Unholy Matrimony (Unedited)

11

N.

There weren't obvious moments in my life I wished my mother was still alive, I certainly didn't wish her dead but I hadn't spent my five out of my nine years with my mother wishing her suffering would end.

There wasn't many milestones in my life for my mother to be present for,

I wasn't permitted to attend regular high school so there was no first day pictures, no prom or graduation for my mother to weep over. There was no advice on boys to be given and the first time I experienced my menstrual cycle I had to ask an older maid for help a two days after attending my mothers funeral. 
But now, now more than anything in the world I wish she was here or at the very least that I had my grandfathers number.
I wanted to ask, to know- what was my mothers reaction to her arranged marriage?
Had she draped a gilded smile on her face while she burned from the inside out? Did she scream, yell and raise hell or was there no reaction at all, had my grandfather sucked the life out of her until everything was numbing too?

I felt like the cage I was locked in all my life was now a bolted vault. There were four steel walls closing in on me.

"I'm sorry, what?" I grimaced, Selene's  chair scraped against the hardwood floors, my fork rattled against my still untouched plate and beside me her red manicured nails thudded against the table and she slammed her hands into the tabletop. "Nalani!? Na-fucking-lani is not the one he is here to marry! This is-" My ears were starting to ring with the amount of her screaming, all the while I was suffocating in the cage it felt like I was being locked in, Selene seemed to be trying to pry open the door to get in.

"I have no interest in a marriage with a vapid woman who will only run my money and my sanity into the ground." Every time the man spoke a chilling silence swelled after. Gazing at him through my lashes he seemed even more domineering.
Eyes as green as sea moss and hair that seemed to glow like sunshine have never at all seemed like intimidating features, on this man- they were suffocatingly beautiful and dangerous.
He seemed crafted to allure one into their own demise.

"And you think Nalani is anything less of these things?" Rene scoffs, I swallow past the pine needles in my throat. It also seems that all formal pleasantries have been dismissed.
There had never been more than a few words spoken between Rene and I everyday, however she had no issue expressing her dislike for me to her friends and even occasionally my father.

Just as he did at the dinner that started this slow motion train wreck, my father remained silent. His wives catty jabs at his child were left unaddressed.

"I think she's more of a woman than you two will ever be." The edge in his tone is blade sharp, it cuts through the growing tension with a blow of finality.

"This however is an arrangement, the contract will only be truly negotiated with agreement from both sides." I blink slowly, wishing the ground would open up beneath me and swallow me whole.
Draco, was looking at me with, if I wasn't mistaken -amusement, his lips curved around his glass. My fist curled into my dress under the table, nails digging into the bed of my palms as heat spread in my chest.

There were several pairs of eyes on me now but the moldavite crystals were the heaviest of all. I could feel him looking at me like the sun was beaming on my skin.

My father still had not spoke and when I glanced at him his expression was unreadable, eyes cold and distant as usual. If I had not known this expression all my life I would've thought he was bored.
But I knew my fathers anger well, I knew it better than I knew the poetry I spent my days pouring myself into and even better than the curves of my cello.
This 'proposal' was being presented as a choice, but I knew if I declined the moment Don Bianchi left this estate, there's no words cruel enough to describe what my father might do to me.

"This is absolutely absurd, you cannot seriously expect me to stand aside as you plan to marry her." I swallow down a gulp of water, despite the bitterness in her town as she addressed me, I couldn't help but be grateful for her lack of respect. At least it kept my mouth shut longer, I knew I had to agree but I didn't necessarily want to say the words.

I was delaying the inevitable, maybe that's why my father had not stepped in. This meeting was just a formality, a gracious gesture to let the bride know of her wedding. My father and Don Bianchi had more than likely drawn up all the details and terms to their liking.

I was just a formality, a term in the contract that tied me to a man I knew nothing about for the rest of my life.

"I've had enough of this, my offer has been made and it will stand." Announcing his soon departure the large man that was now my fiancé stood. Hands slid into the pockets of his pressed, obviously expensive pants.
The hairs on my body stood on end as his shoes clicked off the floor, Selene dropping into her seat as he brushed past her.
Taking a deep breath in through my nose, his cologne climbed into my senses and I swayed involuntarily in my seat as his steps stopped beside my seat. My shoulder in like with the belt of his pants, his body heat radiated off his like a heater.

I was fighting every atom in my body to not move as his body bent, one large hand gripping the back of my chair as the other set a small, black velvet box on the table in front of me.
"Take a walk with me, wife."