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We're soon in the car, speeding down the highway, away from the city. I frown but don't question what's happening. My father knows best. So what if the ball is being held at a country estate? It's not my place to question him. At least, not out loud.
When the car slows and pulls off an exit ramp, I look out, but the road is dark with no streetlights. The car slows again a few minutes later and starts up a private, paved driveway. In the distance, a huge mansion of black marble with black windows comes into view. Only one window is lit. But why is it so dark if there's a ball there tonight?
The car comes to a stop, and I wait for my father to get out. My heart races, but I inhale a deep breath to calm myself and take his hand. I can trust him. I always have before. So why does it feel so different now? Why am I so…afraid?
“This will be the best night of my life. Everything I’ve worked for, everything I’ve done, has led up to this moment, Penelope. Do not embarrass me,” my father says, his voice heavy with warning.
My confusion deepens, and my worries expand with the warning. Why would I embarrass him? And where are all the other attendees? I have no time to answer, however, because my father opens the front door and escorts me inside the quiet mansion.
Then, off in the distance, I hear notes from a piano. I recognize Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, a song I usually love, but now? It sounds like a siren’s call to tragedy.
I grip my father’s arm looped around my waist and plead with my eyes for an explanation. “What’s going on?”
The deeper notes of the tune play, each pounding tone striking more fear into my heart. I've never been so terrified.
“It’s not quite a ball, as I told you, Penelope,” my father murmurs. “But it is the first day of the rest of your life.”
Dread strangles the words in my throat as the piano continues to play. “Father? What have you done?”
“Nothing that won’t be good for the family, my pure little flower,” my father replies, patting my hand as I claw at his arm. “You’ll thank me for this one day. Your whole life has been about this moment. Everything I’ve done, everything I’ve accomplished, has been about this moment. Now, don’t mess this up for me.”
My father’s voice, usually coddling, usually beguiling, is now hard with a mercilessly cold edge. How he clenches my hand, how he forces me to keep walking forward when everything in me tells me to flee, to run as fast and as far as I can. My instincts scream that my entire life has been a lie, is a lie, and something truly awful is about to happen.
I take a deep breath, trying to slow my father’s pace to spare myself for a few more minutes. But he pulls at me, his hand around my waist to propel me forward. My thoughts race in my head, flitting between reassurance that my father knows what's best for me and would never cause me harm to the unshakeable certainty that I'm lying to myself.
I think about the hateful way my mother has defied my father over the years, how she’s tried so hard to convince me that the man is a monster, how he’s lied to me. Was my mother right all along? I look down at my dress and realize my suspicions were correct. I'm not wearing a ball gown; I'm wearing a wedding dress.
It seems my father has arranged a marriage for me. He's tricked me into coming to this mansion by telling me it was a ball like all the others we've attended. Something is wrong with this wedding. Is my groom an old man with false teeth and hemorrhoids? Is he ugly?
“Father, please, I beg you. Please take me home,” I gasp as he leads me through the vast house, past the foyer, and down a long hallway. The somber notes from the piano continue, making my skin crawl as though the music foretells my doom.
“Now, Flower,” my father tries to soothe me, his soft southern accent grating on my nerves rather than calming me. Why have I never noticed how creepy his voice is? “You have to do this. There is no escape. I told you I’ve been planning for this day for a long time. Before you were even born, in fact.”
“What do you mean?” I demand, hoping to stall for a few moments longer, to put off this farce for a few seconds more.
“I chose your mother on purpose. She was a drug addict I picked up off the street. A woman nobody would pay any attention to or notice if she went missing. I had to plan ahead, you see, to ensure she wouldn’t be a problem after I got her pregnant and she had you. I knew I’d have a girl because you have a purpose. I needed her to give me you,” he rattled off, his fingers digging into my waist, revealing the truth hidden from me my entire life.
“Why would you do that, Father?” I whisper, fear strangling my throat in a tight grip. “Mother was right, wasn’t she? You are a monster!”
My father chuckles softly, patting my arm condescendingly. “You women are so easily fooled, Flower. I should've taken care of your mother long ago, but she knew too much about me, about my plans. Once I got her clean and gave her stability, she turned on me. She managed to contact someone outside my organization. She found a way to get information to them. Threatened to expose me if I harmed you and told me that the evidence would be released if she died.”
His voice is hard now, hateful and full of malice. “But she kept her mouth shut long enough to get me to this day. Perhaps I’ll rid myself of her tomorrow as I’m ridding myself of you now.”
He falls silent as we make it to an open doorway. A black altar shines in the candlelight in the room of black marble. A man in black robes—a clergyman?—stands beside a monstrous beast.
Black, everything black.
That’s when I scream.
Chapter Four
Mammon
I tug at the cuff of my tuxedo, straightening the line of my sleeve. I was performing my duties as usual earlier and almost forgot what day it was. I had a case that took ages because the woman kept changing her mind about what exactly she wanted. I nearly sent her away, but she made a decision at last and signed her soul over.
When I remembered it was my wedding day, I toyed with the idea of sending a proxy in my place. The girl was a virgin. Pure. Boring. And I'd had enough of boring.
I was usually able to see the future of the person who signed over their soul, but this wasn't the case with Forest Trumont. I mentioned it to Lucifer, who simply shrugged carelessly and went back to plucking the eyeballs from a man who'd sold his soul for a twelve-inch penis and a career in porn. I wouldn't be surprised if Lucifer were playing one of his childish pranks and deliberately blocking my attempts to see the future when it came to Forest Trumont and his daughter. So, I had my soldiers keep an eye on things in The Above as her father gleefully, almost maliciously, raised Penelope to be my bride.
