“You are finishing school, Owen. That’s what matters.”
“Sadie, please.”
“No. You graduate. You get out. And you become someone no rich woman can price.”
He looked away first.
That’s how I knew he understood.
***
The wedding happened behind scratched glass.
Jonah sat across from me in a beige prison uniform, thin and tired-eyed.
He looked away first.
“You don’t have to pretend I’m a good man,” he said.
“Good, because I’m not that generous.”
I expected anger, coldness, or arrogance.
Instead, he looked ashamed.
“I did take money,” he said. “$18,000 from a restricted foundation account. My trust was frozen after my father fell ill, and I called it borrowing from my future.”
“I’m not that generous.”
“That’s a fancy way to say stealing.”
“Yes,” he said. “It is.”
“But I didn’t take the $600,000 they put on me,” he added. “Dean did that.”
“Who’s that?”
“My cousin. He moved the larger funds, forged my name, and let my smaller mistake make me easy to blame.”
“Then why did you let them bury you?”
“That’s a fancy way to say stealing.”
Jonah looked toward the guard.
“Because I already hated myself enough to believe I deserved it.”
So I signed the papers.
So did he.
Just like that, I had a husband and rent money.
***
At first, I performed.
