Virtue & Vanity (38 page)

“So you say again but... Why would she do that?” I looked at him incredulously, trying to determine whether or not he was telling the truth by meticulously inspecting his expression, but the answer was inconclusive.

“I wish I knew why, but I’m afraid she is the only person who can give you the answer to that question.”

His emerald eyes bored into mine for a few moments, taking in my reaction to what he was saying to me. Before continuing, his lips formed a weak, almost reassuring smile and the fact that he still treated me like I was made of glass should have bothered me, but for some reason it didn’t bother me at all.

“All I can do is tell you what I know about the way in which the events that eventually led to our marriage had taken place, and maybe I can make a few wild assumptions as to why your mother did what she did, but I think they are probably close to the truth.”

“You don’t have to tell me your assumptions, Sebastian. It’s not that difficult to figure out that she sold me for cash.”

“Perhaps.” Sebastian shrugged, but his eyes still held the expression of mysterious depths. “But I think there’s more to it. Your mother is a very interesting individual, Isabelle. One wouldn’t want to have her as an enemy. Trust me on that one.”

A sarcastic smile escaped my lips, because sadly, that had indeed been the only thing I trusted him on at that moment.

“Sebastian, if what you say is true...” I gave him a quizzical look. “I don’t see how it could have gotten that far. You already had a fiancé. Despite your attempt to give us traits worthy of spies and mobsters, we’re only poor people from some godforsaken town in the middle of nowhere and even my mother, no matter how delusional she was, wouldn’t have dared to interfere in the union between a powerful New York millionaire and a rich lady who was groomed to be his wife ever since she was a little girl.” I confronted him with the things I knew were true for a fact and he couldn’t have denied them. And to my surprise, he didn’t.

“That’s true. She didn’t interfere between me and Cora. Something else did.”

Again, his expression turned darker when he mentioned the name of that woman and I swallowed a lump of pain and disappointment.

“What was it then?” I demanded because his reactions to her were driving me crazy. He claimed to have wanted to make me understand, but when I searched for answers about his relationship with her, he closed up and pulled into himself. “Sebastian,” I called his name almost pleadingly. “There must be a reason why you didn’t end up marrying the woman of your choice, the woman you love!”

“It’s not that simple.” He stared at me with what looked like despair and once again tried to convince me in the sincerity of his words. “Isabelle, I swear it has nothing to do with love. It just hurts to hear her name because I still care about her and Dianne’s accusations have only reminded me that I’ve let her down.”

“How did you let her down?” I asked and just like that the truth behind his words dawned on me. “By not marrying her?”

“I guess you could put it that way,” he sighed, “but essentially I’ve let her down by not being there when she needed me the most.”

His explanation left me even more confused than before and it felt like we were running in the same mesmerized circles that were getting us nowhere.

“Why would she need you?” I asked firmly, but he just looked at me with a blank stare, not saying a word. I was tired of this game. I was tired of being held in this dark ignorance, denied to be let in on all those intriguing and possibly dangerous secrets that had a scary boomerang effect on my life. I needed answers. “Tell me, Sebastian,” I urged him and closed my eyes, gathering the courage to ask. “Why does it hurt to hear her name?”

As I muttered the words in a silent whisper, my eyes slowly opened and met his shiny ones that were filled with undeniable traces of grief.

For a while he just stared at me with his lips parted, ready to speak, but still nothing came out and it filled me with anticipation.

“Because she’s dying, Isabelle,” he said in a genuine, brittle voice and I just stared at him in shock. “She’s going to die and there’s nothing I can do about it.”

While trying to make sense of what he had told me, the memory of a beautiful, sophisticated and elegant woman sprang to my eyes and I couldn’t have imagined he was telling the truth.

“How could she be dying?” I asked in disbelief. “The last time I saw her she was perfectly fine.”

Sebastian smiled sadly. “By now you must have realized that nothing is the way it seems to be in our world. Just like me, she was raised to pretend to be fine, even when she’s breaking inside. Isabelle,” he took a deep breath, “Cora has cancer and it’s very bad. She doesn’t have much time left.”

A long, stretching break filled the room around us with stillness and my heart started thumping louder as I took in what his words had actually meant.

“So that’s why you didn’t marry her?”

The weight of my question created an unbearable pressure on my chest as the pieces of the puzzle slowly fell together into one messy structure that painted the disturbing picture of our crushing reality.

