Strings Attached

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

With eyes wide open, she shook her head like she was devoured by some kind of inner torture. 

"I thought I'd end up marrying someone who loved me," she whispered sadly, "but I don't believe in fairytales anymore."

There was a painful burden pressing against my chest and cutting off my air supply when I heard her say that. Was there someone else? Was there another man in her life that she wanted to marry instead of me? I knew she'd never slept with anyone else because she'd been a virgin on our wedding night, but what if there was someone she had been saving herself for before I stole her innocence? This possibility I had never considered sent my mind into an overload, but I fought to remain calm on the surface because I didn't want to frighten her with my jealousy of a man that might not even exist. Isabelle looked away from me, but I made her face me again. She couldn't shut away from me now. I needed her to give me answers.

"Did you ever meet that man? Were you ever in love?" I asked with as much tenderness as I could muster and when she slowly shook her head, a giant surge of relief swept over my entire system.

It took me a moment to realize that my question made her sad. I was acting like a fucking bastard again. Of course Isabelle didn't share my enthusiasm at having been only mine. Every little girl dreamed of tender lovemaking and her very own prince charming. What I had done to her on our wedding night had to have destroyed every single one of those dreams together with her faith in men.

"Isabelle," I uttered her name in a light whisper, "there is nothing wrong with the things you wanted. Everyone deserves to be loved. I wish—" I was at the verge of confessing my feelings, but I was afraid it would mark the end of the conversation and I didn't want that so I swallowed what I was about to say and asked instead, "Why did you marry me? Did you think I would be that man for you?"

The question evoked such powerful emotions within her that it made her wince in instant discomfort. Her eyes clouded with dark, murky shadows like she was reliving painful memories. Then, she shook her head in denial, but offered no verbal answer. What the hell happened to you, angel?

"Then why?" I asked because I had to know what devil forced this innocent girl to enter a marriage with a man who had at the time made it obvious the very idea made him furious. "I even gave you a chance to leave at the altar. Why didn't you take it?"

Her eyes went distant and I was almost certain both of our minds wandered back to that moment when she came to stand next to me at our wedding ceremony.

"I told you. I didn't have a choice. I had to marry you," she blurted out in a constricted voice.

"Why do you keep saying that? Rosario didn't force you to sign that contract." I opted to act confused to see if I could trick her into uncovering the truth. "Did she?"

"She didn't." She paused and took in a deep breath. "My mother did," she confessed in the lightest whisper. "I didn't want to get married to a stranger, but she wanted the money so badly and I eventually gave in to her threats."

Her revelation didn't come as a surprise because I had already suspected for some time that something of that nature had to have happened, but hearing Isabelle say it in actual words turned it into something real. Suddenly, the flashbacks of all the cruel things I had put her through interchanged before my eyes and in the light of her confession, they were so much worse because there was not a single excuse I could use to justify my behavior.

"So your own mother blackmailed you into marrying me?" I repeated in a rhetorical question, feeling disgusted with myself for not having realized it before. All the signs were there. The e-mails, her mother's despicable behavior on our wedding that differed so much from her own. "It's unbelievable what greed does to people."