Finally, I open the car door and hold her hand as she slides onto the seat, and walk around, and grin like a maniac and wave and when I shut the door, the smile must stay pasted on. She too is smiling her pretty little smile and waving, and looking at everyone crowding around. I start slowly, so as not to run over any of these imbeciles, and hold the smile until we turn off and they begin to disappear from sight.

I let out a deep sigh, my jaw aching from the forced smiles. “All those people,” I say shaking my head.

“Darling, what do you mean?” she asks with concern. She brushes a coiffed bang from her face.

“Dearest, they’re all so lovely, but I’m sure we now have three of the same toaster.” Then I remember I don’t have to act anymore. The habit stuck for a second, but she is now powerless. “Melodia, sweet,” I say without feeling, without the need or desire to feign it any longer, “By the laws of this land, I now have full control of your inherited assets. I married you solely for those assets so that I can finally wrest control of this city from the incompetent bleeding hearts that run it. I’d say I regret to tell you this, but it is without regret. This was planned from the beginning."

“What?” she cries. But her protest is insincere. I look over at her and her shocked face transforms into a wicked grin, and she shrieks with laughter.

“Do be serious, Winstead. You have no more access to my inheritance than I decide you do.” She chuffs in delight. “To take over the city? This measly city? Winstead, you think so small.”

“No, by law—”

“Yes, by law, but hours before our legal binding, all my assets were transferred in ownership to a trust, over which I have sole authority.”

I let the car roll to the side of the road. “This whole wedding… We’re… married.”

“Oh don’t be dramatic, so many of us play these games, sometimes you lose. I needed a man because nobody in this place will take a woman seriously. I need a face, a man’s face, with a moustache, and it’s not a bad moustache. All the better a man’s face that can smile at loathsome people. Through you I can conduct my affairs. You’ll live well, likely better than you did before, excellent fare, lodgings, wherever we go. Disobey me and I will concoct a strategy to have you dead, or your reputation destroyed, and I will find someone else. It would be extremely annoying if I had to do that. And if I should happen to die before you, you can have the inheritance. As if I’d give any to my family.”

She took a long look at me, as I tried to process this.

“Darling, start the car.”

I turned the key. I began to drive.

What followed were more indignities. At more of these farce meetings, with people every bit as disgusting as I, I smiled and shook hands, and made small talk, and every moment I did not satisfy my darling wife, her voice would slide in; Friendly disapproval, “Winstead,” the latter vowel dragged out and high. And every time I heard that disapproval in public I heard it worse in private. She would deride me, explain my shortcomings in considerable detail. All the various things she needed for her plan to gain control of not just the city, but the province, then to worm our way into the capital. And they were working. These skills I had used to wed her, were now being used to woo public officials, and important businessmen. But all the thrill I’d have had was gone, because the plans were not mine, but hers. She had near full control of the city, were expanding to neighbouring ones. I became infamous for power, but took also the reputation of a puppet.

It got to the point where my peers and rivals would smirk whenever they heard her public disapproval. How I would wince for a fraction of a second when she said my name in that mockery of chiding. They knew what sort of relationship this was. Every private moment was smiling and good cheer, and every private moment me snapping at her, which she would wave away until I broke. Then, the only thing that left my lips was a glum “yes, dearest.”

It was one such night, where I’d gone to my own, separate bedroom, and found a bottle on the table near the fireplace, an old-fashioned one with the fire already burning. Next to the bottle was a note. In the firelight, I read it. “I never wanted your unhappiness, but it is a price I will pay for the power I seek. You chose this for yourself, but perhaps this will make it a little easier. Don’t drink too much, I need you functional in the morning. – Your wife, Melodia”

I barked a bitter laugh. I suppose I had been ready to do to her every bit of what she was doing to me. I poured the whiskey into a fine crystal glass. Tasted it on my lips and, perhaps because she was on my mind, I could not help seeing the parallels between them. Oily smooth, rich, a touch of sweetness, but how it burnt me from the inside.

There was a breeze coming in and I snarled to myself about disciplining the manservant who had neglected to close the window on such a cold night. But it wasn’t the manservant who had opened it. It was a man, all in tight-fitting dark navy blue.

“Who are you?”

“I am a shadow, an angel of hope, and a demon of death.”

“Well shut the window, it’s cold out.”

The man complied.

“Will you have a drink?” I asked.

“You are a strange one,” the man replied. “I’m working. Drinks will come later.”

“Suit yourself,” I said as I sat next to the bottle.

“Would you like to know why I’m here?” the man asked.

I thought about it for a moment. “May as well tell me,”

“I am here to save you. You see, you are very close to controlling this city. But your wife has unmanned you, done horrid things to you. So I offer you a way out. You can have your freedom from her, and you can keep this city for yourself also.”

I look up at him, brows scrunched. I’d almost forgotten what it was to have desires of my own.

He held a vial to the light of the fire. “This is poison. Untraceable, no odour, nor taste. It’s rare. Nobody would ever suspect a thing. She does, in fact, have a family history of this kind of thing. You could do it, and take the story to a much later grave, or I could do it, and I’m afraid it would be obvious the two of you have been assassinated.”

I stood and held my hand out, he walked forward. I took the vial, held it to the firelight, marveled at it. A small quantity of what appeared to be water. A small vial of what appeared to be hope. With my spare hand I poured my glass full to the brim and took another sip of whiskey, this time straight from the bottle. This next part would be unpleasant. It’d be good to have a bit of haze in the mind while I did it.

In a single, silent motion, I dropped the vial, and two-hand swung the bottle at the man’s face. It shattered across the bridge of his nose and his orbital bone on his left side. He fell and I leapt on top of him. The neck of the bottle had remained intact, ending in jagged bits of glass, which I ground into the man’s neck.

“I am no less a dangerous man than I was,” I snarled into his face, as he gasped and clutched at his bleeding throat. “A kept tiger is still a tiger.”

When Melodia came in, I was sitting in the chair by the fire, drinking from a half-full, blood-stained, crystal glass of whiskey. The corpse was still lying where he’d fallen.

“This one was meant for you,” I said, and lifted the little vial. I didn’t look at her, just laid it back on the table. She sat in the armchair across from me.

“Winstead,” she said, putting her hand on my knee. I looked up into her eyes, which seemed full of some emotion that I couldn’t recognize in the sway of the liquor. “I knew you feared me,” she said. “But I never realized you loved me.”

She put her lips to mine, in a wet kiss, and I realized it too.

“Why wouldn’t I love you?” I mumbled. I looked up at her. “You’re everything I wanted to be.”