He looked away from me and fixated his gaze to the floor. “That’s part of the reason,” he said in a quiet voice. “The real reason is because eventually it became clear that she would be unable to provide me with an heir and that was when all of this unholy mess started to unravel.” He smirked sarcastically, but it sounded as if he was in pain and I knew exactly which part of the story he was referring to.

“This unholy mess…” I started in a small, humble voice. “You and me.” His hand twitched at my words and his eyes turned towards me in a speed of light, observing me brokenly. “How did it unfold, then?”

“That’s not what I meant, Isabelle,” he said, his face holding an apologetic expression. “Everything around is messed up and unholy, but not... not you... not us. Can’t you see that I love what you brought into my life? Why can’t you see that I—”

“I don’t want your sweet talk, Sebastian. I want the truth!” I attempted to say in a firm voice.

“You only want a part of the truth, angel,” he muttered more to himself, but I had heard him.

He cleared his throat and looked at me with an undecipherable stare as he was about to talk about the unfortunate moment in which my presence had caused commotion in his otherwise probably perfectly organized life.

Chapter Forty-One

Seconds that felt like years dragged on as he kept his stare on my worried face.

“This heritage that made every heir of the Everett Empire marry a girl from Rosemont descent, had lasted for quite a few decades and a few generations of my family had managed to follow the strict rule of finding a woman who had the status and upbringing that matched our own.” He paused, looking at me longingly. “Cora’s condition made us the first couple who couldn’t follow up on that rule and it meant that I had to find a new wife, regardless of the fact that I didn’t want one. My father and his lawyers agreed that it would be inappropriate for me to marry some simple girl from Rosemont.” Since I gaped at him, taking in his every word, I noticed the change in his expression when he uttered those last words because it was clear that the word they used was not a simple girl, but a gold digger. He was being courteous enough to spare me the gruesome details. Desperate to learn the truth, I urged him to continue with my impatient glare. “So they came up with the contract which would ensure us that the marriage wouldn’t be permanent. It would only last until I would be provided with an heir.” He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “When I read the dreadful content of that contract, I was provided with hope for the first time after Cora got sick because I couldn’t have imagined that there was a woman alive who would have been willing to accept that arrangement, regardless of the amount of money she would be given...”

He paused, postponing the explosion in order to take in my reaction. My eyes held his anticipating gaze and I pushed myself to hold my head higher. It was time for me to deal with it. It was time for me to grow up and leave the world of fairytales.

“It’s okay,” I said in a clear whisper and there wasn’t even a trace of anything that would show I was even slightly afraid, although inside, I was more terrified than ever in my life. “I need ... I need to hear it.”

Sebastian nodded, and he got just a bit closer to me, offering me his silent comfort from afar. “And I was right,” he said in a steady voice that managed to spread like restless waves in my direction. “I was right because nobody wanted to accept the conditions that in my opinion resembled the devil’s bargain. When both my father and his lawyers realized that, we became aware that for the first time after years of suppression caused by that crazy man’s will, we might have found a loop hole, because if there wasn’t a bride, there couldn’t have been a wedding and therefore we couldn’t be held accountable for not fulfilling the demands of a person who had obviously been out of his mind when he created that despicable piece of paper which managed to ruin lives of almost all of his offspring.”

As he finished the incredible story that only seemed to be the prelude to the real reasons that led to our marriage, I was flabbergasted because the more he spoke and revealed, the more I was confused and it seemed that for every new piece of puzzle he would bring to the table, there were another two pieces missing.

“I don’t understand.” I gazed at him, baffled. “If you’re saying that you’ve managed to find a way out of respecting the will of Collin Everett, then how... how in God’s name did you end up marrying me?”

Contours of a warm smile appeared on his face and I saw the Sebastian who made me laugh; the Sebastian who spoke gently to that little girl in McDonald’s; the Sebastian who called me in the middle of the night just to say that he missed me.

“I don’t want to hurt you, angel.” His fingers lifted up, wanting to reach out to me and caress my face, but after only one short moment of hesitation in which he might have been contemplating on the idea, he rested his hand back on his lap in defeat. “Does it really matter how?” He asked softly and sighed when I didn’t offer him an answer. “If I tell you that I feel like I’m the happiest man in the universe for having you as my wife, is the way in which our paths collided really relevant?”

