Before the ceremony, the two had been given one private meeting. Rosalie wasted no time pretending this arrangement was romantic.
“My father tells me you’re desperate,” she said bluntly.
Manuel met her gaze. “And I was told you despise people who lie.”
“He probably also warned you that I’m difficult to live with.”
“I’ve heard plenty of stories about you,” he answered. “But I’d rather meet the real person before deciding what to believe.”
It wasn’t a declaration of love. It wasn’t even a promise that they would ever love each other.
But it was the first time a man had spoken to Rosalie without treating her like a joke or looking at her with pity.
She agreed to the marriage because she needed a way out of her father’s suffocating control.
Twelve years earlier, her mother, Lorelei, had died after falling from the veranda of the family’s lakeside home. Authorities had ruled the death an accident, but Rosalie had never accepted their explanation.
After Lorelei’s death, Emmett tightened his grip on his daughter. He paid doctors to keep her heavily medicated, isolated her from people who might help her, and circulated claims that she was mentally unstable.
