“Yes you understand or yes you’ll do it?”

“D-do I have a choice?”

“Of course, you have a choice. If you don’t want to pretend to be the love of my life, or if I feel you can’t do it convincingly, you’ll be kept in the dungeon until they leave.”

“Please, no!” The words flew out of her mouth with such force, it embarrassed her. But the idea of being locked in a… dungeon… was too much to cope with. It hadn’t occurred to her that he might have such a thing, but now that he’d spoken the word, she had no doubt as to the truth of it. “I-I’ll do it. I’ll d-do whatever you want, just p-please don’t do that.”

“You’d better not screw up.” His cold words terrified her, but beneath them, she could see the fear that she might do something that would lead to him having to kill her. She wished she could reassure him there was no way she’d cross him.

“I-I won’t. I promise.”

“You understand the consequences if you do?” Desperation edged his words.

“Y-yes.”

Her life had hung in the balance since she’d first seen Angelo pull the trigger in that alley and the body hit the ground. And she was far from out of the woods—if there was a way out. She wasn’t sure that there was.

“I’m glad you’re being so agreeable.” He reached into his jacket and pulled out two stapled stacks of papers. “You will fill this out, and you will answer as honestly as you can. I’ll need to study your answers so we know each other well enough when my family gets here. The other packet contains my answers to the same questions. You will learn all my likes and dislikes and enough about my work to make it look like you belong here.”

He hovered over her, which made her more nervous. The simplest questions like her favorite food became hard to answer in light of the pressure that grew the longer he stood there.

“In the back of the other packet is the story I concocted of how we met and how I proposed. That will be one of the most important things to know since everyone will ask.”

After several minutes, he went to the door. “You’ll join me for dinner in half an hour, and bring your papers with you. You have to get used to being around me and me touching you. If you cringe every time I come near you, they’ll think I’m beating you.”

He closed the door quietly behind him, and Faith went back to the questions, trying not to stare at the gigantic rock on her hand. The trouble with pretending was… if he was a decent actor, if he was kind and gentle while his family was here, she’d start to want it to be real, but when they left everything would go back to the way it was, the spell broken.

At least with his family here, she’d be safe. He was going to a lot of trouble to not make waves with them.