“Do you know why he married you?” Rachael asked abruptly.
Because he loves me…?
“He did mention that there were various reasons. What about you? Why do you think he chose to marry me?” I asked kindly.
I could have added the ‘and not you?’ part but I didn’t. Natalia, you are growing up to be such an angel, really.
Rachael seemed a little stunned at how straightforward I was being with her. Honestly, I didn’t want her hanging around here for too long and I didn’t want her to be here when Reiner came back either.
“I guess Knight never told you anything,” Rachael said before she grinned at me.
“What do you mean?” I asked as I tried not to let her attitude get to me.
“I wasn’t going to tell you this, but I thought that you should know before you get any unrealistic ideas about your relationship with him. Knight didn’t marry you out of love or anything romantic like that,” Rachael said as she stared deeply into my eyes.
If she had said this to me before I married Reiner and spent time living with him, there might have been a part of me that might have been swayed by her words. However, Reiner has told me that he loves me many times by now. When he proposed to me, he told me that he loves me. During the ceremony, he told me that he loves me. He said it so many times as if he wanted to make sure that I believed him.
Sorry, dear, but I don’t believe a word that you’re saying right now. If I had to choose between believing a girl that I barely knew like her or Reiner, isn’t the choice pretty obvious? However, I was curious to hear what she had to say.
“Really? So, why did he decide to marry me then?” I asked as I cocked my head to the side innocently.
“He pitied you and couldn’t bear to watch you die. Knight is just a good guy like that,” Rachael said before she shrugged her shoulders.
“Watch me die?” I asked, very confused.
What does that even mean? I’m going to die?
“Oh right, you don’t know anything at all. So let me start from the beginning for your benefit. The company received an order from one of the clients that wanted you killed,” Rachael said before she pursed her lips and nodded at me.
“…what?” I whispered in disbelief.
Someone wanted me killed and hired King’s company to do it? Why? Who could it be?
“I guess your loving husband didn’t tell you this. Well, that’s why I’m telling it to you now. Someone wanted you dead enough to pay a high price for the company to get rid of you. Obviously, Knight was told about this. He didn’t want you to get killed so he married you so that King would be forced to follow protocols to protect you as part of his family, as Knight’s wife and his daughter-in-law,” Rachael explained before she looked at me with a look of pity.
Of course, she didn’t really pity me. It was all pretenses.
“That’s…” I murmured, still unable to believe it.
Is what she saying true?
“You still don’t get it, do you? Knight married you because he wanted to save your life. That’s all. After he’s sure that you’re safe, he’ll probably call this wedding off as if it never happened,” Rachael continued confidently.
Protocols. If I remembered correctly, Reiner did remind King of something along those lines when we broke our news to his parents that we had gotten married. So that was what he was referring to. Apparently, there’s a protocol that protects King’s immediate family from harm and Reiner married me because of that.
Well, he did tell me that he married me for various of reasons and he did tell me that he couldn’t tell me everything now. I had been waiting for him to tell me on his own terms, but I guess this lady here beat him to it. Screw the saying about how there was a right time for everything. He should have just told me something this important.
“When did this happen? When did the company receive the request from the client to get me killed?” I asked rapidly for more details.
If I can just figure out the timeline, then I would probably start to understand why Reiner was acting the way he acted and why he chose to do the things that he did.
“A few days before you two got married, I guess. It’s like I said. Knight was probably forced to make a hasty decision to marry you just to keep you from getting killed,” Rachael said as she looked at me with pity in her eyes.
I wasn’t sure how accurate Rachael’s data point was but if that was true then the timeline coincidentally aligned with the weekend date that we had planned. Perhaps that was the reason why Reiner turned up later and why he chose to take me to the beach and all that for our date. It was also so that he could propose to me and so that we could complete the necessary wedding rituals and ceremonies. I had to say that I was very impressed at how he could plan and prepare all that in such a short time.
Pain shot through my lower lip, and I realized that I had been chewing on it as my mind processed what was going on. Reiner looked worried about something that I couldn’t understand while we were together at the beach during our date and that was probably because he was worried about my safety. All along, he was worried about me, and I didn’t have a clue of what was going on at all. While I was selfishly getting him to do various stupid things for me like putting sunscreen on me, playing with me in the water, reading some books that he probably wasn’t at all interested in, he had been trying to save my life.
–To be continued…