Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Juliet’s pov

They discharged me on the eighth day.

I was dressed and sitting on the edge of the bed, with a paper bag of medicine beside me and my hands folded in my lap, when the door opened and two men in dark suits walked in without knocking.

The older one carried a thick leather folder, and the younger one carried nothing at all but a small recorder.

Behind them came Helena, who took the chair in the corner and crossed her ankles, and last came Jaxon, who did not look at me and went straight to the window.

He stood there with his back to the room, and I understood that I was not being invited to a conversation.

“Miss George,” the older lawyer said, opening the folder, “we are here to confirm the terms of your marriage contract before the ceremony the day after tomorrow, and I will read them aloud so that there is no misunderstanding later.”

The day after tomorrow.

I had counted five days when Jaxon told me, and three of them had already gone while I lay staring at the ceiling.

“Please,” I said, and my voice was drier than I meant it to be, “go ahead.”

“The marriage lasts two years from the wedding day,” the lawyer read in a flat, practiced voice.

“The wife will reside in the De Luca villa, and the wife and husband will keep separate rooms.

The wife will act as wife to Mr. De Luca and as mother to his two children in every public and private setting.”

I nodded slowly, because so far it was strange, but it was not impossible.

“The wife will hold no authority over the household, over the children’s schooling, or over any matter relating to the company.”

No authority. I looked down at my hands, and my fingers had curled tightly around each other.

So I was to be a mother who could not decide what her children ate, and a wife who could not decide anything at all.

“If the wife leaves the marriage before the end of the term,” he went on, without lifting his eyes from the page, “she forfeits all claim to the children of the household.”

I laughed.

It came out of me before I could stop it, a short, disbelieving sound, because it was so absurd that it had to be a joke, and I looked up expecting someone to smile.

Nobody did.

The younger lawyer kept his eyes on his recorder, Helena examined her nails, and Jaxon did not even turn from the window.

My laughter died in my throat, and a cold feeling spread from my stomach to my fingertips.

This was not a joke. This was real, and I had agreed to it.

“Why would I ever agree to this?” I asked, and my voice cracked on the last word.

“You signed it four months ago,” Jaxon said, still facing the glass.

“It takes effect on the wedding day.”

His tone was so even that it made my anger rise higher than shouting would have, and I felt my cheeks go hot.

Four months ago, I thought, I was a woman who looked at this page and decided that it was acceptable.

What had they done to her, that she believed it was?

“I need time to think,” I said.

“There is no time,” Helena said sharply from the corner, and her smile had gone, and the softness she wore for Jaxon was gone with it.

“The ceremony is arranged, the guests are invited, and the press is waiting.

You will not embarrass this family twice.”

She spat the word twice, and her eyes held mine, and I felt the weight of whatever she was not saying.

“And if I refuse?” I asked quietly.

“You can refuse,” Jaxon said, at last turning his head to look at me.

His blue eyes were completely cold.

“The George family will deal with the consequences.”

Helena did not say a word.

She only looked at me, and her face went still and patient, and in that stillness I saw exactly what those consequences would be, and I knew that she had dealt with them before.

My stomach turned, and I thought, she has done this to me before, whoever I was.

“I want to read every page myself,” I said.

The older lawyer glanced at Jaxon, and Jaxon gave the smallest nod, and the folder was placed in my hands.

It was heavy, and I read slowly, with my finger moving under each line, while Helena sighed loudly twice.

I read the clause about the children three times, and each time my chest tightened more, and I noticed that the word forfeit was printed in bold.

There was nothing hidden in it that I could find, and nothing that protected me either.

On the last page there was a line for a signature, and above it, in black ink, a signature that was supposed to be mine.

I stared at it.

It was sharp and slanted, with a tall A and a hard stroke through the final letter.

“Sign it again,” the lawyer said, “as confirmation that you have heard the terms read to you.”

I took the pen.

My hand was steady, and I did not know why it was steady, and I wrote Alice George in the space beneath the old one.

When I lifted the pen, I looked at the two names together, and I felt my stomach drop.

The new one was rounder.

The A was low and soft, and the letters leaned the other way, and it did not look like the same hand at all.

The older lawyer frowned.

He took the page back, held it closer to the window light, and then without a word he turned it toward Jaxon and pointed with one finger at the two signatures.

“Mr. De Luca,” he said carefully, “these do not match.”

“She hit her head,” Helena said quickly, rising halfway from her chair, and she said it too fast, and too loudly.

“You have seen the reports. Her hand is still weak, and her memory is not what it was, and the doctors say it is to be expected, you can’t expect her signature to be the same”

Why is she in such a hurry to marry me off? I thought, watching her.

Jaxon said nothing.

He took the page from the lawyer and held it in both hands, and he studied the two signatures for a long moment, and the silence in the room grew so thick that I could hear the machine in the next room beeping.

Finally he handed it back.

“It is her injury,” he said, in a voice that gave away nothing at all.

“Finish the paperwork.”

The lawyers packed the folder.

Helena gathered her handbag, gave me one last look that was half a warning and half a threat, and left with the younger lawyer behind her, and the older man bowed his head to Jaxon and followed.

I sat very still on the edge of the bed until the corridor was quiet.

My hands were shaking, so I pressed them flat against my knees until they stopped.

I did not know who I had been.

But I knew who I was going to be from this moment on.

I would not let anyone walk over me again, not Helena, not the lawyers, and not the cold man at the window, whoever I turned out to be underneath.

That was a promise, and I made it in silence, and for the first time since I had woken, something inside me steadied.

Jaxon crossed the room toward the door.

He stopped with his hand on the handle and spoke without turning around.

“You have changed,” he said quietly.

It did not sound like a compliment, and it did not sound like an accusation, and I could not tell what it was.

“I do not understand anything here,” I said, and my voice shook, but I lifted my chin anyway, “but dammit, I am not stupid.”

He turned his head, and for half a second something shifted in his face, a flicker of surprise, or of interest, so quick that I might have imagined it.

Then it was gone, and his face was a closed door again. He did not answer me.

He walked back to the table, picked up the page the lawyer had left behind, and looked at the two signatures once more, the sharp one and the soft one, side by side.

Then he folded it slowly, slid it into his inside pocket, and walked out without a word.

And like that, I’ll really be married to this cold man.