Way Down We Go

Chapter Seven

I didn't hear the threat from my legal team, or the walk to the car or the car ride back to the hotel. All I heard was my lawyer on the phone as I sat on that cold bench, leaning down with my head in my hands, tears in my eyes. The Valois weren't budging on anything. And the forced marriage could easily be be proven otherwise by the fact my parents signed the contract when I was a child.

"Vickie," I whispered, pleading. "Vickie get me out of this. Make it all go away. I don't want to marry him." I pleaded. I couldn't give my company to the Valois. I couldn't marry the man who broke my heart.

"I know, I'm trying baby doll. I'm trying, but the contract was signed. I know you didn't sign it, but they won't accept that." she replied. "He's said no to the money, making things a little easier and harder for all sides."

"Just get me out of this, please," I pleaded. "I can't marry him. I don't want to. Can't you call somebody? An ambassador? Anyone? Anyone that can make this go away?"

"I'm doing everything I can, promise. I'll call you tomorrow afternoon with what I've found, okay. And, if worst comes to worst and we can't get you out of the marriage, we can protect your money and company from them if we have no other option. Okay?"

"Okay," I whispered. She hung up and I lowered my cell phone, sniffling a little. Small tears slid down my face as I buried my face in my hands, my heart hurting in my chest. I felt out of control, something I remembered as a child, something I hated more than anything.

"Do you hate me that much?" A voice asked. I jumped and nearly screamed, for I'd been assured the gardens had been vacated.

I turned and there he was.

Francis.

"What?" fell from my lips.

"I heard your conversation, and your little visit to my father this afternoon," he came close to me and sat next to me. "You don't want to marry me?"

Anger bubbled in my chest. "You, of all people, ask me that? You expect me to want to marry you? After what you did to me?!" I asked.

"Uh, no." he said, more like a question. I knew from our time as children and teenagers that he hated when I was right. "We owe it to our fathers, I thought you wanted to make them happy."

"My father is dead," I pointed out. "and yours is trying to steal my company and get me to marry you, against my will, because of a stupid contract that was signed when I was two years old!" I said angrily.

"Look, I don't want this, either." he sighed.

"But you've agreed to it! My lawyer told me you have! You're ruining me and stealing my company from me!"

"I know you're upset and don't want to do this, for you have everything to loose. But, don't you think we owe it to each other, our families, our companies, to at least give it a chance?" he asked.

"My family is made up of my half brothers and my girlfriends, none of whom need you or your family. My company is thriving in my self built empire, my company doesn't need your bankrupt one! I don't owe you or your family a damn thing!" I bit back. "It isn't as simple as you make it out to be!"

"What's not simple?"

"If I marry you, you and your family gain some sort of entitlement in my companies! My shares! My money! If I marry you, I'll be giving up the chance to ever marry somebody I love and that loves me! If I marry you, I'll be giving you the opportunity to hurt me again, something, might I add, I cannot do!" I wanted to scream at him, but restrained myself. "If I marry you, your fathers' company can grow and breed and prosper and spread, but what do I or my company get?! Some power hungry dictator who would gladly bleed my company and all of my families hard work dry for his own benefit! And some immature boy who proved to me who he really was when he lead me on, thinking that he actually loved me, before sleeping with some blonde whore and posing the pictures on the internet!" I stood up. "So, no, I do not want to marry you! Give me one reason why I should!"

"Because you're wrong! Because how can you be so sure I don't love you!" he pulled me back down onto the bench.

"Ask Olivia D'Amencourt!"

He sighed hard. "No matter what happened between she and I, I wasn't leading you on when we were teenagers."

"Why should I believe you?"

"Because it's the truth. When you came to me when we were six, I didn't know what to expect. My mother couldn't get pregnant again and she and father wanted a big family, so they found you. You were so broken. At the time, we were under the impression that you were simply an orphan, but after learning what actually happened to you, I just- I don't know. I knew I had to help you. I needed to help you. Don't you remember all those days where we sat on the floor in your room, just staring out the window or at the TV? All those times where we didn't talk, but still listened to each other? And when you got better and didn't need those pills any more," I closed my eyes and looked away, remembering being six and terrified and beaten and bruised every time it became time to sleep and Henry and Catherine used to have to sedate me every night to get some sleep, after finding me hiding under the bed. I remembered all those times where Catherine used to bathe my bruised body and run jugfuls of hot water down my bruised back and down my long hair and tender scalp, and all those times I didn't trust them to give me the pills and all those times where I used to hide before they gave them to me because I didn't trust what they would do to me. Childhood and adolescence were horrible, and I clung to the good things that happened, not the bad. Good things happened, of course, but the bad held a little more lenience.

He continued to talk, bringing me out of my memories. "and we became inseparable. We loved each other then, for those glorious two and a half years, but when you left, I was broken heated. I'd lost half of me, it felt like." I closed my eyes again, remembering the horrid day where I'd been forced to say goodbye to him. We had cried and clung to each other, like we'd never see each other again. And, in ways, we didn't. He may have seen me, but he didn't see Blaire or Angelina again.

"But when you came back, something changed. We were no longer brother and sister, there was something more between us. I'd never felt like that before, but, then mother and father sat me down one night and told me that they wanted me to marry in an arraigned marriage. We didn't know you were the girl I was supposed to marry, you were under another alias, but they told me I was going to marry Mariposa. I couldn't handle it. I went wild. Having my future decided for me, having to marry somebody that I didn't think I'd even met before, I couldn't do it. Mother and father were furious when they found out Olivia and I, even more so when they had figured that it was one of the reasons why you left. I didn't want to marry Mariposa because I didn't know her. In addition, I was a fifteen year old boy being told who he was going to marry. You have a far more superior reason to not to want to marry me, you have far too much to loose, but it won't be my love. You never lost that."

He got up and walked away.

"Then why did you break my heart?" I whispered into the wind.