Chapter 4: The Price of a Soul
Ben dragged me down the sterile corridor, his grip unrelenting, until we reached a dim, deserted alcove tucked beside the emergency stairwell. The hum of the hospital’s ventilation system was the only sound.
“I made Rosie a promise,” Ben began, his chest heaving as he struggled for air. “Before they wheeled her into the surgical suite, while the nurses were prepping the IVs. She pulled me down and whispered, ‘If I don’t wake up, you tell my sister everything.’“
I leaned back against the cold cinderblock wall. “Tell me what, Ben?”
Ben’s hand trembled violently as he reached inside the breast pocket of his denim jacket.
“Now it’s time for you to understand why I really married her.”
The air in my lungs crystallized. I suddenly felt as though I was standing on the edge of a jagged cliff, staring down into an abyss I had meticulously ignored for years.
“Ben, please,” I begged, holding up my hands as if to ward off a physical blow. “Do not ruin four years of watching my sister smile because of you. Whatever it is, I don’t want to know.”
“Do you honestly think I want to be standing in this godforsaken hallway telling you this while the woman I love is bleeding out on a table fifty feet away?” he hissed, tears spilling over his eyelashes.
Every horrible, toxic thought I had violently repressed on the day he proposed came rushing back, flooding my mind with toxic sludge. He did it for money. He married her because I was the one he could never have, and Rosie was his pathetic consolation prize.
Ben pulled a tri-folded piece of heavy parchment paper from his pocket and thrust it toward me.
“I made a vow, Cathy, and I am going to keep it. Just… brace yourself. It is so much worse than you think.”
I took the paper. My fingers were shaking so badly the paper rattled.
The very first detail that violently assaulted my vision was the embossed letterhead at the top of the page. It was the unmistakable crest of my father’s elite corporate law firm.
The second detail was a meticulously outlined payment schedule.
It was a staggering, six-figure sum. A fortune. Structured in bi-annual installments. Money to be directly wired to Benjamin’s private accounts, contingent upon his continued, legal marriage to my sister, Rosie.
At the bottom of the page, inked in stark, unapologetic black ink, were the signatures. My mother. My father. And Ben.
A primal, horrific scream tore out of my throat before I could clamp my hand over my mouth to stifle it. I thought I understood the depth of the betrayal I was looking at, but I was about to discover the rot went deeper than I could ever comprehend.
“You sold yourself?” I shrieked, shoving the paper against his chest. “You accepted a bribe to marry a girl with Down syndrome?!”
“Cathy, I know exactly what it looks like on paper, but you have to let me explain—”
“Explain what, Ben?!” My voice cracked, bouncing sharply off the concrete walls. “That you took blood money from my wealthy parents to tolerate my sister? She is in there fighting to take her next breath, and you stood beside her at the altar with a goddamn six-figure check burning a hole in your tuxedo pocket?!”
Ben’s legs simply gave out. He slid down the cinderblock wall until he hit the linoleum floor, pulling his knees into his chest.
He was openly sobbing now, gasping for air.
“I never cashed a single one,” he whispered, his voice broken. “Cathy, I swear to God. Every single check your parents sent went directly into an impenetrable trust account in Rosie’s name. Every dollar. Every cent. She will have it when she needs it. It’s all hers.”
I desperately wanted to believe him. I wanted to cling to the boy who picked her for kickball. But the math of the betrayal simply wasn’t adding up.
“If you didn’t want the money, then why sign the damn paper?” I demanded, standing over him. “Why affix your name to something so utterly disgusting?”
Ben stared at the scuffed floor tiles.
“Because,” he choked out, “I saw the brochures of where they were planning to send her. A place upstate. A facility called Willow Grove.”
