The Bride: An Age-Gap, Marriage of Convenience Romance

Chapter Three

Chapter Three

Leaning back as far as I could in the chair, I propped my right elbow on the arm rest, letting the right side of my head be held up by my hand. Heat flooded my cheeks as embarrassment started to sink in. Mr. Napoli had tried my mother's number seven different times. Each time he took a long pause after he hung up the phone, to which I gazed up at him during. The muscle on the left sight of his cheek twitched, his jaw clenched before he released it and then he would try her number again.

"Maybe you should just give up." I murmured weakly, letting my head hang in shame. "She's not going to answer."

"How about your dad?" He hit the clear button on the receiver three times to get a dial tone. His calm façade was starting to crack, his features were hardening and he was insistently rapping his knuckles on the mahogany desk.

"I don't have one. He's dead." I didn't add the good riddance like I wanted to on the end of that sentence.

"Brother? Sister? Aunt? Grandma? Great aunt? Third cousin?" He slammed the phone down with such force, the lamp on his desk flickered off and then back on again. "You can't tell me there's not a single person in this world that doesn't care about where you are right now."

"Well, if my mother's hallucinating, I'm probably right where I'm supposed to be." I might even be doing a little jig for her. A few months back, when she was lucid and coming off her high, she had requested I do that little dance routine she loved so much. When I told her I had never danced for her, she laughed and called me a selfish little fool, telling me I had upset her. Although, she seemed to be perfectly fine and content ten minutes later when she was shooting up again. Obviously, I hadn't upset her that much.

"You know what, give me your name. There has to be someone somewhere that I can call to come pick you up."

"It's Neveah. Neveah Himmel."

He grabbed a notepad and scribbled down my name. "Spell it for me."

"It's heaven backwards," I said before I listed off each letter that spelled out my name. I wasn't sure my mother named me Neveah because she thought heaven was where I belonged. She had said numerous times to me that I was a mistake and I had ruined and derailed her life. She even spoke about how she attempted to abort me numerous times, taking pills, throwing herself against hard objects, punching her stomach and even having my father push her down the stairs. I was around thirteen years old when she sat me down in our living room, right before our house was foreclosed and she basically blamed it on me for being so expensive. But, her drug problem wasn't just as pricey, if not more?

Cade Napoli opened up his mouth to speak, but a loud knock on his office door behind me startled me, making me jump. Cade frowned, before hanging up the phone into its home on the cradle for good, stood up and adjusted his suit jacket accordingly. He called for whoever was on the other side of the door to come in, and a short man who didn't look an inch over five feet came busting through the door, a panicked look on his face.

"I'm so sorry Mr. Napoli, but we have a situation." The man's eyes bounced back and forth between Cade and I, nervously. "Marianna is asking for you, sir. She's in the ladies lounge."

"Tell her I'll be there shortly, Jeremy. Thank you." And with that, Jeremy knew he was dismissed, scurrying back where he came from.

Cade took the length around his desk in long, purposeful strides until he ended up in front of me. Pulling at the thighs of his pants to scoot them up, he crouched down on his haunches so we were eye level. The water in my stomach from the bar upstairs churned uncomfortably, and I pressed a hand to my chest.