thousand dollars will be transferred. After six months, you will no longer get that. All furniture, knick-knacks, and every item down to every single spoon, has been accounted for. It is listed, item by item. Even the belongings in your room. You may take everything that is yours that my parents didn’t buy. And I’ll be generous and allow you to have your clothes. At six months, you’re either out of here on your own, or I call the cops and you’re out of here not on your own. Your choice.”
My aunt’s face was purple.
Literally purple.
She was so fucking mad.
I stood up and walked to the door. “I’ll be seeing you around. Don’t do anything stupid.”
With that, I left the house that I hated almost as much as my aunt and headed to my beat-up car.
A car that I’d had to purchase on my own.
A car that, sadly, needed a new… something. Probably everything.
However, instead of buying something new, I’d left it the way it was. Maybe I should have bought a newer car, because I knew that shit was about to get ugly.
My aunt was about to use all the money that she’d squirreled away from me, anticipating this day, and she was going to go at me with everything she had.
My accounts would be frozen, and anything that I’d bought with my parents’ accounts would be red-flagged as well.
Meaning that anything that wasn’t mine before this mess started likely would be put in limbo as well—at least that was what my lawyer had explained to me.
Something crinkled under my butt as I plopped down into my seat, and I licked my lips nervously.
Pulling out the paper I’d printed at the library, I stared at it with excitement thrumming in my veins.
Live-in property & pet caretaker needed. Four-year minimum. Background check required. Generous compensation. Marriage of convenience required.
I wasn’t exactly sure why this entire thing looked so… exciting to me. But the thought of having someone at my back, someone that may or may not protect me in the event that my aunt screwed me like I knew she was going to do, made me flitter with anticipation.
I had these feelings. These feelings of the wrongness or rightness of a situation.
I’d had them my entire life.
That was how I knew that the lawyer that I’d chosen—one of three—had been the right one, and the other two had been the wrong ones.
That was how I’d began to trust Six, my best friend.
That was how I’d avoided my aunt’s first and second attempted ‘hit’ on me, too.
Yes, you heard that correctly.
My aunt tried to have me murdered.
I didn’t have proof, no. But I knew, deep down in my heart, that she had.
I wasn’t dumb. Brand new brake lines didn’t just ‘go out.’
And people didn’t just ‘accidentally’ almost-stab you with a knife when you just so happen to turn twenty-five that day and your accounts are officially released to you.
Anyway, the feeling that I had when I read that ad? It hit me in a way that nothing ever had before.
That sense of rightness had only been associated with four people in my life.
My mom, my dad, my uncle Deighton, and my best friend, Six.
Nothing had ever felt ‘right’ like this in a long time.
And that was why I was meeting the man in an hour and a half.
That was why I’d agreed to his terms already.
That was why, in the matter of an hour, I would be getting married and making this official as could be.
A practical stranger to me.
We’d already worked it out.
He’d be leaving within hours of our nuptials to places unknown.
All would be explained to me as soon as I met him at the courthouse.
We’d exchanged all of two emails back and forth.
One from me saying I was interested in the ad. One from him saying the ad had a time limit that was quickly approaching. One back from me saying ‘I was in.’ And one to me saying where to meet him and he’d explain in more detail.
That was it.
I was marrying the man based on zero information.
CHAPTER 2
If Beauty and the Beast taught us anything, it’s that looks don’t matter as long as you keep her locked up long enough.
-Hunt to Wyett
HUNT
I was nervous.
I wasn’t sure why I was nervous.
I wasn’t nervous about going to prison for at least four years in just a few short hours.
But I was nervous about meeting my eyelash girl.
It’d taken far longer for her to respond than I ever thought