Chapter 2
Chapter two
Luca
Once a month, like clockwork, my parents send a prospective bride my way.
After a whole slew of rock solid NDA agreements, debriefings, and legal threats from my lawyer, Samson Stonewell, followed by an intensely awkward dinner, said woman leaves, no longer prospective of anything and having no desire to be my wife.
To be fair, it’s not my face that chases them away. It’s my attitude.
I know my parents mean well. I know they love me and that they’re worried, but honestly?
This is just fucked up.
Every time I reject a potential bride, they only get more determined to find a woman who doesn’t exist. I don’t discourage their efforts because it’s so much easier to let them do this than to try to convince them that I’m fine, it’s all fine, and everything is always going to be fine.
Money can buy silence, but it can also buy silence.
When people think of New York, they no doubt think of the wildly vibrant, densely populated New York City.
But just over two hundred miles away, the Adirondacks are an entirely different world.
If you want to be rich and famous and at the heart of everything, you go to the city.
If you want to be rich and not famous and at the heart of yourself alone, you come out here.
I’m just one of many who sought seclusion in the quiet beauty of this place.
I was lucky I had the means to disappear and withdraw when I needed to.
It’s the last Friday of the month, which means fuck my life night. I mean, date night.
Though Stonewell meets the women for the initial terror session, err, I mean debriefing, it’s Adam who leads them in, their eyes wide and looking like they’ve just seen multiple ghosts.
Stonewell can be incredibly convincing. He’s very discouraging when it comes to things like people ever mentioning a single word about me outside of these walls, and he’s also tremendously helpful when it comes to disabusing my parental arranged dates of the notion that they’re going to strike it rich by marrying me.
I have the table set, the dishes all prepared and laid out. In that respect, I like to be prepared. Also? I’ll never stop loving to cook, and at least this is an excuse to do something extravagant.
Adam’s footsteps have a particularly heavy tread tonight.
It’s twenty-two minutes after seven. I prefer that my guests be punctual, but I know not to be too much of a bastard about it.
Adam approaches me at the window. I’m very careful to keep my back turned during the first few minutes of acclimation.
“Sorry,” Adam whispers, but not all that quietly.
“She got here early, but seemed confused and a little bit hostile. It took Stonewell an extra bit of time to get the paperwork squared away. I hope this hasn’t ruined your meal. ”
At first, Adam was another stipulation my parents forced on me—a live-in caregiver—but it worked out. Adam is as close to a friend as anyone I have. He’s not just a nurse. He does whatever I need him to do, including playing the role of butler for these evenings, seeing as he finds it hilarious.
His ability to laugh about this is one of the only reasons I can bear it.
The debriefing that comes after usually makes for a riot.
Not at the expense of the poor women who are unfortunate enough to have to endure this, but at the whole world.
If I couldn’t laugh about how karma made me its bitch, I might actually toss myself off my front balcony.
And seeing as this house is a timber frame built right over the lake, that would only result in me having a swim.
“It’s fine,” I reply.
“Okay, I’ll be in my room. Save me some leftovers, yeah?”
“The whole table is full. I guarantee there’s a week’s worth of food there.”
Adam laughs and saunters off, whistling loudly.
I’ve angled myself so I can give the room the good side of my face but also side eye my guest. I know what she sees.
A tall, well-built man elegantly dressed all in black, backlit by the sun setting on the lake, and a feast of a spread laid out on the table.
I don’t skimp on the candles, and the chandelier over the table still happens to be built of antlers—sigh—so the whole thing has a very antique, homey lodge meets old money feel about it.
What I see surprises me.
This woman doesn’t look like all the rest. This woman. Nice. Stonewell already gave you her name. It’s Callie. Use it. I find my lips twitching, aching to break out into a grin.
Callie doesn’t seem much like a Callie. She came in full goth for one.
Goth? Can that word be used like that? Her hair is long, straight, and jet black.
Like the blue black of a crow’s feather.
She’s rocking pale foundation or face paint—I have no idea bout this—accentuated by her heavy black eyeliner, long lashes, and black lipstick.
She’s not short, especially not with the huge platform boots she’s sporting.
