The Wedding

The courthouse was grey. Not just the walls—everything about the building existed in some colorless middle ground between white and black. The sky outside the windows was grey. The linoleum tile of the hallways was grey. Even the energy of the space felt grey, bureaucratic and cold and utterly devoid of any sense of occasion or meaning. This was where people came to conduct business. Not ceremonies. Not celebrations. Business.

Fitting, Lisa thought, for a wedding that felt like a funeral.

She’d bought the dress three days ago during her lunch break at a department store downtown. She’d walked past the bridal section without stopping—those dresses were for people getting married for love, people who’d dreamed about their weddings since childhood. Instead, she’d found herself in the regular women’s section, looking at simple day dresses that could masquerade as wedding wear if you squinted and believed hard enough.

The dress she’d chosen was white, knee-length, made of soft cotton blend that whispered when she moved. It had cost ninety-eight dollars. Probably more than she should have spent, but she’d reasoned that she needed to look like a bride, even if she felt like a fraud. Even if she felt like someone walking toward a cliff she couldn’t see the bottom of.

She’d carried the dress home in a plastic bag, hanging it carefully in her closet. The closet was barely more than a cubbyhole, but it was hers. She’d spent the next three days looking at that white dress every time she opened that closet door, watching it hang there like a ghost, like prophecy, like the physical manifestation of the choice she’d made.

This morning, she’d taken it out and pressed it carefully with her ancient iron—the kind that had belonged to her mother before the stroke. The kind that was older than Lisa but still worked if you waited for it to heat up. The heat from the iron had felt almost meditative. A small ritual. A moment of control in a situation where she had none.

But somewhere between her apartment and the courthouse, wrinkles had returned. They always did. Fabric wanted to wrinkle. Fighting against it was futile.

Now, standing in the bathroom of the courthouse building, Lisa stared at her reflection. The wrinkles were visible—small creases running down the front of the dress, across the bodice, down the hem. Her hair was braided so tightly it pulled at her temples, making her forehead look too prominent. Her eyes looked like they belonged to someone else. Someone older. Someone who’d already lived through the things Lisa was only about to experience.

She didn’t look like a bride. She looked like someone playing dress-up in her mother’s clothes. Like a girl pretending to be a woman. The pretense was showing in every wrinkle, every tight braid, every trembling hand.

Lisa smoothed her hands down the front of the dress, trying to coax the wrinkles away through sheer force of will. The fabric was warm from the bathroom’s heat. The wrinkles didn’t go anywhere. She tried again, using more pressure, but nothing changed.

Finally, she gave up. The dress was wrinkled. She would be a wrinkled bride. It seemed fitting.

Lisa took a breath. Counted to five on the inhale. Held it for three. Exhaled for five. A technique her mother had taught her years ago when she was afraid of thunderstorms. It hadn’t worked then either, but it was familiar.

When she emerged from the bathroom, Martin was waiting in the hallway. He was dressed in a charcoal suit with a grey tie, his appearance immaculate. He looked up when she appeared, and something in his expression softened. Not pity, exactly. But something close. Something that contained understanding and concern and gentle worry.

“You look beautiful,” he said, and Lisa could tell he meant it. His eyes held genuine warmth, genuine approval. That somehow made everything worse. Because Martin’s kindness was unexpected. It was undeserved. It was making her want to cry before the ceremony had even begun.

“Thank you,” Lisa managed. “Thank you for being here.”

“Of course,” Martin said. He reached out and squeezed her shoulder briefly—a gesture that was both comforting and heartbreaking. “That’s what friends are for.”

He paused. She watched him consider his next words carefully. “Are you okay? Lisa, we don’t have to do this. If you’re having second thoughts—if you want to back out—I can help you. We could still—”

“No,” Lisa interrupted gently, though her instinct was to say yes. Yes, let me back out. Yes, let me walk away from this courthouse and this dress and this decision. But she couldn’t. “I’m okay. I’m just… nervous.”

It wasn’t the whole truth. The truth was much more complicated. The truth was that she felt like she was walking toward the edge of a cliff she couldn’t see the bottom of. The truth was that every nerve in her body was screaming that this was a mistake. The truth was that she was doing it anyway, because her mother needed her to, because the money was too much to refuse, because desperation had a way of making terrible decisions feel inevitable.

“Okay,” Martin said. He offered his arm. “Let’s go meet your husband.”

They walked into the courtroom together, and Lisa’s stomach dropped.

