"Dear, it's either your wedding that will erase that filth of a scandal you created or a new scandal that your late mother was a drug junkie and other vile things that will do it. I will cook up enough proofs to present the image of your mother as such, which would be enough for the media to believe that you've been traumatized since childhood because of your unerasable memory of your gone astray mother when she was still alive. Choose carefully, Victoria."
It was the final threat of Rex Davies that cut through all of Victoria's armor.
She could bear the blames, humiliation, and scandals, no matter how they scorched her from the inside out, but she could not bear the demolition of her late mother's name. Her mother's sacred memories were the only good thing in her life. Victoria would rather kill herself than let anyone mock them.
And so, she picked her poison. She picked the wedding.
Her last wedding dress was ruined entirely, receiving all kinds of rough treatment after she ran from Adi in the rain, dirt, and disasters. However, back then, the fashion counsel her father hired had the time to pick the correct one and customize that one according to her size and shape.
But now, the stark white dress arranged overnight was so loose around her shoulders that the sleeves looked a little bloated and kept slipping off.
Her father's arm felt like the body of an anaconda as she had to slip her hand into the crook of his elbow.
Up at the altar, Victor was standing like a statue. His matt black coat had no special touch, giving him the look of yet another day in the office. He was turned towards the direction of the hall's entryway but was not sparing her a single glance. Perhaps, the wall behind her was a more appealing sight for him than her.
Not many people were in the hall where the function was taking place. Nonetheless, the few people present were all Victoria's side of relatives. Of course, her aunt and her viper son, Ricky, were present. No one came from Victor's side, apparently. She guessed he didn't inform anyone—friends or family.
The media and paparazzi were there, of course, not forgetting to click pictures of her when Victoria arrived with her father. Blinding flashes of wild clicks made Victoria snap her eyes closed instantly as she stepped out of the car. Yet, she had to pose for them following her father's strict gesture. The grand show was all for the cameras, after all. Also, most of the people present would have lost the motivation to act sane if not for fear of starting yet another scandal in front of them.
Victoria felt like a puppet. Agonizing, invisible strings were fastened around her limbs, pulling her in the cruelest direction. And a mad urge befell upon her—to resist it—to resist it with all she had.
As the bridal processional song started playing, she found herself unable to move.
This was a scene from her recurrent nightmare, which she often had to endure after running away from Adi.
At this exact point in time, her thrive to attain free will and need to obtain deliverance from the chains of rules and values her family had set around her feet faced tremendous backlash. Her dream to marry the man she would love crashed before her eyes.
What kind of evil game the heavens had played with her!
Seeing that she was not moving her feet, Rex detached his arm from her hand and slipped it over her shoulder. With a smiling face, he started to usher her forward, albeit with some discreet pushes.
There was no way to run, was there?
Her heart felt like it was shrinking as she reached the altar.
It seemed that Victor was in his own phase of reluctance, too. It took him a few awkward seconds and a throat-clearing on Rex's part to finally offer Victoria his hand.
Rex gave her away into his reluctant hand. She knew it was a symbolic action depicting from a father's side that his daughter was now the man's responsibility.
Nonetheless, Victoria knew her father would be nowhere near done attempting to dominate her.
Besides, an enforced responsibility is a doomed game from the start.
Before long, the music slowed gradually and quietened as the wedding mass began.
In the middle of taking the vows, suddenly, Victoria felt all her emotions splashing against the walls she had caged them into—trying like hell to topple out into the open.
She wanted to weep, scream, and run.
Yet none of them were the options in her hand.
With the paparazzi right outside the entrance, she could never do that. It would create the mother of all scandals in the middle of attempting to fix one. If such a thing occurred now, Victoria wouldn't be surprised by the consequence of her father killing both of them on the spot.
That was the reason why she put a heavy stone on her heart.
Victor's eyes looked zoned out as he spoke after the priest, "I, Victor Jones, take you as my wife."
"I, Victoria Davies, take you as my husband," she uttered the vow feebly.
Their vows were plain and straightforward, hastily prepared in an hour or so. And it felt heavy on her tongue like she was given anesthesia which had slowly started to demonstrate its effects on her body.
They uttered the promises to be together in all situations of their life.
