Sweet Romance13 min read
Married by Mistake, Loved by Design
ButterPicks13 views
"I woke up with my head pounding and a cotton taste in my mouth."
"Where am I?" I whispered.
The room was too bright for morning. The sheets smelled faintly of cedar. My hand flew to the back of my skull and met a hard, warm bump. "Ow," I said.
Someone rolled across the floor. The sound of a wheelchair clicked like a metronome.
"Who are you?" I asked again, louder.
A pair of polished shoes came into view. A man in black with a neat three-to-one hair part sat in a wheelchair, fingers turning a string of beads. He looked like a marble statue with a dangerous smile.
"Mark?" I tried, the name half-falling from my lips. "Mark Felix?"
He craned his head, one eyebrow rising. "You used my name."
"I—" My memories swam. The date. The dress. The car. The back of a hand. "My head hurts."
Mark's fingers pinched my chin until I had to tilt my face up. "Say your name."
"I... I don't remember." Tears pushed behind my eyes without permission. "It hurts."
He watched me like a scientist watching a rare butterfly. "You were supposed to marry someone else," he said finally. "Who sent you here?"
"I don't know." My voice was small, a child's voice. "I don't remember anything before... the dress."
He let go of my chin like it had burned him. "You expect me to believe you're a lost bride? On my bed?"
"I thought I was his wife," I whispered. "I thought I was married."
Mark's face didn't change. He leaned closer, and his breath smelled faintly of pine. "Who told you that?"
"No one." I wrapped my arms around myself. I was in a wedding dress. "I just... thought it."
"Nobody just thinks that." He smiled, cold as glass. "You were knocked out. Someone put you in a car. Someone, likely, wanted chaos."
"Why would anyone do that?" I said.
He tapped his beads. "There are plenty of reasons in my family to cause chaos."
I blinked. "Your family?"
He used my lack of fear like a toy. "Do you know who I am?"
"I think so." I squinted. "You are... Mark Felix."
"Yes," he said, flat. "And I am not amused."
"You're mean," I said blushing despite the headache. "My head hurts and you're being mean."
He stared for a long moment. "You said 'my head hurts' with a ring in the voice you save for the people you want to fool."
"Am I fooling you?" I asked.
He smiled then, just a little, the way someone smiles at a trick that delights them. "We'll see."
Half an hour later, Kenji Henry walked in with his medical bag, hair still messy from sleep.
"Mark, why are you here?" Kenji asked, scanning me like a doctor scanning a chart.
"I found her in the loft," Mark said.
Kenji crouched. "You're conscious. There is a hematoma. Memory can be affected."
"Amnesia?" I whispered.
Kenji bit his lip. "Possible."
Mark's eyes flicked to mine. "Recover or not, I want to know who set this up."
"I don't even know my name," I said.
"That's fine," Mark answered oddly. "You can be my wife for the night."
I blinked. "What?"
"For now," he said. "Say it."
"Say what?"
"Say 'Mark is my husband.'"
I couldn't help it. Maybe I was stunned by the way he said it. "Mark is my husband," I tried, sounding ridiculous.
He closed his eyes for a second. "You don't have to be the person they sent."
"Who sent me?"
Mark's face hardened. "My mother and my brother. But right now, no one will take you from me."
"Why would your mother do that?"
"Because our family is messy." He rolled his wheelchair with an inkling of amusement. "Because we make arrangements. Because people like to move chess pieces without asking."
I was part chess. I felt less than a living thing.
"You're cruel," I said, and the word landed without heat.
"Maybe," he said. "Maybe I just want to see what happens."
I did not scream. I did not run. I had slept in the car after being knocked out. My brain was a small, blank room. "Are you my husband?" I asked again. The thought made me sad and oddly hopeful.
He studied me. "For now."
"Okay," I said. The word felt like a promise and a lie both.
That night the house smelled of citrus and old money. Mark's house was all angles and silk and organized whispers. I sat up in bed and rubbed my head. It hurt.
"Do you like milk?" I offered suddenly.
He looked at me as if I had offered him a crown. "Why?"
"Because you take it," I said. "I saw your cup."
He managed a half soft laugh. "You're bold."
"Why not?" I shrugged. "If I'm married, I am your wife. Wives do small things."
He rolled his eyes but did not move away when I reached for his glass. "Don't drink from my cup if you've been knocked unconscious," he said.
"Okay," I said. "I'll use a new cup tomorrow."
He watched me with something like curiosity. "Tell me about yourself."
"I can't," I said. "My head is a blank slate."
"Then make something up."
"I already made something up. I am your wife."
"You made an informed choice."