It wasn’t a courtroom in the traditional sense—just a small, sterile room with white walls and beige carpet and a desk at one end. A justice of the peace sat behind the desk, a woman in her sixties with grey hair in a severe bun. She looked like she’d performed hundreds of ceremonies and stopped caring about them all approximately a hundred ceremonies ago. Her expression was neutral, professional, utterly devoid of any recognition that this was significant.

Two people Axel had hired to serve as witnesses sat in folding chairs, phones in their laps. They didn’t look at Lisa. They didn’t acknowledge her. They looked like people who’d been paid to be here and nothing more.

And then there was Axel.

He stood near the justice’s desk, dressed in an Armani suit that probably cost more than Lisa’s car. His dark hair was perfectly styled, not a single strand out of place. He looked like he was about to conduct a business meeting, not marry someone. When he saw Lisa, his grey eyes registered her presence for a moment—a quick assessment, like a computer scanning something and filing it away.

Then he simply nodded. A small acknowledgment. The kind of nod someone might give to an employee who’d completed their task adequately. Not warm. Not recognition of her as a person. Just a small, perfunctory gesture.

Then he looked back at his phone.

He pulled it from his pocket and scrolled through something, his jaw moving slightly as he read. His expression didn’t change, but Lisa could see his attention fully engage with whatever was on that screen. She watched him type out a response with precision. Even his texting was efficient. Even in this moment, someone else, something else, was claiming his focus.

Someone was more important than this.

“Shall we begin?” the justice asked, her voice containing no enthusiasm. She said it like she was asking if they were ready to move to the next item on her agenda.

Axel put his phone away—slowly, deliberately, making a point that he was doing this on his own schedule. Lisa took her place across from him. She stood a careful distance away, not close enough to touch. He didn’t offer his hand. They stood in parallel, two people who’d agreed to occupy the same legal space.

“We are gathered here today to witness the marriage between Axel Castellano and Lisa Marinelli,” the justice began in her flat, practiced tone, and Lisa understood immediately that this would not be a ceremony. This would be recitation. Words without weight. A transaction dressed in the language of matrimony.

The justice read through the standard vows. She talked about love and commitment and the bonds of marriage, and every word felt like a lie. There was no love here. No commitment that meant anything. Only a transaction. A deal. A business arrangement.

Lisa’s mouth was dry. Her hands were cold. She felt like she was watching this happen to someone else, like she was a ghost observing her own wedding from somewhere outside her body.

Then, mid-sentence, Axel’s phone buzzed.

He didn’t hide it. Didn’t excuse himself. He simply reached into his pocket and checked the notification, his eyes moving across the screen with focus and interest. His expression shifted slightly, became engaged with something that wasn’t Lisa, wasn’t this moment.

Lisa watched him read whatever had come through. She watched him consider his response, watched him type out an answer. She watched the phone go back into his pocket, but not before she saw his jaw tighten—a small shift, barely perceptible, but it meant something.

The message was more important than she was.

“Do you, Lisa, take this man to be your lawful wedded husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do you part?” the justice asked.

Lisa looked at Axel. She waited to see if he might look at her. She hoped that maybe something in him would recognize what this meant, even if he didn’t believe in it.

He was staring straight ahead, his expression blank.

“I do,” Lisa said. The words felt foreign in her mouth, like she was speaking in a language she didn’t understand.

“Do you, Axel, take this woman to be your lawful wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do you part?”

“I do,” Axel said.

He said it the way someone might confirm a restaurant reservation. The way someone might say “yes” to “shall I send this email?” There was no inflection. No emotion. No acknowledgment that they were discussing a human life.

“By the power vested in me by the state of Valmont,” the justice continued, “I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss the bride.”

The silence that followed was profound. It filled the entire room, pressing down on Lisa’s chest. She looked at Axel. For a moment, she thought he might actually step forward. She steeled herself for it, prepared her body not to flinch.

But Axel simply stepped back. He created more distance. He looked at her the way someone might look at a painting in a museum—with detached observation.

“Shall we?” he said.

It wasn’t a question. It was a dismissal.

Lisa stood in her wrinkled white dress and watched the man she’d just married turn and walk out of the room without touching her. She watched him exit without looking back. She stood there in front of everyone and felt more alone than she’d ever felt in her entire life.

Martin appeared at her side. He gently took her elbow, his touch warm and steady.

“Come on,” he said softly. “Let’s get you out of here.”

