Chapter 7
CHAPTER
SEVEN
JULIE
The run-up to our wedding weekend flies by in an endless list of decisions I am not allowed to make.
Evangelina, Dean's wedding planner, took over with the efficiency of a military general.
She calls me twice a week with updates. My input is not required, which is clear since I'm informed as opposed to consulted.
The venue is the Four Seasons ballroom. Not Chihuly.
The guest list has ballooned to three hundred.
Not forty. The style of dress I’d dreamed of, a simple silk sheath from the small boutique down the block from my store, is harshly vetoed and replaced with a haute couture ballgown.
When I push her to tell me the cost, I nearly vomit.
It's close to a quarter of a million dollars.
"Having high-end haute couture created in eight weeks was a big ask. It's worth the price because of the designer's name. Plus, it will photograph better than an off-the-rack dress ever could," Evangelina says when I try to protest. "Trust me, darling. You'll thank me when you see the pictures."
I won't. But I don't say that. Asher apologizes constantly. He brings me flowers. Takes me to dinner. Tells me it'll all be worth it. Reminds me how much I love him and how much he loves me.
"Just get through the wedding," he says. "Then it's just us again."
I want to believe him. I really do. But I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that marrying a man I haven’t yet known for six months feels riskier now than it did when he asked me.
The night before the wedding, we have the rehearsal at the church Dean selected. It's massive. Ornate. The kind of place where presidents get married, not regular people.
As I stand at the altar in a white Chanel suit, after practicing my walk down an aisle that felt a mile long, all I can think is, this isn't me.
Asher holds my hands in his and silently promises me that everything will be okay. I know he's stressed about what this is doing to me, but his father and the machine he unleashed on our wedding are an unstoppable force.
After the rehearsal, there's dinner back at Dean's mansion in Bellevue.
My mother has been in town for the last week.
She sits next to Jamie, looking like she's struggling to stay awake.
Her conditional approval of Asher is less firm than before.
I tell myself it's the circus of a wedding that's raised her hackles.
At least that's my hope. When dinner concludes, Dean approaches me.
"Julie," he says, his voice cutting through the conversation. "A word?"
It's not a question. Shit. Bile churns in my gut as I set down my champagne glass and follow him to his home office.
It's massive and dark, lined with first editions and polished wood.
The faint scent of cigars, whiskey, and furniture polish hangs in the air.
Everything has a place. Every book. Every pen.
Every folder stacked on his desk as if disorder is intolerable.
He closes the door behind us. "I wanted to give you your wedding gift privately," he says.
He goes to his desk and pulls a folder from the top drawer. Then he holds it out to me. I take it. The folder is heavier than it should be. Inside are documents. Legal documents. My hands start shaking before I even finish reading the first page.
Dean has paid off the balance of the business loan on my shop.
In full. Two hundred and fifty-three thousand dollars, gone.
Just like that. My stomach has fallen to my ankles, pulled there by a pallet of bricks.
This is not good, and it gets worse as I continue reading.
He's done more than clear the debt. He's also purchased the entire retail block where my shop sits.
The building. The land. All of it. It's the most premium retail space in Bellevue and he bought it.
The numbers on the paper are staggering.
I look up at him in shock. My legs feel like jelly and my throat is tight. "I don't understand."
"It's simple." Dean's voice is calm. Pleasant, even. Like we're discussing something benign like how to properly fold a towel or which direction toilet paper should face on the roll.
"I know how important your little business is to you. And I wanted to make sure you and Jamie had security. Stability."
Little business. There it is again.
"This is..." I look back down at the documents. The numbers are staggering. Tens of millions of dollars in real estate. "This is too much."
"Nonsense." Dean moves behind his desk, but he doesn't sit. "Consider it an investment in my son's future."
I look at the first page again. The loan payoff. The real estate. The transfer language. Then I see something that pulls me up short. Five years. I read it again. Then again. Then once more, because in none of the readings has it made sense. Because what I’m seeing can’t be right.
"Dean?"
He adjusts the folder already sitting on his desk until the corners line up perfectly. "Yes?"
"This says if I stay married to Asher for five years, this all transfers to me."
"Correct."
"And if I don't?"
Dean finally looks at me "If the marriage ends before the five-year mark, you'll need to repay the loan in full within ninety days of filing for divorce. You won't get the real estate, so you'd also have ninety days to relocate your shop."
I don't have two hundred and fifty-three thousand dollars. And even if I did, finding a new location, moving inventory, rebuilding our clientele... it would destroy us.
Jamie and I spent the last two years building this business.
We used the money our grandmother left us to start it.
Including the balance of the loan and the inheritance money we put into it, she and I have more than a half a million into the business.
It was a big leap of faith to go all in like that.
Until now, I've been confident we made the right choice. The store is doing well, but it's only been two years. We're not in a position to pay off a quarter of a million dollars fast.
And Dean knows it. If the business went under, the inheritance we used wouldn't suddenly reappear. That was a one-time thing. Which means we'd have wasted that money by starting a business that failed—which only adds to how wrong this is.
The worst part, the thing that's sitting on my soul, is that this wouldn't just hurt me.
It would hurt my sister. My best friend.
The one person on this earth who understands me at every moment and never judges.
She is my constant, and I am hers. I would never, ever have gone out with Asher or accepted his marriage proposal if I knew this would happen. Never.
"I..." I flounder, unable to form a complete sentence.
"I know it sounds complicated," Dean says. His voice is so kind it makes me want to scream. "But it's really quite straightforward. Stay married to my son, and you'll never have to worry about money again. You'll have security. Stability. A future."
I already have a fucking future. The one where I’m marrying his son and building a life. But he doesn’t mean that. He means his future. The one he's designing.
