“Ben, look at me. Rosie chose you because you make her feel safe. Give her that same strength now.”
“My promise,” he whispered.
Before I could ask what he was talking about, he turned to me.
His eyes held something I could not name.
“I need to talk to you,” he said. “Away from here.”
“I need to talk to you,”
He led me down the corridor into a small alcove near the stairwell.
“I made Rosie a promise,” Ben said. “Before they took her back. She said, ‘If I don’t wake up, you tell my everything.'”
“Tell me what?”
Ben reached inside his jacket.
“It’s time for you to understand why I really married her.”
‘If I don’t wake up, you tell my sister everything.’
I grabbed the wall to steady myself.
“Please, don’t ruin four years of watching my sister smile because of you.”
“You think I want to be standing in this hallway telling you this while she’s in there? Fighting.”
Every horrible thought I had ever pushed away came rushing back at once.
He had done it for money.
He had married her because I was the one he could not have, and Rosie was the closest he could get.
Every horrible thought I had ever pushed away
Ben pulled out a piece of paper and held it out to me.
“I made a promise, and I’m going to keep it. Just… it’s much worse than you think,” he said. “You’d better sit down.”
I took the paper with shaking fingers.
The first thing I noticed was the letterhead.
It was from my father’s law firm.
“It’s much worse than you think,”
The next thing I noticed was the payment schedule.
A six-figure sum.
Money to be paid to Ben if he married Rosie.
My parents’ signatures…
Ben’s signature.
The scream tore out of me before I could stop it.
I thought I understood exactly what I was looking at, but I would soon find out that there was so much more.
The payment schedule.
“You SOLD yourself to marry my sister?”
“I know what it looks like, but let me explain—”