The penthouse was exactly as beautiful and exactly as soulless as she remembered.

Lisa had been here once before, for that brief, shocking meeting where Axel had made his proposition. But being here now as his wife felt different. It felt like crossing a threshold from which there was no return. The building’s elevator had taken her to the fortieth floor—the penthouse level. The doors had opened onto a private foyer with white marble floors and abstract art on the walls.

Axel had walked ahead of her, his key card opening the door to his space. His space. Not their space. His.

The interior was all glass and steel and minimalist design. Floor-to-ceiling windows on every wall that could accommodate them, offering views of Valmont City spread out below like something he owned. The furniture was geometric, expensive, carefully curated to suggest taste without suggesting comfort. There was nothing soft in the space. Nothing warm. Everything was sharp angles and cold surfaces, a physical manifestation of the man who lived here.

“I’ll show you where things are,” Axel said, his tone businesslike. “And then I have work to do.”

He’d moved through the penthouse like a tour guide, pointing out the kitchen (which Lisa was apparently allowed to use but shouldn’t expect him to notice), the living area (which had seating but looked like no one had ever actually sat on it), and the bathroom off the main bedroom (which was his bathroom, not shared, not for her use).

Then he’d opened a door off the main hallway, and Lisa had felt her stomach drop.

“This is where you’ll sleep,” he’d said.

The guest bedroom was decorated in shades of grey and white—a color palette that matched the rest of the penthouse but somehow felt colder in this context. There were no photographs, no personal items, nothing that suggested this room had ever been inhabited by an actual human being. It was like a hotel room designed by someone who’d never experienced joy in their entire life.

The bed was a queen-size, with sheets that were probably high thread count. Lisa had touched them once, and they were soft—expensive soft, the kind of soft that came from fabric that cost more per yard than she spent on groceries in a week. But the softness somehow made it worse, because it meant that her isolation would be comfortable, at least.

“We can share a bed for public appearances if necessary,” Axel had continued, his voice containing no emotion. “Business functions, charity events, anything where people might expect to see us together. But this will be your primary sleeping arrangement. The bathroom is here.” He’d pointed. “Feel free to use the kitchen and living areas, though I’d prefer if you kept your schedule separate from mine. I wake at 6:45 and prefer quiet mornings. I leave at 7:00. I return at 7:00 PM.”

He’d stated these facts like he was explaining the terms of a business lease. Which, Lisa supposed, was exactly what he was doing.

“Your belongings can be stored in the closet,” he’d continued. “There’s a dresser as well. If you need anything else, tell Martin. He manages these kinds of logistics.”

Lisa had stood there in her wrinkled white dress, listening to the rules of her imprisonment disguised as accommodation.

“Try not to disturb my routine,” Axel had said, and then he’d walked out.

She’d listened to his footsteps move down the hallway. She’d heard a door open and close—his bedroom, she assumed. His private space. His sanctuary.

And she was alone in her husband’s penthouse, in a guest bedroom that now belonged to her, wearing a dress that had cost ninety-eight dollars and wrinkled despite her efforts to press it.

Lisa sat on the edge of the bed now and didn’t allow herself to cry. She’d learned a long time ago that crying was a luxury, and she couldn’t afford luxuries. Crying required energy that could be better spent surviving. Crying required the belief that things could be different, and she’d stopped believing in different a long time ago.

She looked around the grey and white room. She looked at the expensive sheets, the high-quality furniture, the view of Valmont City through the single window. She looked at all of it and felt nothing but an empty, hollow ache in her chest.

Somewhere out there, other women were celebrating their weddings. Other women were kissing their husbands. Other women were beginning their lives together.

Lisa was beginning hers in a guest room, on a bed that would never be shared, in a penthouse where the man she’d married didn’t want her to make a sound.

This was what $500,000 looked like.

This was the physical manifestation of desperation.

This was the price of her mother’s care.

This was the cost of survival.

And for the first time since she’d made the deal, Lisa understood the full weight of what she’d agreed to. Not just the loss of freedom, though that was significant. Not just the loss of hope for genuine connection, though that hurt more than she expected. But the loss of herself—the understanding that for the next six months, she wouldn’t be a person. She would be a ghost in someone else’s life, existing in the spaces between his routines, trying not to disturb anything, trying not to take up space, trying not to need anything.

She was a wife without a wedding night, a woman without a husband, a person with no one.

Outside the windows, Valmont City glittered in the darkness, indifferent to her small, quiet heartbreak.