Page 5

Three

Maddie

I watch the SUV until it disappears from view, and as soon as it’s gone I’m convinced that none of this happened, that I had some kind of crazy hallucination.

There was a blurry unrealness about the whole thing from the moment I stormed out of the restaurant.

Only now has my life snapped back into clear sharp-edged reality.

When I get inside I remember to call Erica, but I need to plug my phone in first. I’m halfway to my room when my parents stop me.

“We need to talk to you,” my dad says, grimly. They both look like ghosts standing like that in the hallway. My mom wears a long pale lavender dressing gown, and my father has on the same polo shirt from the country club and khaki pants he was wearing when I left.

“D-did someone die?” because I know it’s not the IRS again.

There’s nothing more they can take at this point.

Maybe they’re going to charge him and put him in jail.

Even after all this? Ripping our whole lives away…

Why lock him up? Then he starts costing the government money.

I thought the money he didn’t pay was so important for the government to function or is it all just retribution for him daring not to pay them?

Why spitefully toss my father in a cell on top of it?

Wouldn’t they just break even then after years of housing him in prison?

Did anyone in our government ever take an economics class?

“Let’s go into my office,” my dad says.

I follow them both into the office. My dad sits in his chair, I sit in the chair on the other side of his desk, and my mother sits in a high-backed burgundy leather chair off to the side.

She clasps and unclasps her hands in her lap and twists her wedding ring around then fidgets with her hair, her eyes not quite meeting mine.

When I turn to my dad, his gaze is avoidant as well.

“What’s happening right now?” I ask, looking back and forth between them. They look more cagey than they have ever looked about anything in my entire life. It wasn’t even this bad when they told me we were losing everything. What could be worse than that?

“Is it grandma?” I ask. It’s the only other thing I can think of. “Is it her heart?”

“No, your grandmother is fine,” my dad says.

“For now,” my mom says.

What the hell does that mean?

“Margot, don’t,” he says.

“I’m just saying, when she finds out about this, it’s certainly not going to be good for her heart.”

I look around the office and notice photos on the floor, shattered glass, my brother’s baseball bat leaning against the edge of the desk. And then my gaze goes to a thick cream-colored envelope sitting in the middle of the desk on top of a few stray shards of glass.

“What’s this?”

I reach for it, but my father takes it before I can get my hand around it. It feels like it’s about me, and I don’t know where that crazy thought came from, but I know somehow my fate is in that envelope.

“You are to be married on June fourteenth,” he blurts out, sounding more formal and stiff than he’s ever sounded.

“What? I most certainly am not!”

I’m going to move in with Erica and get a job. I already talked to them about this. I am definitely not getting married.

“I wish this was a choice but… I owe someone a lot of money. These are dangerous people. They don’t deal with things like we deal with things.” His gaze goes to the smashed photos and shattered glass, and I don’t need him to draw me a diagram.

“Who is it? The Corleone family? Jesus, dad.”

He doesn’t say anything, and I realize my sarcastic comment hit a bit too close to the truth. “The mob ? Are you serious? You’re going to marry me off to some old mob boss because you borrowed money!? Or what? They’ll kill you? Kill all of us?”

I imagine some old guy my dad’s age or worse wearing a blue track suit trying to unsuccessfully hide his beer gut, wearing a thick gold chain around his neck, and I think I might vomit right here.

He looks down at the desk.

“Oh well that’s just great, dad!”

I’m tempted to start breaking the rest of the shit in this office with the baseball bat.

“It’s not… the mob, exactly. He’s not even full Italian. His mother was Irish. And… he’s not old. He’s the new boss… he inherited the family business. He’s… young… your age.”

Oh that makes it better. I hold out my hand for the envelope my father is clutching.

He sighs and hands it over. I open it and pull out an engraved wedding invitation. I can feel the indentations from the engraving plates on the back of the paper.

Mr. Albert Prescott and Margot Prescott request the pleasure of your company to celebrate the marriage of their daughter

Madison Hilary Prescott

to

Aidan Antonio Stryker

at half past six in the evening on Saturday, the fourteenth of June at Our Lady of Hope Church.

I read it no fewer than six times. Finally, I look up.