Black tights lead up to a knee-length black velvet dress, the batwing sleeves long enough to brush the floor.
The only splash of color in the outfit is a red velvet choker with a little silver spider hanging from an oval-shaped red stone.
One other notable detail? She looks completely pissed off.
This is generally the part of the night where the regret at agreeing to whatever it is my parents promised sets in. After I turn around, it goes downhill from there. Fast.
I show her more of my face while she stands there with her hands balled into fists at her side, but it’s only so I can fully appreciate her expressive taste in fashion.
“Let me guess,” I venture. “You had this situation forced on you too.”
Her face doesn’t relax fully, but she does look less like she’s about to undergo six back-to-back root canals.
“There’s been a nice dinner prepared for us. If you don’t mind, we could hate our lives and barely speak to one another while eating?”
Her hands clench and unclench, and her shoulders sink as she lets out a breath.
“It would be a shame to let good food go to waste.” She turns to the table, where two places are set, one at each end.
It’s not a monolith, but it could seat at least sixteen people. “Did you intentionally boobytrap this?”
“Nothing is poisoned, I assure you.”
“We’re supposed to talk, I assume.” She motions to the plate way down at the end. “Even if it’s forced, shouting at each other to be heard is only going to make it seem like I’m angry.”
“Are you?”
“At being here?” Her brows have been drawn on.
They’re whip-thin but still quite able to draw together over the bridge of her dainty nose.
A septum piercing sparkles in the antler lighting.
“Yes. You’re right. It wasn’t my choice.
I’m not mad at you, though. Your parents arranged this with mine. There was nothing we could do.”
“Do you know about what happened then?” We said we’d sit, but we haven’t.
“My mom mentioned something,” she mumbles. She has a nice voice. It’s sweet. It doesn’t match all that black. “That you were in an accident and that you’ve had some surgeries.”
Her honesty is refreshing. There’s nothing worse than having to endure meeting people and watching them go through the stages of pretending that the one side of my face doesn’t sort of resemble a half-rotten head of cauliflower.
“You’d be surprised at the damage a ladle can do when hurled at high velocities, not to mention the shrapnel a jar of pickled vegetables can turn into. Or the hot oil.”
“You had a run-in with vegetables?” she asks.
“At high velocity.”
“Well then, let me see,” she says.
This is it. The wretched moment of truth.
I used to think that if I weren’t so dramatic about it, it wouldn’t be so bad, but I’ve been proven wrong.
Every. Time. It’s so much easier to face the window than it is to face someone else’s horror and disgust. I don’t like to etch images into someone’s brain to be used for nightmare fodder later.
My face is vastly better after the surgeries, but it’s still the opposite of a work of art.
“I’ll tell you it’s alright to scream, gasp, or cry, but if you have to throw up, please let me know ahead of time. Adam would insist on cleaning it up, and for someone in the medical profession, his stomach is shaky at the best of times.”
She laughs, then stops, groaning. “Oh my god. Is that actually based on experience, or is that just your way of trying to make the best of a bad situation? I do agree that sarcasm can be fun.”
“So far, no. But prospective wife number seven did faint. I caught her, and she came to while I was lowering her to the floor, which caused her to faint again.”
“Are you serious?”
“About which part?” I ask.
“All of it.”
“Unfortunately,” I say.
“It’s just all very… uh… gothic. But you’re missing the castle and the royalty status.”
The rich, rolling sound of my laughter surprises me. Her calling me gothic is hilarious. But she’s serious too.
“I know I’m a recluse, but you’re right. No castle. Just a timber frame home with a bunch of big stone arches that rise right out of the water like some kind of medieval miracle. The house used to be a bed and breakfast.”
“Really?”
It’s not my style, but at the time, I wasn’t worried about the damn architecture. I just needed to creep to somewhere dark and isolated to lick my wounds and await the surgeries that would take me from monstrous to… less monstrous.
“Yes. It might not have been exactly what I wanted, but at least one side is a lake, and the other is gated. It makes it rather hard for people to jailbreak their way in. Not that it hasn’t happened.”
“I read that story that journalist wrote. Apparently, he camped out for a month.”