Page 57 of Unwanted Vows

I nod. “Be still. He isn’t usually violent without cause. Let’s not give him one.”

“Now, before you all get too comfortable,” he says. “My boys and girls brought along their musical instruments. I don’t think any of you would like the tune they can play, so you just sit tight. Gentlemen, ladies, show them what ya got.”

The “musicians” pull out an assortment of weapons, ranging from assault rifles to handguns, and even a few swords.

“Now that I have your attention,” Aims said. “I’m going to tell you how it will be. I’ve brought a marriage license and a jack-leg, backwoods preacher with me. I’ve got six months to live, and I’ll see my errant grandson and his sweetie married, and, I hope, pregnant before I pass on.”

I stand up slowly. “Grandfather, why are you doing this? You know Maddy and I are handfasted. Unless we find we can’t stand each other, we will be married at the end of a year and a day.”

“Pah! Don’t spout me any o’ that new age crap about handfasting. Besides, I don’t think I have another six months, let alone a year. You need to be married, right and tight, and you got to take up the reins of Aims Corp. This isn’t any game I’m playing, boy. This is life and death. ” Aims grinned a death’s head grin, spreading his lips wide and sucking on his teeth so the air hissed between them.

I stand up slowly, keeping my hand on Maddy to keep her in her seat. If I am careful, I can make myself the target of all those guns instead of Maddy, the children, or the vulnerable elders and other guests.

“Why is it so vital that we marry?” I ask.

“It is vital that you marry,” he says. “Since you passed the princess to Leland, I don’t have anyone special picked out for you. Your little nurse will do as well as the next. Maybe better since you seem fond of her. But I cannot die without tying down the inheritance lines.”

I step out in front of the others. “Why Grandfather? Will your bookies all wither without your guiding hand? Will your working girls suddenly be out of a job? Will your pushers and dealers not have any product to sell? I thought we covered this when you visited me.”

“And you thought you’d shunted me off to a nursing home,” Aims snorts. “We’ve got a few things to get glued down before I kick off, like just exactly who is going to take the reins for Aims Corp.”

“Just who do you intend to take up those reins, Grandfather?” I ask.

“You and your legitimate heir,” he says.

“Beg pardon?” I say. “I don’t recall volunteering for this.”

“I didn’t ask for volunteers,” he snaps at me. “I’m telling you how it is going to be.”

“Why would I want Aims Corp?” I ask. “It’s a mess. It’s a holdover from the 1920’s. You are a hundred years out of date, Grandfather.”

He glowers at me. “Vice never goes out of date. There’s always someone wanting to climb that ladder on the backs of others, and at their expense. Do you know what happens when vice is unsupervised? It runs rampant, it becomes a bloodbath in the street. You are too young to remember what it was like, I don’t think you were even born when I took over Aims Corp from my father. That fool, Albert, went all soft on me. Made his own company and went legit. Mostly legit anyway.”

Aims coughs a little, looks around, sees a bottle of wine that has been left open to breathe. He picks it up, delicately pours it into a snifter. He swirls it in the glass, admires the color, passes it under his nose, then sips.

No one speaks. No one moves. There is enough firepower in the room to blow everyone to kingdom come.

“Ummm. Prime stuff, that,” Aims says. “I should know. My grandad started Aims Corp during prohibition. He always appreciated fine wine.”

He takes another sip from the snifter. “So, you hear me, boy. I’ve got a tiger by the tail. Everyone one o’ you kids has been in danger since the day you were born. I’ve had a hell of a time keeping body guards on all of you, but I’ve done it. But do you know what happens if one of my rivals takes over the company?” He takes another swig.

“No, Grandfather,” I say. “But I am sure you are going to tell me.”

“Damn straight, I’m going to tell you. If someone else has control of those bodyguards, they are going to turn into death squads. It will be a wholesale slaughter of every villager left alive, of every islander on Ildogis, and yes, of every man, woman and child of Freedom. It might even reach as far as to take down Spindizzy, and it ain’t never been part of Aims Corp or Lane Enterprises.”

He took another sip of the wine. “But if you marry the girl, if you honor the oath, and live up to that tattoo you got the summer you spent with me, then I can make it known that you are taking over my operation.”

I look at the assembled crowd. I look at my brothers, my sister, at the woman I love, and yes, at her friend and her friend’s husband. I see the elders I managed to get airlifted out of the carnage at Mountain Hold, and I know I can make only one answer.

“I will take on the business,” I say. Then I swallow hard because this isn’t the way I wanted to propose to the woman I had idealized, and as coming to love for her own, very real self. “If Maddy will have me, I will marry her. As for babies . . . I have a son. And you know as well as I, babies happen in their own time, not in ours.”

“A fair enough answer,” Grandfather said. “What do you say, young woman? Will you back your man’s play?”

Maddy has gone white as a sheet. My heart aches for her. I did not want to marry her this way. I had hoped to give her all the time she needed to decide, to plan for the kind of beautiful wedding that is in every young girl’s secret dreams.

“Come with me, Maddy,” I say, making a sudden decision.

She blinks up at me. “What? Where?” she says, clearly confused.

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