We moved like that for days. Mark kept his distance sometimes, but he watched with a hungry kind of patience. He let me sit close, but he stayed cold when someone important called. He wrapped a dressing around his hand when it bled, but he hid the anger under the tender gestures he made when he thought no one watched.
"You don't have to call me by my first name," he told me once when I reached to flinch at his touch.
"Why not?"
"It makes you feel small," he said. "I like the sound of 'wife' when you say it."
I practiced. "Mark is my husband," I said the words into the quiet while making coffee. The sentence become some sort of anchor I could hold when the world shifted.
A few days in, Matteo Arnold, Mark's younger brother, texted me. He had been expected to marry another girl; he had been complicit. The message was syrupy, easy on the surface and thick with poison.
"Cecilia, it was a mistake," it said. "You were in the wrong car. We'll fix it."
I threw the phone down. How could they 'fix' me?
"Let me handle it," Mark said, his jaw tight, fingers worrying beads. He did not act at first. He tested. He watched.
"Why won't he step in?" I asked.
"Because he likes to watch," Mark said finally. "Because he believes he is owed a perfect life and will claw for it."
"You sound like you have a plan."
"I always have a plan."
There was so much I did not remember about my former life. I did remember a pale, complaining girl named Emma Stein who had been promised to Mark. She had been beautiful and brittle and angry like glass. I remembered the day of the weddings — two brothers marrying two women — and then the chaos. Someone had pushed my head into a pillow, and somewhere in those hours I became the other woman's stand-in.
"Who is Emma?" I asked one afternoon when Mark was reading a file.
"Emma was the agreement," he said. "She will be furious."
"Is that bad?"
"For her, yes," Mark murmured. "For you? It depends."
We tested boundaries. I fetched a jacket for him. He let me brush dust from his shoulder. Once he laughed when I tried to tie his tie. "You have no idea how to dress a man," he said.
"You told me to tie it, didn't you?" I said. "I followed orders."
He gave that iced half-grin. "Yes."
When a small, sharp man named Ely Bryant — the father — glared at me, I answered his outer politeness with a steady stare. I had no memory, but I had nerve.
"Do you take good care of him?" Ely asked gently to test me.
"I will," I said.
"Good," Ely murmured. "Good."
It was foolish, but the more people tried to move me like a chess piece the more I felt something like stubbornness grow.
"Are you angry?" Mark asked once, when the house creaked and the world seemed too loud.
"Angry at being used," I said. "But I'm not scared."
He smiled, once, like a crack of light. "Good."
One night, applause rolled through our rooms like thunder — a sound from the outside world, the city breathing. I watch Mark prepare his wheelchair and fingers fumbled a ring in his pocket. "There will be people," he said.
"People?" I felt a pulse of excitement. "Like a party?"
"A contract meeting," he said. "I have to sign something important."
"Can I come?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because people will talk." His voice softened. "Because it is messy."
"Take me anyway," I said stubborn as ever. "I can say your name. I can be your wife."
He looked at me with eyes that saw too much. "You are annoying," he said softly. "And I like it."
That day we were ambushed on the road. A flash of metal, a broken windshield, the world shrieking.
"Hold still," Mark ordered.
I clung and then a crash of sound. The smell of smoke and blood and something like hot iron. Mark pulled a gun and then I found myself handling one as if I'd been trained years. Bullets punched the air. The car spun. Men shouted. I aimed and shot. The smell of gunpowder was in my nose, and adrenaline sang in my veins.
"Where did you learn to do that?" Mark called, his voice high with a rush of something — fear or admiration.
"From watching too many bad movies," I said, and pulled the trigger again.
We escaped into a broken factory. The snow wolf — Mark's dog called Snowball — tore a man into the ground like an answer to an accusation. I watched Mark smile when Snowball snarled. I watched him watch me with a new kind of hunger.
"You did well," he said when the shooting ended and the car trailed smoke.
"You wanted a guard dog," I said.
"Yes," he said. "And you are braver than I expected."
That was the truth. He had wanted to scare me. He had wanted to test me. I had wanted to survive.
After the attack, I grew into my role — not as the meek pawn they wanted, but as a living person who moved and planned and laughed. I learned to be useful. I read contracts. I could keep quiet and watch. I could play a part and still carve out a life.
"Why do you trust me?" I asked Mark one night, as he sat with beads slipping between his fingers, a dark laugh hiding behind his eyes.
"Because you're interesting," he said without looking up. "Because you don't fear me. And because you make me feel alive in ways I forgot existed."
"I am not your toy," I whispered.
"Maybe not," he answered. "But you are mine, for now."
The week we were together, my smile made the household hysterical. Veronique Camacho — Mark's stepmother — came at me like a storm. "You are a fraud!" she hissed. "You were placed to ruin our family honor!"