"This is too generous," I hear myself say, like I'm outside my own body. "I don't need millions of dollars in real estate or for you to pay off my loans. I'm not marrying Asher for his money."
He barks out a harsh sounding laugh. "For my money," he corrects. "Asher doesn't have anything that isn't mine," Dean says. "And it'll be decades before he does."
The words land hard, no padding. Even after everything I've seen and heard from this man before now, they're chilling.
"That said," he continues, "I know you're not marrying him for money. You signed a prenup that favored my son and actually fought for it to be less friendly to you. You bought the cheapest house Asher could talk you into. You've taken nothing you weren't pushed to accept."
I go still. The house Asher and I chose together is beautiful. Updated. In a gorgeous, exclusive neighborhood on Lake Sammamish. But to Dean, it's modest. Reasonable. Almost embarrassing.
"I almost intervened on the house," Dean says. "But a reasonably priced, tasteful home has its uses. It makes the family appear grounded."
The family. My God. Like it's the mob. Dean watches me for a moment, like he's waiting for me to catch up.
"You're an oddity in my world, Julie. A genuinely..." He pauses, as if searching for a word he doesn't often use. "Decent person."
I'm not sure if that's a compliment.
"And because of that," he says, "I want to make sure you're protected."
"Protected from what?"
He studies me. For one second, something almost like pity moves across his face. Then it's gone.
"The first years of marriage can be difficult."
"I’m understand that. I'm marrying Asher because I love him, and I’m prepared for the ups and downs of the life we’ll build together. Life isn’t a fairytale. It takes work. And we’re willing to do that work, together."
"I know that you are."
"He loves me. We're good. So why do this?"
"Love is an unreliable foundation for a life." Dean says it simply. No bitterness. No drama. Just fact. "Assets are better. Commitments are better. Consequences are better."
My brow pinches. Consequences?
"Children deserve stability," he adds.
The words come from nowhere. My stomach dips. "Children?"
"You're almost twenty-six and Asher is about to turn thirty. So you're young." he says. "You have time. But as you build a life together, as you have a family, stability will matter more than whatever feelings happen to be loudest in the moment."
"You really don't have to do this," I say. "You can tear all of this up, and we'll never talk about it again."
He shakes his head. "No. I've spent a fortune buying my idiot son out of bad situations of his own making."
He has?
"For the first time, I'm putting money into something that may actually matter."
"Asher is a good man."
Dean is silent for a few moments. Finally, he says, "I'm glad you think so. I hope you always feel that way."
A chill moves through me. "He makes me happy," I say, because I need him to understand. Because I need myself to understand. "I would never have agreed to marry him if I didn't think we'd grow old together. This is my forever."
Dean's expression doesn't soften. "That's what I'm encouraging here."
"I don't like the idea of having something so transactional between us."
He inclines his head. "That's because you have the luxury of believing love and transactions are separate things."
My mouth goes dry.
"They aren't," he says. "Not in families like mine."
I look down at the documents again. The numbers.
The signatures. The building. My shop. My life.
I have to say no. I have to stop this wedding.
I can't enter into an agreement like this.
"I’m sorry. I can't do this. I won't do this. My business isn’t just about me. It’s my sister, too. Jamie... I just can't do this to her."
He cocks his head and stares at me like I'm a science experiment that's gone off the rails.
"You want to say no? Truly?"
I nod. "Yes." I'm sick to my stomach but I'm firm about that.
"That's… a surprise. It shouldn't be, though. I should've seen this coming. You're made differently, and I respect that. But it’s too late, Julie. All of this, everything you just read, it's already done."
"Done?"
"Yes. In fact, the clock started two days ago. So it's too late to walk it back."
He takes the folder from my hands and puts it back into his desk drawer. The click of the drawer closing sounds final.
"There’s no need to panic. Everything's taken care of. All you have to do is build the life you want with my son and hang in there, even when he's an idiot. I'll make sure he knows how important your happiness is. This will work out for you."
I'm fucking spiraling so hard I can barely stand. This is a disaster.
He opens another drawer and removes a square black box. He slides it across the desk.
"One last gift."
My eyes fall on it and stay there.
"Your car isn't appropriate anymore. My assistant picked up your new one today. White Audi Q8. Top of the line. The key fobs are inside."
"I don't want..." I swallow. "I can't accept this."
"You already have."
My head snaps up.
His expression doesn't change.
“Asher can't know about this. About the conditions. No one can. That includes your sister. You may tell her that I paid off the loan so that your monthly payments no longer include interest. But otherwise, you will stay silent until the five years are up," he says.
In this situation, silence is no different than lying. But I'm trapped.
"You’re accepting the car because Asher saw me bring you in here and he will expect me to give you something. A car will satisfy him." His expression tells me there's no use arguing. And honestly, at this point, the car is the least of my problems.
"Okay. Thank you," I say. The words taste wrong. I am thankful for none of this.
"No, Julie." Dean's gaze holds mine. "Thank you."
I don't know what to do with that.
"I truly didn't think he could pull it off."
"Pull what off?"
The look on his face is more pity than pride before it smooths out into his usual mask. "Find someone appropriate."
The word lands between us. Appropriate. Like I'm a skirt of reasonable length.
"By the time you crossed my desk, I'd long since given up on him," Dean says. "For the first time in his life, my son truly surprised me."
Crossed his desk. The phrase sticks somewhere sharp. What the fuck does that mean? He says no more. Just turns and heads for the door.
The sound of laughter and conversation drifts in from the hall when he opens it. Then he's gone.
I stand there alone in his office, trying to process everything that just happened. In under ten minutes, he reshaped my entire life. Not for the better.
Dean Stevens didn't give me security. He found the one thing I would never abandon, tied a rock to it and then wrapped a weighted chain around it for good measure.