Page 13

Six

Maddie

Aidan swooped in at the point of our most extreme destitution, when not even the roof over our heads was secure anymore.

But I know he was always coming for me, one way or another, and my father’s financial situation didn’t have a thing to do with it.

I was crazy back when we were kids if I’d thought him being expelled would somehow magically end his sick obsession with me.

In the past two weeks I’ve been included in other wedding details.

I thought I just had to get the dress, but our wedding guest list has been demanded.

I have no one I want to invite, so I passed that task on to my parents.

There’s no way I’m compiling a list of people to watch me being officially sold to Aidan.

It’s bad enough it’s happening at all, but in front of an audience of people I’ve known for years?

No. Am I supposed to invite all my sorority sisters?

The answer to this question is… yes, apparently.

My mother insisted we had to invite them.

It would look weird if we didn’t. And the supreme thing at the top of my parents’ minds as they sell their daughter off to a local crime lord is that nothing can look “weird”.

Because we wouldn’t want that. It’s only my entire life that’s over.

I only have to sleep in the same bed as the creep who stalked me since we were six for the rest of my life.

No big deal. Why would we care about anything other than what “looks weird” to the people from the country club?

My parents—my father primarily—have decided that this is their golden opportunity to get back into society.

My father has had more than one secret meeting with Aidan, who I’m not even allowed to see or personally interact with until the wedding—which makes me even more afraid that on top of everything else he has grown into the bridge troll I always knew he would.

My understanding from the small snippets of conversation I’ve picked up from my parents is that Aidan is going to help them keep their financial situation on the down low and is buying their house and allowing them to continue living in it while they rebuild their lives.

The For Sale sign has been removed from the yard, and the word that plans have changed “in light of our daughter’s wedding and wanting to be nearby should a grandchild materialize” have trickled through our circles.

A grandchild might materialize.

It’s yet another thing for me to worry about. I don’t know if I even want to bring a child into this hellscape, but I have no idea if Aidan will force the issue. Why the hell am I not involved in any of these negotiations or decisions?

In addition to the guest list, I’ve met with the florist and wedding planner to discuss the flowers and décor.

Most of the planning work is already complete, I just need to okay it all before they can finalize everything and proceed to the next stage of their to-do list. The wedding planner, Carol, has this event running like a well-oiled machine.

The ceremony and reception venues were chosen without my input and booked probably months before Aidan even sprang his trap.

That’s confidence. Or psychopathy.

Our Lady of Hope is the biggest Catholic church in the city.

It’s more like a cathedral really, which makes this all feel very much like a Royal wedding.

They’re usually booked for years in advance for weddings and only host members of the church or people with deep pockets who are willing to make very generous donations.

I wonder if Aidan is Catholic. Is that his actual church?

Or did he just pay the necessary fee to have the most grand affair his money could buy?

It’s clear he wants to show me off, parade his purchased bride for all the world to see.

He for sure doesn’t want to take me in the dead of night and marry me under cover of darkness.

The reception will be held at an aquarium.

Our city has the state’s largest and most visited aquarium in the country.

It sounds like a strange place to have a wedding reception, but the space is rented for formal events all the time.

It’s one of the most stylish buildings in the city with a modern art feel that contrasts sharply with the old-world style of the church.

I’ve also been called by the caterer who prepared the test menu for me to taste. It was all amazing, but there isn’t a wedding in this world perfect enough to make up for the groom.

I have to remind myself of this every day because there is this weak, shallow part of me—the part I thought I lost this year—that just wants nice pretty things, that just wants flowers and soothing smells, and good food and music.

And for things to be simple. Why does everything have to be so deep and complicated all the time?

Why is it a sign you’re terrible if you just want a nice life and to talk about nice things?

Why can’t I just be ? Why does the world have to be burning down all the time, and why is my participation in putting it out required?

I miss those days when things were… easier.

So when Aidan shows up, making everything feel easier, even though he’s the source of all my angst and fears, I find myself lulled into it because as long as I don’t have to see him, as long as this is just a flurry of activity and people on his payroll fluttering about behind the scenes to give me one perfect day before I’m dragged to Hell, I can forget—or pretend—that he’s not the one who will be waiting for me at the end of that aisle.

I’m pouring all this into my journal like a besotted teenager when my mother knocks on my open door.

Aidan’s guards still stand outside in the hallway.

There are six of them altogether on a work rotation where two are with me at all times.

If I go anywhere, they are my shadows. I haven’t been given a moment’s peace, and though I’ve tried a few times while out on errands, I can’t shake them.

I have exactly zero idea of what I would do if I did somehow get past them, but I can’t even get out of the starting gate. And I have a feeling they are my permanent security detail going forward, not just until the wedding.

“This came for you,” my mother says.

I look up to see a plain brown box with a red silk bow on it. It’s brown in the way chic eco-friendly packaging is brown—that “on purpose simplicity”. Like this wasn’t just some random cardboard box something was chucked into, this is… intentional, mindful, and carbon neutral.

I don’t have to ask. I know it’s from Aidan.

“Thanks,” I say. “Can you close the door on your way out?”