"I didn't come to ruin anything," I said calmly. "I was carried in. I woke up. And I stayed."
She snarled like a caged animal. "You will not take my son's life and laugh!"
"Are you threatening me?" I asked.
"Maybe."
"You are angry," I said softly. "But angry and cruel are not the same thing." I saw the room full of hired faces, and I saw Matteo Arnold pacing like a caged tiger. They had expected tears. They had expected my submission.
I had learned to be quiet, and then to test them. I had learned Mark's habits. He had learned mine.
One day, while he was at the office, I went through a file and found a copy of a project plan for a huge development — a project Matteo wanted. I thought of the message Matteo had sent: "Help me, and I will make sure your future is secure." The plan looked like an invitation to ruin.
Mark came into the room and saw what I'd done. He did not look angry. He looked pleased.
"You planted it in my folder," he said.
"Yes," I replied. "You said to keep an eye on things. I followed your instructions."
"You have a talent for it," he said.
"He will try to use it," I said. "Matteo. And Veronique. They want to get rid of inconvenient people."
"Then we will show them we are not to be trifled with," Mark murmured.
That set in motion the thing that would change everything. I uploaded the files to Matteo's account in a way that made them public. I did it with a prank-like flourish — a small flying kiss to the webcam like a dare.
Mark watched the screen. His face went dark, then delighted. "Good," he murmured. "Very good."
It was not long before we had them where we wanted them — on paper, on camera, caught. Evidence flowed. Men who thought themselves safe were suddenly exposed.
I arranged a small event at the company to celebrate a new contract signing — an ordinary day, with chairs and coffee and a man named Andres Corbett arriving from the city. I invited people because I knew people would come. I arranged seats. I arranged a pleasantly ordinary morning.
Then Mark played the first clip.
"What's this?" Matteo demanded, confident as always.
"You will see," Mark said quietly.
The lights went down. The screen lit up with messages Matteo had sent: "We will swap the brides. She will be complicit. She will be gone." There were tags, plans, money transfers. Then messages to a man who had been used as a silence-bringer. The crowd leaned forward.
Matteo's face had that easy arrogance. He laughed. "Fake," he said loudly. "My messages are—"
Mark played another clip. This one had Veronique calling in men, a recorded conversation where she ordered a staged accident and laughed about a "perfect swap." Her voice, once cold and commanding, now sounded small and frightened over the loudspeakers.
"I did not—" she began.
"Do you deny sending men to take her?" Mark asked.
"Yes," she lied.
Mark smiled and clicked the next file. It was a live feed from the car that had carried me. He had the footage. He had the faces. He had the fingerprints. The room filled with the evidence slowly and without mercy.
"What is this?" people whispered. Someone gasped. "They framed her."
A phone light lifted like a moth as someone recorded. The press had been invited, and now the guests recorded like a forest of flashbulbs.
Matteo's smugness crumbled. He tried to retort, to blame others, to twist words. His voice rose and fell between denial and panic.
"You're making this up!" he shouted. "You can't prove anything!"
Mark's voice was measured. "Listen."
He played the final clip. It showed Veronique handing cash to a man. It showed Matteo approving a plan. It showed messages of contempt — "She's only useful for a price," one message read.
Matteo's color drained. He looked ridiculous, then savage. "You—" he started, and then his voice shook.
The room shifted. A few men in suits started to stand, murmuring. Someone hit a phone to call a lawyer. A woman let out a short, sharp laugh. "I knew something was off," she said.
Matteo's shoulders trembled. He looked around, finding eyes on him. Faces that had once smiled now frowned with disgust. The company's partners watched, paying close attention. A dozen cameras filmed.
"I didn't do it," Matteo lied, voice raw. "I didn't—"
"Matteo," Mark said, cold as winter. "You're going to explain."
"Explain what? It's a setup!"
"Explain how your messages match the bank transfers," Mark asked. "Explain why the men you hired were in the footage with Veronique's car."
Matteo's voice thinned to a high, sharp sound. "They're lying! They're—"
A chorus of gossip rose. People recorded. Phones flashed. "Is this really him?" one woman whispered. "I thought he was discreet."
Matteo's face shifted, from amused to furious, to bewildered, to terrified. For the first time, he looked like a boy who'd broken something precious.
He lunged toward Mark, a desperate curiosity on his face. "You can't do this!" he screamed. "You can't destroy me!"
Someone in the crowd laughed. It was not a kind laugh.
"Get away from him," a man said. "You're embarrassing."
Matteo's eyes darted. He grabbed at a chair and knocked it over. "This is a conspiracy!" he cried.
Mark remained silent. He let the crowd do what crowds do: they judged. Phones recorded the desperation on Matteo's face. The chief legal counsel stood forward, eyes like knives.