His question sounded like the voice of reason that tempted me to tell him that it wasn’t important to know, but I couldn’t do that. I burned to know.

“Sebastian, it matters. No matter how much it hurts, it matters,” I said sincerely, offering an explanation for my request. “When people play with your life and treat you like you’re a thing, knowing why is all that matters. Otherwise, you can never let go and move on.” A small nod of Sebastian’s head was all the conformation I needed that he understood so I bravely repeated my question. “So tell me... How on earth did I, a simple girl from Rosemont, end up being the wife of Sebastian Everett?”

Taking time to put himself together, he stared at the tiled floor for a few moments and he seemed to be lost in deep thought. I couldn’t help thinking that he was creating a script of what he would tell me in his head.

“There’s not much to tell really.” He turned back and looked towards me. “After a couple of weeks passed by in complete peace, without anyone so much as mentioning the ridiculous idea of a temporary marriage, I was convinced that I would be free of this dreadful commitment to marry a complete stranger,” he said in a serious voice and then, a sarcastic smile appeared on his lips, “but I rejoiced too early because one morning I got to work and I was welcomed by a very unpleasant surprise. There was an e-mail from a woman who was stating that she found out that I was looking for a wife from Rosemont and she just happened to have a lovely daughter who would be too happy to fill in the part.”

My heart started thumping like crazy because I knew who he was referring to and I couldn’t deny that it sounded just like my mother. “And...” I started asking with restraint. “And what did you do?”

“It was obvious that she had some connections that provided her with certain information, but I wasn’t really worried so I ignored her,” Sebastian said in a strange voice and his features formed a frowning expression. “At least I tried to ignore her, but the e-mails kept coming and each one was more aggressive and distasteful than the other. In the last e-mail that sent me over the edge, she claimed to have possessed evidence of the nature of our ties with the city of Rosemont and she had threatened to take them to the press.”

“So eventually you replied to this woman?” I asked in a weary voice, still refusing to make sense of what he was telling me.

“No,” he sighed, “I didn’t think that contacting her was a smart idea so I forwarded all those e-mails to my father. Although we weren’t sure if she was bluffing, we couldn’t have taken the risk of a public scandal so he decided that we would send one of our lawyers there with a copy of the contract, counting on the fact that she would politely decline our offer, just like everyone else.” A sarcastic smile curved his lips as he shook his head in disbelief. “Big mistake on our part!”

Caught up in the aftermath of his words, my heart jumped to my throat as if I didn’t know the outcome of this story. As if I were an idiot who didn’t understand what Sebastian tried to imply. “Why was that a mistake?” I observed him in surprise. “What did the woman do?”

“According to Rosario, the moment she read the contract, she was ecstatic, claiming that her daughter would be more than happy to oblige to the terms that were required,” he said in a quiet voice that faded away by the time he got to say the last word.

I swallowed. That meant that she knew it. My mother had known my destiny all along and she had done nothing to prevent it from happening.

“Wasn’t anyone concerned about what the daughter who allegedly wanted to marry you had to say?” I asked in disappointment, shooting daggers at him with my eyes.

When he looked at me like he was hurt, I yielded to him again, and as I was turning weaker, I could feel my stare becoming softer until I gazed at him with burning compassion.
Damn you, Sebastian...

“I don’t know the details of that meeting,” he started speaking with apparent caution, “but Rosario described a girl who confirmed every word of what the mother had said.”

With those words, the painful memory of that first meeting with Mrs. Moran and Dr. Mayhem sprang to my mind and I remembered my shameful weakness. When I thought of how I nodded and silently confirmed every single one of my mother’s despicable statements, I felt ashamed of myself and something heavy pressed on my chest. How could I have let that woman brainwash me with such terror that I had let her ruin my life, doing nothing except for watching it happen like I was an uninvolved bystander who was completely unaffected by the consequences?

“She did what she had to do,” I muttered sadly and Sebastian nodded again, like he understood. “So Mrs. Moran told you I was a gold digger and you... you believed her.” I concluded with traces of defeat ringing in my small voice.

“Isabelle,” he said softly. “You can’t really blame me for not thinking of the possibility that a mother would actually coerce her child into something like that.” He sighed. “And back then, I was too busy handling my own life. It was a mess. With Cora being sick and my obligations to run the company all by myself because of the disputes which were happening within the family, the life of the girl who was still a stranger and for all I knew wanted exactly the same as her mother was the last thing on my mind. And so was the slightest possibility that we would ever actually get married.” With that last sentence he revealed that he had been indeed talking about my mother and suddenly it became even more real and the implication of what it meant made me sick.