Victoria wondered what this togetherness would mean for them.
The couple rings they put on one another's fingers were made of platinum. Well, it was clear Victor didn't want to invest much in this forced wedding sham—she wouldn't have, too.
At last, turning them around, the priest announced them as man and wife.
Victoria felt numb. Victor was deadly quiet.
Their lives were changed forever.
At the reception, the bouquet-throwing part was skipped. There were no young girls present anyway. Nevertheless, the first dance couldn't be skipped. Unfortunately, the bride and groom were both present. And the worst song possible for this purpose was chosen by someone already—considering the taste, Victoria guessed that someone could be her aunt, Regina.
One thing her loose dress did good for Victoria was that it didn't bother the bruises on her body. Despite that, she flinched when she glanced up at Victor after he took her hand and gathered her into a dance.
Cold despise.
That was the sole emotion his eyes burned with as they danced in the dimmed light. No one noticed that, and even if they did, they just chose to ignore it. There was no advantage in questioning Rex's judgment.
Victoria bent her head so he could not see his face—her gaze remained on his tie. It might have looked like a romantic gesture to the onlookers, but for her, it was choosing not to look at the truth.
The truth she would have to live with now every waking hour.
As the song ended, after what felt like just lethargically stepping everywhere instead of dancing, Victor detached himself from her rather quickly. Like, he couldn't get away from her any quicker.
Her father came up to have a dance. Nevertheless, she had had a lot in one evening and stepped back in denial. "I did what you wanted. But I'm exhausted now," she said with her voice low.
Gathering the floor-length skirt of her dress and raising it slightly so that she didn't trip over it, she started toward the direction of the tables. She didn't stop to wait for a reply but noticed how her father's eyebrow ticked. A sign of his irritation. She was half-expecting him to come after her, which, thankfully, he didn't—a rare mercy from the beast.
In her peripheral, she watched Victor dancing with someone. While taking her seat at the table, she looked adequately to find it was her aunt.
Regina was Rex Davies' dear sister and shared her brother's mentality and toxic traits. And she had a penchant for showing up at all feasts and parties in sarees. This party was no exception as well. In a silver-colored saree with matte cream threadwork all over it, Regina danced with Victor right now, and she looked like the only smiling person in that dance. She had a skinny shape—almost skeletal, a long face with regular black eyes like most of the Indians and bright beige-colored skin.
Leaning up, Regina seemed to be whispering something to Victor.
Obviously, it was inaudible from where Victoria stood at the moment.
Victoria wondered what venom Regina was spewing as her words were hardly ever without it.
After her father clinked on the wine glass, he gathered everyone's attention. He gave a speech that sounded more like he was promoting his business and family values instead of meaningful, positive, or emotional words directed toward the newlywed.
"You're not eating anything," when the dinner was served, Regina pointed out, pinning Victoria with a sharp stare. She sat next to her father opposite Victor and Victoria.
How was she supposed to eat when her throat was being throttled to death?
But that wasn't something Victoria could say, could she? So, she said instead. "Not hungry."
Victor was deadly quiet the whole time beside her, and, for some reason, it felt like a sin to utter more words than absolutely necessary being touched by that aura of silence. Not only that, the guilt of someone's life getting touched and ruined by her family's vice sat heavily on her mind and heart.
Despite Victoria's reply and having evident knowledge of the current situation, because Rex Davies did nothing without consulting his sister, Regina still began to stand up, saying, "Nonsense! You're just being shy."
Walking around the table, she reached Victoria, picked a spoonful of the steak before her, and held it close to her mouth. "I think someone feeding you a little is a must. Or you would go to your wedding night utterly malnourished."
Some of her other close relatives looked up from their food and chats to glance her way with intrigue.
Victoria's jaw clenched.
There were rash movements next to her as Victor suddenly stood up and slammed the napkin on the table. "Excuse me for a minute." It was the first time he had spoken after taking the vows.
"Don't attempt to run away, young man. I've some guards set up around for that reason," Rex warned in a manner like he was making a joke. "You two newlywed must still give the media people waiting outside what they're desperately waiting for."
A few people chuckled.
Victor's entire face was stiff. To Victoria, he seemed like the very epitome of suppressed, unbounded fury.
