My room was beautiful—pale blue wallpaper with silver damask pattern, blush-lit corners, cashmere throws draped just so, fresh peonies perfuming the air each morning without fail. A cage disguised as comfort.
My father had selected every pillow, every scented candle himself, crafting this illusion of sanctuary while keeping the key well out of reach.
I moved across the room and perched on the mattress edge.
Dinner.
Marriage.
The two words rioted through my brain until I wanted to scream.
I twisted and my fingers found my laptop I'd left on the bed, desperate for motion, for distraction. The screen illuminated, harsh and unforgiving as I typed.
Alaric Kostas.
His name filled the search bar like a summoning spell. Results cascaded down my screen— a digital shrine to the man I was meant to impress tomorrow. Headlines varied but the portrait they painted remained consistent. There were pictures of him emerging from tinted-window vehicles, clasping weathered hands of industry titans.
He was objectively beautiful, but looks had nothing to do with personality, and I knew nothing personal about this man.
I sifted through the digital altar of Kostas Enterprises—tankers carving paths across sovereign seas, security personnel flanking the ultra-wealthy, charity foundations constructed with fortune that reeked of suffering.
And there she appeared, haunting image after image like an exquisite phantom.
Danielle Rousseau.
Society pages crowned her their precious gem. Reporters circled her like vultures, and the reason was painfully obvious. She commanded attention with champagne-colored hair that seemed lit from within, a body women paid top dollar for, and honey-amber eyes that had a gentle doe thing going on. She was a masterpiece of privilege's workshop: radiant, dangerous, untouchable.
Beside Alaric, they formed the perfect composition—he sculpted from shadow, she bathed in gold.
My finger slid down the trackpad, revealing more and more of their life together. Gala after gala, interview after interview on her end, headline after headline from different bloggers and influencers—all singing the same refrain. Alaric Kostas and his destined bride. I told myself this was reconnaissance, just cold intelligence gathering.
I knew better than anyone that emotions were liabilities; and any kind of vulnerability was a currency others would never hesitate to spend against you. Still, something heavy and cold settled beneath my ribs when I saw how his hand curved possessively at her waist.
I couldn't compete with that.
The screen went dark as I shut the laptop, leaving me alone with the silence. Whatever had transpired between Alaric and Danielle remained a mystery to me, but the evidence wasundeniable. He had belonged to someone else already, marked by her in ways photographs couldn't hide.
Tomorrow night, I would somehow need to redirect a man's gaze from the golden woman who once held it to me, a magic trick I had no idea how to perform. I'd have to convince himIwas the better investment.
My chest felt carved out, empty. These calculated maneuvers weren't games I knew how to play. I couldn't pretend to hunger for table scraps when someone else had already been served the meal. It was degrading.
But my wants and self-respect had always been slaughtered on the altar of my father's ambition, blood spilled without ceremony or remembrance.
What would my mother tell me if she were here? Would she help me escape as she had Amara? Or would she counsel me to bend, to survive, to play the game until I found a way to win it?
CHAPTER THREE
I stared at my reflection and saw the woman my father built.
Brown eyes, the color of aged bourbon in crystal, steady and expressive enough to betray what I never said aloud. A face too symmetrical to feel like mine, every angle softened into compliance. Straight chestnut hair, parted clean down the middle with military precision, falling to my waist like a heavy silk curtain.
He preferred it that way.
I was nothing but a living canvas for his vision.
At five-foot-six, I was tall enough to look commanding in a room of whispers, but not so tall I couldn’t be mistaken for ornamental when men like my father gathered.
My figure carried the kind of balance that men in our world liked to claim as theirs—waist shapely enough for possessive hands, shoulders straight enough to bear expectations. Graceful, restrained, and never threatening.