41. Michael #5
The fake vows were said. The toast was made. The band played something stupid and expensive, and everyone clapped like they hadn’t just watched a hostage situation in high-end couture.
Krystal clung to my arm like a prize-winning calf at a rodeo. Glittering, purring, buzzing with the power trip of having me locked beside her.
She leaned in, red lips brushing my jaw. “Now, we consummate.”
Her voice was syrupy and smug, like she was checking off a line on some fucked-up family to-do list.
I didn’t respond. Just smiled like a good groom should.
Across the room, Brett locked eyes with me. A single lift of his brow, a twitch of a smirk.
Plan’s in motion.
He’d handled it—like he always did. Slipped Krystal a party favor laced with hallucinogens and enough MDMA to make a sociopath feel love. She was practically floating by the time he helped her to the suite. Purring about silk sheets and candlelight. Asking where I was.
What she got was something else entirely.
Brett had rigged it perfectly—some prototype AI sex bot from a startup sextech firm in Tokyo. Human skin texture, voice modulated with my cadence, even sprayed down with my signature cologne.
In the dark, high and rolling, she wouldn’t know the difference.
And she didn’t.
From outside the suite, Brett sent me a text:
"Mission accomplished. Your ‘wife’ is currently making love to a lithium battery with great enthusiasm."
I nearly choked on my scotch.
For now, the lie held.
Let them all think it was real. Let Krystal think she’d won.
But my real wife?
She was already far from here, hidden. Safe.
And when this empire finally cracked—when the kings fell and the bloodlines burned—Kate would still be mine.
She was humming.
Humming.
Krystal fucking K, in one of my shirts—my real ones—parading around the presidential suite like she just won a trophy instead of dry-humping a robot with Bluetooth.
I nursed my espresso like it was the only thing keeping me from choking on my own laughter.
“Oh my God, babe,” she purred, running her fingers through her tousled hair, “last night was transcendent.”
I raised a brow. “Was it?”
She winked. “You were insatiable.”
I forced a tight smile and looked out over the Vegas skyline. Brett had texted me the second she passed out—robot powered off, Krystal drooling on its shoulder.
It should’ve been horrifying.
Instead, it was the best thing I’d seen since sunrise on my real wedding.
Krystal prattled on, pouring herself mimosa number three. “I don’t remember everything, but I remember you were rough. So rough. Like—caveman Michael. It was hot.”
I almost choked.
“Glad I could deliver,” I said dryly, sipping the coffee again to hide the twitch of my lips.
She walked over and draped herself across the couch, her head in my lap. “Now we’re really husband and wife, huh?”
I glanced down at her and thought about Kate—her scent still lingering on my skin, the way she whispered I love you into my mouth just before we fell asleep.
Krystal blinked up at me, waiting.
I smiled the way I’d practiced since I was thirteen.
“Yeah,” I lied. “Now we are.”
Krystal stretched out on the bed like a cat in heat, the sheet sliding just enough to make her intentions obvious.
“Round two?” she cooed, lips still stained from the cherry gloss she never stopped reapplying. “Or three… four? I lost count.”
I set my watch on the dresser with a click, jaw tight. I couldn’t keep doing this—this theater. But the show had to go on.
I pulled on my shirt and stepped into my slacks, buttoning them with deliberate calm. “Can’t.”
She pouted.
I didn’t flinch.
“You tired me out, babe,” I said, tone dry. “You damn near broke me.”
That smug smile came right back.
“I need to eat something with protein, and your uncle’s already blowing up my burner. I’ve got three back-to-back meetings starting in less than an hour.”
Her expression cracked just a little.
I added the final dagger. “We’re married now, right? Which means I work for him. That was the deal, wasn’t it?”
She scoffed and reached for her mimosa.
“Take it up with him,” I muttered as I grabbed my suit jacket. “I gotta go.”
I walked out before she could fake another pout.
Before she could make me vomit in my own mouth.
Before I did something stupid like rip this mask off and tell her the truth: that I had a real wife.
A real marriage. And last night wasn’t the beginning of our life together—it was the punchline to a damn joke.
The cigar smoke hit me before I even cleared the bottom step.
Uncle Roman was already mid-toast, glass of bourbon in one hand, a fat Cuban in the other. Half the council was there—councilmen, syndicate reps, tribal land execs—all dressed like kings and criminals. Which, to be fair, they were.
“There he is!” Roman boomed. “The man of the hour. Husband to our Krystal. You did it, nephew.”
He walked toward me, eyes gleaming, the grin of a man who believed he had the world on a leash. He clapped a heavy hand on my shoulder. “They didn’t think you had it in you. But I did. I knew you’d do what had to be done.”
I didn’t flinch. Just nodded. Played the part.
“I’m proud of you,” he said, voice quieter now, but not softer. “You chose loyalty. You chose family. Duty. Over… well. Anything else.”
His implication was clear.
I swallowed the urge to laugh in his face.
Instead, I accepted the glass someone handed me, raised it like I meant it. The men clapped. The room swirled with approval and smoke and lies.
Let them believe it.
Let them all think I’d taken Krystal. Wed her. Bedded her. Signed my soul over in blood and sex and power.
Because from here on out, that’s all this was.
Business.
Redmond clapped me on the back like we were blood brothers instead of political enemies waiting for the first excuse to slit each other's throats.
“Krystal’s already texting me,” he said, grinning like a proud uncle. “Says she’s very satisfied. Happy to be your wife. Gushing, actually.”
I raised my glass to hide the twitch in my jaw. The bourbon burned less than my pride.
“That’s… great,” I managed.
Redmond chuckled. “At this rate, we’ll have a baby sooner than summer. Hell, we might even get twins.”
I nearly choked on the drink.
He laughed harder. “Didn’t peg you for a stallion, Michael. Good to know.”
I forced a smirk, the kind that looked real enough to fool them all. I’d spent my whole life perfecting that face—the one that said, I’m in control even when everything was a powder keg about to blow.
But inside, all I could think was:
She slept with a robot, bro. A literal f--king robot.