Providing a curt nod as a reply, he stormed off in the direction of where the washrooms were.
"Now, Victoria," Regina was back with her mission. "Open!" Seeing Victoria clamping her mouth shut further to resist, Regina pushed the spoon to her lips. "Come on, now, don't be so stubborn. You're being like a little kid."
Victoria looked up. Regina's eyes were hard despite the smile still intact on her face. Overwhelmed, she didn't know what she was doing at this point when she opened her mouth just a fraction. And Regina slipped the spoon into her mouth anyway, urging her to start chewing already. Then she proceeded to feed her some more spoonfuls.
Some of the rice and other stuff fell all over Victoria's chest and lap over the dress—some slipped in her cleavage, making her squirm in disgust and shock.
Victoria's eyes filled up with humiliation and contempt.
People around the table looked away in discomfort. Some left the table.
Regina glanced around, sensing it, and cleared her throat. "Ah, she's getting quite emotional recalling her childhood. Poor girl. Her mother, God bless her soul, would have been so delighted seeing her like this."
Eyes tearing up, Victoria mentally scoffed. None of this would have happened if her mother were here today.
When it was time for them to end the night and, at last, face the cameras, they stood outside together with Victor uttering Rex's scripted words, "It was just a lover's quarrel gone too far. But thankfully, it's all sorted now, and while the process of patching up, I proposed to her for this hasty wedding."
"But couldn't you have taken a little time to turn the wedding into a much grander one?" A guy with pale skin and glasses asked.
Victor stretched his lips into the shortest smile in the history of smiles. "We just couldn't live without each other."
Did her heinous father read romance novels or what? What sort of sappy lines were these?
Throwing an arm over her shoulder and bringing her snugly to his side, he said, "She's an absolute angel. And I'm glad her family, especially her father, had accepted me as a son."
Indeed, it was her father's script.
By the way, the warmth from Victor's body was beginning to sip into her. They were standing so close, and the night was windy and cold that it made her worn-out body lean further into him—into the pleasant warmth he provided.
"So, at the night of the party of the Wishing Star's first launch of commercial made my the Chimera, all the things you said—"
"It was all just a slip of the tongue and words of anger with no facts in them. Also, I was a bit drunk," Victor cut in.
"That's enough, everybody," Rex Davies walked up at that point with a large grin. "The newlyweds must leave now, everyone."
Leave! Oh.
Victoria's heart thudded anxiously.
Normally, a man and his wife were supposed to live under the same roof. But there was nothing normal in their conjugation.
Someone had pasted a board with 'Just Married' on the back of Victor's car. The long look he cast its way before getting into the driving seat made her believe he had not done it.
Victoria was already reclined in the backseat. Her flowy wedding dress required more space and couldn't have fit in at the passenger side without disrupting the driving.
"It is only usual for the newlyweds to sit side-by-side while leaving the venue," Rex Davies whispered with his eyebrows crunched. He was leaning close to the window and looking back and forth at them. Something missed out from his cunning mind!
Victor grunted. "Too late for that." Looking away from a scowling Rex, Victor started the car and pulled out of the driveway.
If it were a different situation, Victoria would have clapped and laughed heartily that her father was clean-bolded by an outsider for a change. No other people in the past had ever had that guts.
But Victor was quiet. She was alone in the backseat, and the environment was pretty suffocating. They had both got their lives freshly ruined. So, the prospect of mocking her father felt like a sin now in this situation.
During the long entirety of their drive back home, her brain replayed the day spent—the tragic change of her life through this wedding, her shameful acceptance of it, and the portal she had opened toward, perhaps, an even more despondent future. And she was unable to run from it—she could not save herself from it.
~
Word Count: 2517
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:'(
I would like to start by shedding a tear. *whimpers
My heart goes out to the poor girl. And our poor boy, too. Both are going through a rough time. However, the drama had just started! *evil laugh
Now, how many of you're excited about the next chapters? Raise your hands yo people!
And how many of you're excited about bad things happening to bad people? Raise your feet now!
Okay. So, please don't forget to vote, comment, and share the story! Fan/follow me to get notified of my updates!
Lots of love,
Lara.