I know she wants to hover to see what’s in the box, but I live in fear one of these gifts is going to be slinky lingerie, and it’s the last thing I want my mother to be witness to.

When the door is closed and I’m alone, I take a deep breath, untie the bow, and open the lid. Inside is pink and red paper Easter grass, and buried in all of that are three cassette tapes, a mini cassette player, headphones, and a note on nice stationery.

Did he send me mix tapes? That was a whole thing in my parents’ generation.

Aidan’s monogram is stamped in gold on the interior notecard.

I’ve come to know his masculine and decisive handwriting in the month I’ve been receiving packages and gifts from him.

I tell myself again that he cannot buy me.

He cannot woo me. He cannot win me. I told him no when we were six and every time after that.

Why would it change now? No is a complete sentence.

If only I still had the luxury of No .

Maddie,

Listen to these demo tapes and text me which of these songs you want on the reception playlist.

Yours,

A

So he did make me mix tapes.

It’s a clipped order, not a request. The only indication that this is somehow supposed to be about a romantic coupling is his sign-off, Yours .

Such a mockery of my free will. He’s mine ?

I think what he really means is that I am his and there isn’t a goddamned thing I can do to change that state of affairs, short of flinging myself off a tall building.

Cassettes have made an inexplicable comeback.

They’re what my parents listened to when they were kids.

Vinyl I can understand. That’s classic. But cassettes?

Though indie bands never really gave up on using them to get their music out.

Either way, with a cassette you can’t easily skip around from song to song.

You have to listen to the thing all the way through.

And I think that’s by design here. Aidan probably could have just as easily had some CDs burned, but he wants me to listen to every song without skipping around.

I think about fast forwarding and writing down every song I recognize, but he’ll know I didn’t listen when he reviews security footage.

I recoil at this constant surveillance and micro-managing.

Is this going to be my life when I’m Mrs. Aidan Stryker?

Never another moment free from his lingering gaze, his creepy stare?

He’s made it increasingly clear that watching me is his full time hobby. I’m not sure how he manages to get anything else done.

Ever since I texted him at the bridal shop about having to force a woman to marry him, I’ve been a bit subdued, worried he’s keeping a list of things I do and say that “displease him” and how I might pay for that later when the facade of the Prince coming in to save me from a life of being poor has evaporated to reveal the ugly beast beneath.

Despite how he seems to be trying to woo me, Erica has reminded me about forty times now that he’s a dangerous player in the criminal underworld.

He commands a vast empire of money and resources and power.

Every time she says something like this she sounds like an evil tour guide.

She may be horrified, but a part of her is also fascinated by it all.

I’ve tried searching on the internet for a current photo of Aidan, but he is a ghost. It’s like any evidence he ever existed has been wiped off the entire Internet—if it was ever on there to begin with.

It seems his family was very concerned about privacy and security from the infancy of runaway tech and acted accordingly while they still could.

the Stryker corporation has a PR person who answers press questions for the front-facing part of the company, though they try to stay out of the news.

They don’t seek PR in the same hungry way that most companies do.

They don’t want the attention even though I’m certain they have police and politicians on their payroll.

It occurs to me that Aidan is sacrificing the anonymity he’s built, keeping his face out of the paper and off the Internet just so he can claim me so publicly.

I’m not sure what that means. It feels like a huge sacrifice just so he can rub my face in his triumph.

He wants to make sure I can’t hide from this.

It isn’t enough for him to have me. He needs the whole world to know he has me, even if it means nothing to them, and they don’t know our backstory.

Anyway I’m sure they’ll spin it into something innocent, like that I was his childhood crush or something.

If anyone ever knows any part of our history, it’ll be whitewashed into something far less sinister than it was so that rather than pulling back in horror, people will just say “awwww, that’s so sweet. ”

With as successful as the Stryker corporation is, you’d think they could just drop the criminal element, but do any of the movers and shakers in the world truly have clean hands at this point? Aren’t they all kind of crime lords past a certain point of wealth?

If I were a heroine in a romance novel, I’m sure my book would be called… The Captive Bride of the Crime Boss . The overly descriptive title… it’s simple. Easy. We know what we’re getting. It’s like boxed macaroni and cheese. It’s comforting in a way.

And I know what Aidan is doing with all these gifts after such a long period of struggle. He’s trying to be macaroni and cheese. He’s trying to be that warm fluffy blanket I want to snuggle into. He wants to be the satiny soft petals of the rose, so I forget about the thorns.

My room is filled with vases of roses. The entire house is full of roses. There is no escape from them. They die and get rotated out, but it isn’t fast enough to prevent having to accept some of them into my room.

I put on the headphones and insert one of the cassettes into the player.

I listen until dinner while I continue to write in my journal—a journal I will likely burn before the wedding.

I just need to get all this out, I don’t need someone else to come behind me and read it, least of all Aidan.

And maybe that’s why I’m keeping the journal, because for all his fancy surveillance, he’s not actually physically in my room, and he can’t know what I’m writing.

It’s my one space of peace and privacy from him.

I hope it drives him crazy.