“So that’s how it ended?” I asked bitterly. “They told you that I wanted to sign the contract and you agreed to marry her lovely daughter.” As my voice echoed across the room, I couldn’t help but think that my conclusion almost ridiculously resembled a very twisted version of Cinderella.

“Sadly, that’s not the end of it, Isabelle. We tried to offer her money...
A lot
of money to give up the idea of pursuing marriage, but she said that if all she wanted was money she could always simply sell us out to the tabloids which meant that we were stuck. We couldn’t have claimed that we were unable to follow through with the will because now there was a bride who was willing to sign that contract,” he said without looking away from me and I felt like everything started crushing down around me.

Knowing my mother and the life she had, I could believe she would push me into this marriage in a craze to get her hands on a large amount of money. But to think that she would insist that I marry Sebastian despite the fact that it wasn’t necessary, was too much for me to bear and it was beyond my realm of acceptance. Besides, I couldn’t have imagined that she was capable of declining that much money when it was offered to her.

“It’s a very nice story, Sebastian, but I know my mother.” There was a strong presence of irony in my voice. “Elisa Walsh wouldn’t have declined the money because that’s the only thing she ever wanted.” My voice was cold, but there was a spark of rage burning inside me.

“Like I’ve said; I’m not closely familiar with her motives, but if you ask me, what your mother wanted was the status and the power along with the money. And she believed that this marriage would provide her with those things since she would be related to a family that was both rich and prominent.” He shrugged. “Or maybe there was even more to it, but I can’t really answer those questions. There are only two people who can do that; your mother and whoever rat us out to that witch,” he said with apparent disgust.

If what he said was true it meant that she deliberately chose to ruin me even though she could have had the money without making me marry Sebastian. But it couldn’t have been possible... could it? No, he couldn’t have told the right course of the events because even my mother couldn’t be capable of committing such a crime against her own flesh and blood. At the brink of despair, I closed my eyes in an attempt to remember the moments when she was kind to me. I was trying to evoke at least something that I could throw at Sebastian’s face as a reassurance, but all I could think of was a woman who constantly scowled at me, accusing me of being just as useless as my father. There were so many bad memories that made my heart ache. So many things that pointed out that Sebastian was telling the truth, but I couldn’t accept that.

“She wouldn’t do that...” I tried to speak clearly, but my voice started shaking.

Sebastian gazed at me with a strange glow in his eyes that appeared to have radiated the same something that always drew me to him. I cannot find the words to say how much I feel for you, Isabelle. His attempt to make amends for earlier returned to my mind as he stared at me in silence and I started shivering in desperation, holding on to the last remains of the only thing that kept me sane—denial.

“She w-wouldn’t,” I repeated, shaking my head at him and trying to hold back tears.

“Isabelle,” he muttered in a silent, convincing whisper and his expression resembled that of a man who was about to murder someone who was dear to him, “I’m afraid she would and she did.”

And indeed... Those rushed words and the silence that followed broke through my heart like a raging bullet, finally leaving it at peace to bleed to its slow death.

“No. My mother wouldn’t do that to me...” I twitched as the tearing sensation broke through my chest. It meant that my heart had given up on hope and that was when the voice of common sense took over, making me exhale in sheer agony as I closed my eyes, leaning my forehead on my knees.
Why did she do that to me?

There was an overload in my head and I didn’t know how to deal with it at the moment. As my teeth began to chatter in utter shock, I realized I was horribly cold and I had nothing that would keep me warm at the time. Fighting the cold, I almost curved into a ball at the edge of that leather sofa and tried to sink into numbness where I wouldn’t feel anything. The touch of soft fabric on my shoulders startled me and I looked up at Sebastian who was holding his suit jacket above me. Slowly, he lowered it over my shivering back and spread its front over my chest. In a moment, I was dazed by his familiar scent, that managed to evoke some of the pleasant memories in this moment of despair and like an unwanted reflex, a weak smile appeared on my lips as his hand reached out towards my face to wipe away the tears smeared all over my cheeks. Even though my mind screamed all sorts of warnings, I was unable to move and he ended up touching me, sending those electric shivers that spread along my skin with the force of a domino effect.