“Did you have these invitations printed?” I demand, wondering if they’ve been sneaking around behind my back planning all this.

“He did.”

“I’m not marrying him!” I rip up the invitation and throw it on the floor as though it’s the only one that exists, and now it would be quite impossible for anyone to make me go through with this.

“Madison, please don’t do this. I know a lot has been asked of you. I know I’ve made a lot of mistakes, but… he will kill me if you don’t do this. And then I don’t know what he’ll do with you and your mother, but his implication was not good.”

“So, you think I’ll be safe marrying him? Let’s just run. Just get in the car and go. It’s not like we have literally anything anymore. We can be poor anywhere!”

“I’m afraid it’s not that simple.”

Of course, it’s that simple. What does he mean it’s not that simple?

“I’ll run away. I am NOT marrying him!”

“You don’t even know him,” My dad says.

In ordinary circumstances I would say ‘Exactly, which is an excellent reason to flee!’ but I DO know him.

“Don’t you recognize that name?” I say. “Aidan Stryker? That’s the kid that stalked me all the way from first grade until Junior High—the weird kid I complained about every single day until he got transferred out.”

I had forgotten about him until this exact moment.

We were thirteen the last time I saw him.

He was awkward and gangly and creepy as ever back then.

Zero social skills or charisma. Just fucking weird as shit.

He finally ended up getting expelled for starting a gang.

In Junior High . I should have known he’d end up the head of some criminal enterprise when he was already building a rap sheet at thirteen.

I think about those tall skinny guys in the alley.

They looked like heroin addicts. That’s how I imagine Aidan looks now.

I cannot and will not let this weird little freak win.

I thought when he went away to another school that was it, his fixation with me would end. Has he been stalking me this entire time? Through high school? Through college and beyond? Just waiting for his moment like a fucking psycho?

What if I’d just been his girlfriend in first grade?

What if I hadn’t gotten that valentine from Brayden?

Maybe we would have been boyfriend and girlfriend for a few weeks and then we would have broken up when he pulled my hair, and he would have moved on with his life.

Nobody marries their first grade girlfriend.

I swear that kid is a psychopath. I keep forgetting he’s not a kid anymore. It’s like my brain has frozen him in time to the last time I saw him.

I shudder at the idea of giving this guy my virginity.

It wasn’t like I was keeping myself pure for some religious reason.

My family isn’t even religious. I just didn’t like anybody enough to…

and I was busy with… things. Though there were times when I was dating when I thought the guy I was seeing might be the one, and then soon after he would mysteriously disappear from my life.

I don’t mean they disappeared like swimming with the fishes disappeared or anything like that. I mean… they would suddenly seem to lose interest. It was like I couldn’t freaking give my V-card away.

Was he making them go away? So he could what? Keep me pure for him? I am going to be sick.

And now after all this, Aidan Stryker is going to be the one to deflower me?

Oh no, Hell no. This is even worse than the idea of some old grizzled mob boss.

This kid’s presence terrorized me every day.

Do they not remember the nightmares I had?

How I had to go through such extreme measures to make sure he didn’t follow me home?

I stand, and I am shaking with rage.

“I suggest you run because I will not be your sacrifice! I will not marry the guy that stalked me for years. He’s not right in the head!”

“He would find us. The Stryker empire is… it’s vast. The resources he now has command of… Believe me when I say he would find us.”

But I’m not listening, I leave the office and slam the door behind me. I have to get out of here, tonight. Fuck, I don’t even have a car. I’ll have to wait until Erica gets back. Erica. She’s probably worried sick that I died tonight.

Why do I feel like I did? Now I’m the one who feels like a ghost.

I’m fighting back the tears as I reach my room. There are two armed thugs standing outside my door. They nod at me.

“Miss Prescott.”

Aidan put guards in my house ? Because I know my dad can no longer afford such a thing. We’re barely keeping the lights on right now while we wait for the house to sell.

I turn to run even though my phone charger is in my room and I need it, but my parents are coming up the hallway from the other direction. I’m blocked in. So I run into my room and lock the door behind me.

And then, because interior door locks are feeble courtesies instead of actual barriers to entry, I shove a chair under the doorknob.