Being His Wife

"Dad?" Alura Wayne called out shakily as if she was dreading her father's response.

She stood in the cramped living room of their apartment, the walls peeling like dead skin, the single bulb dim as usual.

Across from her, was her father who slumped over the kitchen table like a finished man, he clutched an empty beer bottle. His hands shook so badly the glass shook slightly.

Robert Wayne didn't look up. His face was a mess of purple bruises. Fresh ones.

"Dad, what did you do?" She asked loudly this time, but he still didn't respond.

"Dad, I'm talking to you!"

"I'm sorry." The words leaked out of him like blood from a wound. "Alura, I'm so sorry."

She inhaled sharply. "How much?"

He hesitated.

"Dad. Tell me how much!"

He flinched, "Four...million dollars, it's four million dollars."

The number hit her like a fist to the stomach. Four million dollars. She made barely fifty thousand a year working three part-time jobs. Four million dollars was practically forty million to her.

" You said...." Her hands clenched tightly. "You said the money was for the new business. You said we were going to start over."

"Yes we would have! But then...then I thought." His voice broke. "Just one game. I could double it or triple it. Pay back the loan early and even have enough left over to really do it right."

Alura closed her eyes as tears slid down her cheek. She held her nose bridge with a shaky hand.

Of course. Of course it was gambling. Again. It was always gambling. Her mother had died when she was ten, and her father had spent the last fifteen years slowly destroying everything her mother left behind.

"They came this morning," Robert continued, his words slurring together. "Percy's men. They said thirty days to pay back. Thirty days or..."

"Or what?" She looked at him preparing herself for whatever ultimatum he was about to drop like a bomb.

He finally looked up. His eyes were red with tears and alcohol. "Or he'll take you in return."

Alura stumbled backwards, "What?"

Robert reached across the table with shaking fingers and pushed something toward her, It was a document with red stamps.

She slowly picked it up.

Her eyes scanned the first page. Then the second. Then back to the first because surely it had to be a mistake.

Marriage Contract.

Party A: Percy Miller, CEO of Miller Financial Services.

Party B: Alura Wayne.

"Y--you sold me, Dad." Her words came out trembling. "You sold me to pay your gambling debt!"

"I had no choice! They were going to kill me! Percy said if you married him, he'll forgive everything. The principal, the interest, all of it. He's been asking about you for years, Alura. He's always saying how beautiful you are, how you remind him of his first love."

Alura suddenly felt like throwing up. Percy Miller, the fifty-year-old man if he truly was. His greasy hair which was combed over his balding head and his small pig eyes that followed her every time she went with her father to beg for loans.

"He's been asking about me since I was nineteen, and you noticed but didn't say anything to warn him." Her voice shook.

"What could I say? I owed him money."

"You owed him two hundred thousand dollars back then! You could have stopped! You could have gotten help! But you kept going back, you kept borrowing, kept gambling it away, and now." She threw the contract at his face. The papers scattered across the table. "Now I'm the payment?"

Robert's jaw clenched, "The wedding is in thirty days. Everything's arranged. Percy already paid for the dress, the venue, everything. He's excited. He keeps calling me to ask about you, saying how he's going to take good care of you."

Something inside Alura cracked. It felt like a clean snap like a bone breaking.

"I am not marrying him, Dad."

"You have to!"

"I'm not marrying a man old enough to be my father because you can't stop gambling!"

"They'll kill me!" Robert jerked off the seat knocking the chair backward. "Don't you understand! These aren't normal creditors! Percy runs half the loan sharks in Cedarville! If you refuse, they'll kill me and then they'll come for you anyway! At least this way you'll be safe, you'll be taken care of."