Wicked Snow

Terms and Conditions

I may have gone to see my father with the intention of agreeing to the marriage, but once I was there, my anger grew and spread like a virus. I wasn’t going to let him win without a fight.

“You work quickly,” I said when I found him in his living room.

“I did try to warn you,” he said with a self-satisfied grin, only glancing up briefly from his phone.

“Oh, yes, you’re oh so magnanimous for giving me warning before you ruined my life,” I replied sarcastically.

“Don’t be so dramatic, Grace,” he scolded me, like I was still a child. “You’ll come to realize that this arrangement will benefit everyone involved.”

“How exactly will it benefit me?” I asked with disbelief.

“Being married to Kingsley will give you fame, attention. It will raise you up in society,” he explained as if he were doing me a favor.

“I’ve never wanted those things,” I retorted honestly.

“What about your art? Surely you wouldn’t mind having the spotlight shone on that?” he asked with raised eyebrows.

“For the right reasons yes, not because of who I’m married to,” I replied in frustration. I wanted my art to be well- known because it was good, not because of my connections to Kingsley Hall.

“You’re too much like your mother,” he scoffed at her.

“Cut the bullshit,” I snapped at him angrily. “We both know that what you did was way below the belt.”

“That may be true, but it’s all just business,” he said dismissively.

“It’s my life,” I said through gritted teeth.

He sighed in annoyance and asked, “Why are you here, Grace?”

“How many colleges have you reached out to, to get my blacklisted?” I asked him bluntly.

On the way there, I had realized that he would have gone the extra mile to make sure his plan to blackmail me worked. He wouldn’t want there to be any possibility of me getting into another school.

“All of the big ones,” he said with a casual shrug. “I figured that you would want the best– and even if you applied to a smaller school, I could have bought them off easily.

“All that just to get me to marry Kingsley?” I asked in disgust.

“I’ll ask again, why are you here?” he asked while turning to walk into his office.

I followed him into the room, irritated that he was now rifling through the papers on his desk and pretty much ignoring me. “Well, you haven’t given me much a choice, have you?”

He looked up from the documents in his hand and assessed me with new interest.

“So, you’ll agree to the marriage?” my father asked with a triumphant smirk.

The dim and dreary setting of his office seemed perfect for the conversation we were having. It wasn’t every day that I agreed to an arranged marriage after being blackmailed into it by my own father.

“On certain conditions,” I replied with narrowed eyes. “The first of them being that you get me back into art school.”

“That can be done after the wedding,” he said with a dismissive shake of his hand.

“No,” I said clearly and strongly. “You will do it today, and only then will I agree to the marriage.” I wouldn’t allow him to get the upper hand, and I sure as hell would not leave that room without the assurance that my degree was no longer in jeopardy.

He raised an eyebrow and almost looked impressed. It was the first time he had shown me any emotion that wasn’t negative or disapproving, and that in itself was bloody depressing.

“Alright, that can be arranged,” he agreed with a small nod of his head. “I’ll make the call and get you into the School of Visual Arts for the Spring semester.”

“I would prefer Yale,” I said with a glare.

“You’ll need to be in New York for the marriage to be believable,” my father insisted.

“Why should I have to move when he’s the one who wants to get married?” I countered angrily.

“It’s either the School of Visual Arts, or nothing,” my father retorted, leaving no room for negotiation.

I sighed in frustration, hating that my whole life would be rearranged for something that, for all intents and purposes, wasn’t even real.

“Fine,” I spat in irritation.

“Good,” he said with a sharp nod. “The wedding will take place in two weeks.”

“Two weeks?” I shouted, forgetting my aim to remain unfrazzled by anything he had to say.

“A few days after Christmas,” he informed me. “It needs to be done as soon as possible so that the merger can go ahead swiftly in the new year.”

"Don't you think getting married that soon after my mother's death is just a tiny bit tacky?" I asked with venom.

"We'll say that her death made you realize how short life is, so you pushed the wedding up," he explained.

“You are really something you know,” I said in disgust.

“What difference does it make, Grace?” he said with an eye roll. “Either way you’ll be marrying him, and this way it can be over sooner.”

The man did have a point, but two weeks was not a lot of time to mentally prepare myself for a marriage I didn’t even want. It was also not a lot of time for me to get a contract drawn up like my friend Sarah, the law student, had suggested I do. I would make it work though, because like he said, the sooner I married him, the sooner I could divorce Kingsley Hall.

“I’ll agree to that date, if you sign a contract stating you’ll never contact me again after the divorce is finalised,” I said adamantly. This was the only way I could think to get him out of my life for good. “And,” I added. “Kingsley will have to sign a contract agreeing to all my conditions.”

“What kind of conditions do you have?” he asked. Of course, he wouldn’t blink an eye at being told I never wanted to see him again, but he would worry about the conditions poor Kingsley would have to deal with.

