense, but everything he says sounds like a bad joke.

  I start to laugh. Of course this is a joke.

  Raphael looks at me with concern in his eyes.

  “Good one, Raphael. Very funny. Can I go in and see him now?” I ask.

  “I’m serious, Alice,” he says quietly, his face sincere and apologetic.

  Tears well in my eyes, and everything blurs together into a beige haze.

  “Please, Raphael, I need to at least talk to Seth. He needs to understand how sorry I am. I swear I won’t run away again, so if he’ll just take me back…” My voice trails off, my words cut off by the lump in my throat.

  “You don’t understand, Alice. This is good. Everything is good now. The traffickers are arrested, innocent people are freed, the bad guys can’t hurt you again. You get your life back. Those are all good things, right?” Raphael coaxes me in a voice sweet as honey, but I don’t care about anything he has said.

  How can anything be good if Seth doesn’t want to see me again? He must hate me.

  “Tell him I’m sorry. Please…” I beg. God, this is humiliating, but I don’t care anymore. I just need to see Seth.

  “He’s not angry at you, Alice. The opposite, in fact. He thinks you should be the one who’s angry at him, for involving you in something so dangerous. He just wants you to stay away for your own safety. You’ve suffered enough. It’s time for you to live your life now.”

  “But, Raphael, my life is here now. You don’t understand.”

  “Then make a new life for yourself,” he says softly. “You’ll be happier living your own life.”

  He keeps talking in that sickeningly sweet voice, like he’s telling a kid that ice cream is bad and banned forever.

  I hate it. And I hate him.

  I don’t remember everything he says after that.

  It’s clear that he’s not going to let me enter Seth’s room. He tells me Seth has insisted on keeping me outside, although I can’t see how that could be true. Which means he’s a liar.

  Still, it’s not like I can just push him away if he decides to block the door with his body. He’s so much bigger and stronger than I am.

  So, with limp legs and a broken heart, I walk away.

  Seth

  Sometimes, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

  After going through so many fucked-up things in my life, I’ve learned to see the humor in every situation.

  You know what’s funny?

  The cell phone.

  Alice’s cell phone, I mean.

  The only reason I could find Alice was because she had asked for her cell phone back that morning, and I had placed a tracker on it. Without it, I wouldn’t have been able to find her.

  The craziest thing?

  The thugs who first caught her and threw her into a van could’ve thrown it away, and she would’ve been gone without a trace.

  Instead, they chose to keep the phone to sell. To sell! That would’ve fetched a few hundred bucks, at best. To think that one piece-of-junk cell phone crumbled the whole empire Walter had built for decades.

  Funny, right?

  Sure, even without the tracker, I was definitely going to look for Alice at Walter’s farm, but it would’ve taken much longer.

  I would’ve had to check multiple possibilities before finally finding her. I would’ve had to check her former co-workers, her sister, and her ex, just in case she was hiding from me, which would’ve exposed her to dangers from Walter.

  Instead, she went straight into the hands of the most dangerous man of all. Luckily, it only took me an hour to get there, instead of a few days.

  Now, everything’s safe. Peaceful.

  It feels strange, to be honest.

  It's been a long time since peace and safety felt normal.

  My life before incarceration was pretty normal, at least by the standards of trust-fund kids. I went to college and started working for my father after graduating.

  Then, the arrest happened, and my whole life changed.

  Life was a jungle in
prison. Peace and safety disappeared, never to return again, until now.

  Wait, that's not true. There was a time after prison when it was relatively peaceful.

  Before chaos drew me back in like quicksand, for a while, I lived a normal life.

  I developed a routine, just like everyone else. I had a job I was good at, the job I’d been trained for my whole life. Work took up most of my time, business was going well under my management, and the family wealth grew and grew.

  In short, by the standards of society, I had bounced back from my hardship and was now doing better than ever. Even my parents might've been proud, if they were still alive to see me.

