Page 19 of Priceless
Pushing the door open and found my aunt draped across one of the couches in my uncle’s office, wrapped in a silk robe with what looked like a cosmo in her hand. If I had to guess, I’d say she’d never gotten dressed today. But if I’d done the same thing she would have called me lazy.
I hated that part of me would have believed her.
Frank stood near the giant fireplace with a drink, though it was too warm this time of year to have a fire indoors. The plate with my grilled cheese still sat on his desk, with the sandwich only half eaten.
“Glad you’re on time,” Frank said.
I said nothing.
After a second, he cleared his throat and took a sip of his drink. “You probably know that the business has been having some trouble.”
“Yeah.” I didn’t know what, but I heard enough to know that things weren’t going well. Yet another reason why they wouldn’t pay me what I was fucking worth for all the flowers I did for the gala.
“We received an offer today. It’s a good one.” He winced. “Well, it’s a decent one, and we’re going to take it.”
I frowned. “Okay? What does that have to do with me?”
“You’re part of the deal.”
It felt a little like the sounds of the whole world went fuzzy and I had to lean in to hear him properly. Because there’s no fucking way he actually said what he just said. “Excuse me?”
He huffed out a breath, looking annoyed at having to repeat himself. “You’re part of the deal. The Alphas making the offer want a wife, and they want you. So you’re going to marry them, and while you do, you’ll help us take their company for our own from the inside out.”
My jaw dropped, and for a second I wondered if I’d hallucinated this whole thing, or maybe the soup had been expired and I had food poisoning. “Are you fucking insane?”
“Watch your mouth.” My aunt was on her feet and charging toward me. “You think you can suddenly talk to us like that after everything we’ve done for you?”
“Done for me?” I gaped at her.
“Yes. Done for you. You should be grateful we took you in at all.”
My jaw trembled and the words I’d wanted to say my entire life hovered behind my lips. As if they could take me in when the house we lived in was mine and they were staying in it on borrowed time. As if anything they’d done in my entire life had caused me anything but pain.
But they still held the keys to fucking everything, which bound my tongue. Rage swam behind my eyes and my entire body shook with it. My hands curled into fists with the urge to reach out and hit and hurt and take back everything they’d done for me.
“No,” I said.
“You ungrateful little shit,” she hissed. “You will do this.”
I shook my head. “No, I won’t. You might control my entire life, but you cannot make me marry anyone. I don’t care.”
“You want us to be thrown out of this house because you can’t see this for the opportunity it is?” Laura’s voice was rising, echoing off the walls. “Frank said you’d do this, and I thought you would be happy.”
Part of me snapped. “Why on earth would you think that?”
“Because someone would finally fucking want you.”
I didn’t intend for the gasp that came out of me. My rule was never to show how hurt I was. Never give them more power over me than they already had. Yet, with that single sentence, it felt like I’d taken a knife to the ribs.
That was the worst part. Laura believed those things, and an aching, not-so-small part of me believed them too. Hadn’t I just said the same thing to myself?
It wasn’t just the desire to be wanted romantically. Was it too much to ask that my own family want me?
The pain drained out of me, replaced with bleak devastation. She was right. It would be easier to take what I could get and try to find some happiness within it. Then at least I’d be away from them and I wouldn’t be alone.
Five more years of this stretched in front of me like a path into nothing. Just a desert of the same conversations and the same hurts over and over again. I almost said yes.
The tiniest glimmer of my soul that wanted to be loved for me instead of what I could give someone rebelled. It took all the strength I had. “No.”