“Things like not sleeping in the same room, agreeing that the marriage will end after two years, and that our lives will be as separate as possible,” I explained angrily. “I’ll go through with this charade only if it’s treated as just that–a charade– and nothing more. I’ll play my part as his wife in public, but in private I want nothing to do with the man.”

I had no interest in spending time with a man who would use me as a pawn in his plans to merge his business with my father’s. Besides, if the press had it right, he slept with just about anything with breasts, so he wasn’t someone I could ever consider as even a friend. I didn’t know the man, but if he was okay with my father’s plan of an arranged marriage, then I didn’t want to ever know him. The fact that he was the reason my father had gotten me kicked out of Yale, was reason enough for me to never like the man. It didn't help that his personality was that of a frat-boy, despite the fact that he was forty-three and supposedly a brilliant businessman.

I had read up on him the previous night, so I would know just who my father wanted to sell me off to, and I found out that his wife died two years ago. It was a few months after her death that his image started to worsen as he started to drink and sleep with more and more woman. In a way, I actually felt bad for him because I knew his actions were those of a man grieving for his wife, but I also read that he had a daughter. It couldn’t have been easy for her to see her father behave that way after her mother passed away, so any respect or sympathy I may have had for Kingsley Hall, was dead. I also didn't know how I felt about being a step-mother, but that was the least of my worries.

“I don’t think you’ll have much trouble getting him to sign that,” my father told me with a chuckle. “He wants as little to do with you, as you do with him. You’re there to fix his image, and apart from that he wants you out of sight and out of mind,”

Even though his words meant that I wouldn’t have to worry about Kingsley wanting more than a marriage certificate, they sent indignation through me. It was such a chauvinistic thing to say, that it made me furious. Those two men had manipulated me into agreeing to a marriage, all for their own benefit and now my father was talking about me like I was the one who would be an inconvenience to Kingsley. It was so ridiculously sexist that I felt like I needed to punch something.

“In that case, I’ll have a lawyer draw up the contract, and we can sign it before the wedding,” I said through gritted teeth.

“Yes, that’s fine,” he said dismissively, like the contract meant nothing to him. “Oh, and don’t worry about any of the wedding arrangements,” he said offhandedly as I was turning to leave. “Kingsley and I will take care of those.”

“Of course you will,” I muttered while rolling my eyes.

I would have no say in the wedding, just like I had no say in the marriage. I left his office in a huff, hating that it still felt as if he had the upper hand. I had hoped that putting my demands on the table would make me feel like I had more power, but my father had yet again made me feel at his mercy. More than that, I felt like my agreeing to the marriage meant that I had caved into his demands way too quickly– like I had fed the monster and now he would probably be back for more.

I looked at my reflection in the mirror in the elevator, seeing the puffiness and dark circles under my blue eyes and the drab flatness of my auburn hair. Even my usually golden skin looked pale and washed out. The signs of my mourning were plain for the world to see. It was no wonder I didn’t feel strong– how could I be, while I was drowning in the grief of my mom’s death. How could I fight back and remain strong in the face of my impending marriage, when I was still grieving her loss?

Without her, I felt rudderless and without direction, and I suddenly felt like I was betraying all the values she had instilled in me by agreeing to the arranged marriage. I knew she would be so disappointed in me for even considering going through with the ruse. Yet, I had to– albeit reluctantly– ask myself if she would have really have the right to judge my choice, considering she had stayed in an abusive relationship with my father without once trying to leave.

In some disturbing way though, my mom had always loved her husband, even if their marriage was tumultuous and unhealthy. On the other hand, I would be entering into a loveless marriage, knowing that it was doomed to fail from the start. In my eyes, her marriage was just as much a sham as mine would be, but at least I knew that mine had an expiration date. I would take being married to Kingsley for two years, over being married to an abusive narcissist for my whole life, because at least after those two years I would be free.

I loved my mom with all my heart, but I could never understand why she had stayed with my father. I just hoped that I wouldn’t regret my choice to marry Kingsley Hall as much as my mother must have, at least at some stage, regretted marrying Frank Thornton.

Once I was back in my hotel room, I pulled out my laptop and looked for a lawyer who I could reach out to. Sarah, my friend studying law, had suggested getting a lawyer who dealt mainly in prenups and the like, to create a contract with my conditions for the marriage. She had seemed flabbergasted by what I had told her, but promised that she would keep it between us. She told me to call her if I needed any help and even offered me a place to stay with her during the break if I needed to get away. I was seriously considering taking her up on that offer, so that I wouldn't be alone on Christmas– it would be my first Christmas without my mom and I was dreading it.

As I scrolled through options for lawyers, I wondered if there would be enough time for them to create the contract before the wedding. I hope that the short time-frame wouldn't be an issue or make the cost too much higher. I needed someone who wasn’t too expensive because my bank account wasn’t big enough to cover anything major. I also considered how on earth I would approach the subject of the contract I needed to be drawn up. It was embarrassing enough for my father and I to know that I was agreeing to an arranged marriage, but having to admit it to a stranger was going to be beyond humiliating.