  But I didn't feel like I was doing any better. I didn't feel like I was doing well at all.

  I couldn't stop thinking about that day, that moment when the light went out of the emaciated man’s eyes. I kept hearing the sickening thud of his limp, lifeless body, and the small splash as he fell into a puddle, the sounds playing and replaying whenever I tried to sleep. I was so sick of the noises I tried to shut them out with ear plugs, but it only confirmed what I already knew: they came from inside my head.

  So I went back to Walter’s asparagus farm. I got in touch with Walter’s girlfriend, who had become a friend during my time working there.

  I told her about my nightmares and about what I saw in the rain that made me quit. I was afraid she'd tell Walter on me, but it turned out she was more than happy to tell me everything that was going on in the farm. She answered all my questions, then she begged me to help her get out. She also wanted to get her friends out of there.

  I said yes.

  Helping her friends led to helping her friends’ friends, and then their friends, too. Eventually, we decided to keep conducting these covert rescue missions for as long as we could find people who wanted to get out. Together, we helped the trafficked laborers escape, transporting them out in a black van with tinted windows every few months.

  That did the trick. The emaciated man stopped haunting me. He had accepted my peace offering and released his grip on me. But I knew he’d come back as soon as I stopped.

  So I sold my family home, where I had grown up with my parents, and used the money to buy some land and build a place here, big enough to house and even employ some of the men and women we’d helped.

  In the meantime, we were building a case against Walter. It was hard just to find people to testify against him in court. Walter had a strong network of thugs in the hometowns of these men and women, who’d go to extreme lengths to keep people's mouths shut.

  Those who didn't have families back home were more likely to come forward after running away. They couldn't just go out there, though. It would've been too dangerous. Walter’s men would kill them on sight if spotted.

  That’s why they lived with me. They were happy to stay under my protection on my property, even if they couldn't leave the premises.

  When Alice came under the same danger, my first instinct was to bring her here, where she'd be safe, just like those who had escaped Walter and needed to hide from him. This was the only place where there was tight security specifically designed to keep Walter’s men out.

  It’s pretty sad that I, an ex-con, was the only one who would help them.

  The police? They didn't give a shit. They didn't want to know anything about the plight of the forced laborers, even though it was literally modern slavery.

  I know this one man who managed to escape Walter’s farm and got to a store that sold Christmas ornaments all year round, out of all places.

  He reached out for help, explaining his plight to the teenager who worked part time there. He was probably a good kid, but the language barrier prevented him from understanding the man.

  The kid called the cops, who also didn't understand the language. But they understood enough to know that he didn't have any documentation. And they recognized it when he said Walter’s name and “asparagus,” so they took him back to the farm.

  Poor guy. He has a new life now, but that must've been quite a scene.

  I imagine the three of them standing around in the middle of a big-ass store full of Christmas trees, string lights, and shiny colorful ornaments, making big, wild, crazy gestures to communicate. As they walked the man back out into a warm California night, something happy would be playing on the speakers like Jingle Bells, and the part-timer kid would be wearing a Santa hat.

  What a perfectly merry backdrop to the man's return to hell. He went back to back-breaking work, not to mention actual medieval-style torture, especially after an escape attempt like that.

  See? Twisted shit like that makes me chuckle because I’m so desensitized to human suffering now.

  I know it wasn't funny for the man to have been caught and taken back to the farm, but I can't resist the absurdity of it all. I can't help finding it funny.

  When the man arrived at the farm, Walter's men were quick to say he was an uncle who didn’t speak the language and wandered off because he wasn’t completely lucid. And just like that, the police left.

  Of course, in reality he was not their uncle. They weren’t related at all, in fact; and he was in for a world of hurt. He still has scars all over his body from whatever inhumane torture they put him through.

  In my mind, that was the same fate Alice was about to face, if they got their hands on her. And since she's an attractive woman, I could just see them drooling over her, fighting with one another to decide who got to have her first.

