They Sold Me in a Crate to Pay His Debt, and the Devil Knelt and Called Me Wife novel · Chapter 3 of 16

Chapter 3: The River Road

Elias confesses her mother died in his arms, Eliza marries him in his library the next day, and an invitation arrives telling him to bring the cripple.

I typed with my thumbs jabbing the glass.

Where were you?

The phone read it out, flat and polite.

Elias stood up.

He walked to the window and stood with his back to me, looking down at the dark park.

"On the river road," he said. "Nine years ago. October."

My chest went tight.

"Your mother called me that night. She said she was bringing me the papers herself, because she didn't trust the mail. She said she was scared."

He was quiet for a moment.

"I was twenty-five. I waited at the end of the road in my car. Her headlights came around the bend too fast."

I already knew how this ended.

I'd read the police report a hundred times.

Brake failure. Wet road. Guardrail.

"She went through the rail and down the bank," Elias said. "I got there first. The car was on its side. The hood was on fire."

He turned around.

"I pulled her out through the windshield. She died on the grass with her head on my knee."

I didn't feel myself move.

I only felt my palm sting.

I had slapped him.

His head had barely turned.

He didn't touch his cheek.

He just waited.

I typed so hard the phone slipped.

You were THERE. You let everyone tell me it was an accident.

"I couldn't prove it wasn't."

He came back and crouched in front of me.

"Her brake line was cut clean. By the time I got my people to the tow yard, the car had been crushed. I saw a gray sedan pull away from the bend. No plates."

He looked straight at me.

"Her last words were for you. She said, tell Lizzie to keep dancing."

That was when I broke.

I cried without any sound at all.

My body shook and my throat burned and nothing came out.

Elias didn't grab me.

He sat on the floor beside the couch with his back against it.

He stayed there until I stopped.

Later he carried me to a guest room with white sheets and a lamp shaped like a moon.

He set my phone on the pillow.

"Nico's outside the building. I'm outside this door. Nobody gets in."

I didn't sleep.

Every time I closed my eyes, I heard the hammer.

At three in the morning I hopped to the door on one foot and opened it.

Elias was sitting on the hallway floor in his shirtsleeves with a gun on his knee.

He looked up.

"Nightmare?"

I nodded.

He shifted over.

I slid down the wall and sat next to him, and he didn't say anything else.

Sometime before dawn my head ended up on his shoulder.

When I woke, the hall was bright.

His jacket was over my legs.

He was still awake.

I picked up my phone.

I'd been thinking about it all night.

Damian bought me once. Conrad sold me once. As long as I'm not married, anyone can try again.

Elias read the screen over my shoulder.

"Yes."

So marry me. Today.

He went very still.

"You don't have to do this to be safe. I'll keep you safe either way."

I know. I want to walk into that engagement party as your wife.

I paused.

I want them to watch.

Something moved behind his gray eyes.

"Then we'll do it right."

By noon there was a judge in Elias's library.

She was an old woman with a cane who'd owed him a favor for twenty years.

Nico stood as witness in a tie that looked borrowed.

I sat in a wheelchair in a borrowed cream dress, because I couldn't stand.

Elias wore black.

The judge asked if I took him.

I nodded, then typed it too, because I wanted it on the record.

I do.

Elias slid my mother's ring off the chain and onto my finger.

It fit.

"You may kiss the bride," the judge said.

Elias bent down to the chair.

He didn't rush it.

He cupped my jaw, careful of the blisters at my mouth, and kissed me slowly.

It was the first time anyone had kissed me like I might break.

It was the first time I'd wanted someone to keep going.

So I didn't let him stop.

When he started to lift his head, I caught his black lapel in my fist and held him there.

He went still against my mouth.

Then he made a sound, low, almost pained, the sound of a man who hadn't been touched in seven years.

His thumb moved along my jaw.

His other hand found the back of my neck, under my hair, and spread there, warm and enormous.

He kissed me again.

Not careful this time.

Deeper, his mouth opening mine, his breath going ragged against my cheek.

My whole body leaned up out of the wheelchair toward him.

I couldn't make a sound.

He felt it anyway, the way I shook, and his fingers tightened in my hair.

Nico cleared his throat.

Elias didn't stop.

Nico cleared it again, louder.

Elias pulled back an inch.

His gray eyes had gone dark, almost black.

He looked at my mouth like he was deciding whether to come back for it.

"Later," he said, very low, just for me.

My face burned.

I nodded.

When he straightened up, his breathing wasn't steady either.

Nico looked at the ceiling.

The judge signed, and the paper was real.

I was Eliza Wolfe.

That afternoon, a courier brought a thick cream envelope to the lobby.

Nico carried it up with two fingers.

Gold script across the front.

Conrad Prescott requests the pleasure of your company at the engagement of his daughter Simone to Mr. Damian Wolfe. Saturday. The Prescott Grand.

A small card fell out of it into my lap.

I knew the handwriting.

I'd seen it on birthday cards that always arrived a week late.

Bring the cripple, Elias. We'll make her dance.

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