"Matteo Arnold," he said slowly, "because of these recordings and transfers, this is now a criminal investigation. You are suspended."
Suspended. The word sounded small and ordinary, but it was a pivot. The people around them started to talk, louder now, not about company deals but about betrayal.
Matteo's face contorted. He dropped to his knees on the polished floor. "No," he cried. "No, please, no—"
He pleaded. He reached for Mark like a drowning man reaching for air. "Please! I can fix this! I'll sign anything! I'll do anything!"
He begged. He balled his hands and struck the floor. "Please!"
People pushed back. Some filmed. A few clapped, quietly, as if applause was a hint of justice. A woman nearby hissed. "How dare he?"
"Is this how you behave?" another man said. "Kneel and beg."
Matteo's voice broke into raw sobs. He looked smaller than the chair he'd thrown. He placed his head on the floor and whimpered into the carpet. A mat of witnesses circled like vultures.
Veronique stood behind him, stunned at first. Then she reached for her handbag like an injured animal. "You—" she said.
Mark did not rise from his chair. He watched her with eyes that had begun to look soft when they promised pain.
"Veronique Camacho," he said, "you will answer to the company and to the law."
Her face crumpled. "I—" She tried to deny. "I did it for the good of the family!"
"A good family does not murder its own," someone shot back.
"Please," she begged, voice thin. "I didn't mean—"
"Quiet," Mark said.
She fell silent as the word came down. The room hummed with the sound of phones and whispers and the shuffling of legal steps. The security team guided her away. People took pictures. The legal counsel spoke in a stern voice about investigations and lawsuits and media exposure.
Matteo writhed on the floor. First he was proud, then arrogant, then pleading, then a broken man with tears soaking his shirt. Cameras recorded every second. "Please!" he repeated over and over. "Please, don't ruin me."
The crowd recorded, commented, and judged. Someone cheered softly. Another whispered, "I always knew the Arnolds were rotten."
When they led Veronique away, the whole room watched. Some recorded the exit on their phones. Some clapped in small, private ways. Someone shouted, "Good riddance!" The corporate consultant made notes.
Matteo rose after a long time, but his legs trembled. He tried to smooth his hair, to compose an image. But the cameras had captured everything — the messages, the cash, the men. The crowd would not unsee what it had seen. Lawyers circled. The police were called. The news team — who had come for a contract signing — smelled a bigger story and started to line up their microphones.
Matteo's mask fell away. He begged in public, more pathetic than he had been in private moments. He tried to rally allies. Some avoided him. His best friend looked away. A few men whispered, unhappy. The company's board met in hushed rooms.
In the days that followed, the videos went viral. People replayed the clips and debated. Matteo's empire shrank. Veronique's name was dragged across newspapers. They lost deals. They lost status. In public, they were humiliated; privately, their allies left.
"People will talk," Mark said to me one night as the storm settled. "But when they see this — when they see you — they will see you are not what they planned."
"Did you want them punished like that?" I asked.
"I did," he admitted. "And I wanted them exposed. I wanted them to feel the world look back at them."
"And you felt good watching him kneel?" I asked.
"It was necessary," he said. "You survived."
Matteo's fall had been public, long, and ugly. He had gone from smugness to madness to pleading. He lay on the floor and begged while a hundred phones recorded. People whispered, some cheered, many judged. He begged, and the whole city watched his ruin become entertainment. That was a punishment worthy of the hurt he had tried to do.
The world changed for me after that. People treated me like a person who had done something clever. The press wanted my comment. Mark wanted my hand and sometimes he acted like a mad king protecting something rare. I was surprised to find I liked that.
"You're not stupid," Mark said one night in bed, fingers twined with mine. "You're dangerous. You can pretend like you are soft and small, but you're tough."
"I have to be," I said. "If I had to play someone's role, I'd rather be the role that fights back."
He smiled then. "That's why you stayed."
I had fallen into a life that wasn't mine and made it mine.
We learned each other's rhythms. I learned to love when he looked at me like a secret he couldn't hide. He learned to let someone touch him and not recoil. We were a business, a chess game, and then something tender that even the noise outside could not drown.
"You would have been happy with Matteo?" I asked one afternoon when rain ticked at the window.
"I would have been angry," he said. "And bored."
We laughed. And in that laughter, I felt the world settle like a book on a shelf.
But the world still had its teeth. Friends and enemies shifted and the house we lived in was a place of plans and small victories. We had exposed them. We had won publicly. The city still talked. The cameras still followed.
"Married by mistake," he murmured once as he rolled his beads. "Loved by design."
"Is that how it goes?" I asked.
"It is how it goes for us," he said.
I squeezed his hand. "Then let's write the rest."
The End
— Thank you for reading —