  I know the kind of losers who were in Walter's posse. The thought of Alice falling into their hands made me want to bash their skulls in with a baseball bat until their blood splattered all over the place.

  Instead, I killed their boss with a bullet. Less satisfying, but it did the job anyway.

  I was late, though. I should’ve gotten there sooner. I shouldn’t have let Alice leave my house in the first place.

  I keep playing and replaying the events of that day in my head, over and over and over. To be honest, I don’t know any other way things could’ve played out better. Given the choices that I’d made, that was actually the best-case scenario.

  If I really cared about Alice’s safety at all, I should’ve stayed away from her, right from the beginning. I shouldn’t even have visited her at the restaurant where she worked, much less started conversations with her.

  I fucked up, majorly.

  That’s why I’m letting her go. It’s for her own good.

  I know Walter’s gone now, but there will be other guys to fill the void. Maybe not here, but in other places, all over the country.

  I can’t just slip back into the kind of normal that I used to have a lifetime ago. I’m starting to have bad dreams again, now that everything’s peaceful.

  Peace is not normal anymore. My new normal is standing up to bullies like Walter. I’m going to find the next Walter, and help his victims. That’s the only way I know how to spend my life anymore.

  I can’t just go strolling into the law firm right now and start working as if nothing has changed, as if I never got arrested and had my whole world turned upside down.

  The family business is in the hands of capable people whom I’ve handpicked myself. I maintain sporadic contact with them, giving them an emergency phone number in case I’m really needed.

  This frees up my time to help end human trafficking. I have grand visions of shutting down those operations one by one, until they’re completely gone. But, to be honest, if all my efforts could only save one more person, I’d still do it.

  I just don’t want to drag other people into it. Even Alejandra is moving on, now that Walter’s operation is shut down, and that’s okay, too.

  I exhale a deep, tired, sad sigh.

  I’m going to miss Alice.

  I’m going to fucking miss Alice.

  But she’ll be happier without me. I’ve risked my life twice to save her, so she’d better live the hell out of her life, which I hope will be completely boring, normal, and safe.r />
  I’d risk my life over and over again to save her, but it would be better for her if she doesn’t have to be in that kind of danger in the first place.

  That’s why I knew exactly what to do when I woke up in the hospital. I couldn’t ever see Alice again, or my resolve might break and I might just lock her up and never let her leave my side again.

  Alice

  I grab my bag from the dining chair and try to suppress my anger as I walk across this damn luxury apartment to the door.

  This is a really nice apartment, but I haven’t been able to appreciate it at all, which is a waste, really.

  I reach the parking lot, which always has rows upon rows of expensive cars, including mine. A brand-new silver Mercedes. I found the car key on the kitchen countertop inside the apartment one night, along with a piece of paper that told me where it was parked. I stick that same key in and start the engine, then pull out of my reserved parking space.

  I didn’t drive myself here. Anthony was the one who did it. He took me here straight from the hospital after that talk with Raphael.

  I spent the whole night sobbing. There were so many different emotions, all swirling around inside me and blending into one, expanding and expanding until I was ready to burst.

  I still feel all those same emotions, although they’re less intense now, one month after the incident.

  I’m sad because our goodbye was so abrupt and permanent. I feel rejected and alone. Sometimes, when I’m feeling especially masochistic, I imagine Seth telling Raphael he doesn’t want to ever see me again. It feels like Seth has punched his fist clear through my chest, grabbed my heart, and squeezed it with all his strength.

  I’m scared, now that I didn’t have Seth’s protection anymore. Even though Raphael told me I didn’t need it anymore, I can’t believe it. It just feels wrong.

  How can it be right that Seth will never save me again, and yet I’m supposed to be safer? I feel safest when I’m with him.

  I’m angry because, after everything that has happened, he still thinks he can run my life and make my decisions for me. He has decided, single-handedly, that I’m better off without him, so he sends me away. He gave me an apartment, a car, and a $200,000 check—presumably my salary for a year’s worth of work.