I descend the sweeping staircase, a practiced ballet of grace that belies the frantic rhythm thrumming beneath my skin. Each step is deliberate, measured, a descent into the maw of the lion's den. My mother, a still life of serene complicity, stands sentinel by the grand floral centerpiece.
Her smile, painted on and as decorative as the blossoms, blooms as she murmurs, “Darla, darling, you look exquisite.” Her eyes, however, don’t linger on my face. They sweep over me with swift, critical appraisal—not a compliment, but an inventory. “Turn, dear,” she whispers, her voice like silk over a razor. I turn, the silk whispering around my legs. “Perfect. Trent will be so pleased.”
My father, a booming presence by the heavy oak door, clasps hands with a man built of sharp angles and the cloying miasma of expensive cologne, wielded like a weapon. His voice fills every inch of the house, pressing against the walls, against my ribs. Even the air seems afraid to move without his permission. TrentMoreland. He’s exactly as I remember, and somehow, worse. His gaze doesn’t flick over me as a suitor might; it settles, hard and assessing, like a merchant weighing an unopened ledger. He looks at me like an acquisition. My skin crawls. I float above the scene for a heartbeat, watching this perfect, polished version of myself move through motions I didn’t choose. It’s easier than feeling his eyes on me.
“Trent, so good to see you,” my father roars, his voice rattling the crystal chandeliers, a false bonhomie that makes my teeth ache. “You remember my daughter, Darla.” My name, uttered by him in this context, feels less like an introduction and more like a commodity being presented for inspection.
“She’s even lovelier than I recall, Winston.”
Trent’s hand closes around mine. His skin feels like paper. Thin, dry, wrong. It’s the touch of someone who collects things, not people. His lips, a brief, dry whisper against my knuckles, sear a brand onto my skin. A claim being etched into my flesh. The touch is cold, invasive; every nerve ending screams in protest. I want to recoil, to snatch my hand away, to scream, but my muscles are locked, frozen by a primal instinct to appear compliant. My jaw clenches so hard I taste blood on my tongue. Don’t flinch. Don’t show them anything.
My mother’s silhouette chimes in, her voice thin as silk thread. “Isn’t she just? We were remarking on it ourselves. The way that particular shade deepens the sapphire in her gaze.” Her practiced smile is another knot in the net, another layer of performance I’m expected to embody. The air is tense with her unspoken expectations, a palpable weight pressing down on me.
The air in the dining room crackles with the dry rustle of paper money. My father and Trent discuss fiscal years and leveraged buyouts. My mother is a conductor of this symphony of commerce, guiding the flow with a flick of her wrist.
“Trent, you must tell us about the new property,” she urges, her voice light, dismissive. “Darla was just saying how she adores the architecture in that part of the Hamptons.” I said no such thing. I’m adrift in this sea of financial jargon, my life reduced to its potential monetary value. The silverware clinks, a metronome counting down the seconds of my silent surrender.
“Darla possesses a discerning eye,” my father declares, yanking me into the fray like a pawn on a chessboard.
My breath catches. I want to scream that my discerning eye sees the hollowness behind these smiles, the cold calculations in their eyes, but the words choke in my throat. My throat feels thick, constricted, as if a physical hand is clamping down. Be a snake, not a lamb. Watch everything. Frankie's warning echoes in my ears. I wrap the words around me like armor. They slide beneath the silk, coiling warm around my spine. If I must sit at this table, I’ll do it with fangs.
My mother’s smile doesn’t waver. “Indeed. She has a gift, Trent, for transforming a house into a sanctuary. She has always had a knack for… infusing spaces with a certain glow.”
The lie is so profound, so utterly detached from the truth of who I am, I almost choke on it. I create walls, not warmth. I survive; I don’t nurture. When I look at her, I remember another woman—the one who helped me and stood up for me. I silently plead. Look at me. See me. Say something real. Her lips twitch, just once. A blink too long to be accidental. Hope flares, only to die when she looks away.
She doesn’t. She just sips her wine, the crystal glinting under the chandelier, her eyes flat, unseeing.
Trent reaches across the table and places his hand over mine. His skin is cool, the touch possessive, a dead weight. It’s nothing like the memory of East’s hand braced against the brick wall, radiating a heat that felt dangerous and alive. That heat is what I cling to. Proof I’m still alive under the silk and pretense. Proof Ican still feel something that isn’t fear. Trent’s touch is the cold of a vault, a chilling premonition of being locked away.
“We’ll have to make a trip out there soon.”
The single word “we” slices through the silence, a suffocating shroud. My hand lies inert beneath his, a pale surrender, the cold of his touch seeping into my bones. A smile stretches my lips, brittle and fake, a mask cracking at the edges. “I’m sure it’s lovely.”
His thumb traces a slow path on the back of my hand, not a tender stroke, but a claiming, a branding, a chilling echo of my father’s ambitions. The delicate lace of my sleeves feels less like decoration and more like shackles.
“She’s modest,” my father booms, a hearty laugh rattling the crystal. He lifts his wine. “But she knows what’s fitting. A vital trait in a wife.”
The word strikes like a physical blow, stealing the air from my lungs. Wife. The ornate wallpaper seems to contract, the gilded frames of ancestral portraits pressing in. The sound of my blood rushes in my ears, a frantic roar. My eyes fly to my mother, a silent, desperate scream tearing through me.
Please. Stop him. Say something. Anything.
Her gaze meets mine for a fleeting second. No flicker of understanding, no lifeline. No warmth. She simply raises her glass, her face a placid mask of approval, her eyes as vacant as a doll's. “A perfect union,” she purrs, her voice as smooth as clotted cream, as devoid of emotion as a recording. “Our families have always agreed. It’s a mother’s dream to see her daughter so well-provided for.”
A physical void opens, a sudden emptiness where my lungs should be. My mother, whom I’d reached for, has vanished, replaced by this stranger. A flawless porcelain doll echoing her husband’s ambitions. Deafening silence follows, punctuatedonly by the clink of crystal against crystal. My breath comes in ragged, shallow gasps. This is it. The cage door is closing.
“To the future,” my father declares, his voice a booming pronouncement of doom. “And to the joining of Graves and Moreland.”
Trent hoists his glass, his hand a vise still clamped over mine. His smile widens, a shark’s glint of possession that churns bile in my gut. He lifts my hand, still caught beneath his, and tilts his glass toward me. “To Darla.” The world shrinks. The crystal, the candlelight, the polished silver—all blur into a shimmering, suffocating trap. His eyes hold mine, a possessive gleam, and in that moment, I know: I am his.
Their glasses chime, a brittle, mocking sound that scrapes at my raw nerves like nails on a chalkboard. The air, thick with the cloying scent of lilies and my mother’s expensive perfume, feels like a physical weight pressing down, squeezing the breath from my lungs. My gaze drops to my hand, still trapped beneath Trent’s. It’s a pale, lifeless thing, a prop in their little play. For a terrifying, hollow second, I feel nothing. A strange, cold detachment, as if I’m watching this happen to someone else, a girl in a movie whose script has already been written. This is it. The cage door just locked.
Beneath the damask, a luxury I loathe, my other hand moves. My fingernail finds the tender skin of my palm. I press down. It’s a familiar sting, a tiny, secret violence that is mine and mine alone. A tiny explosion of red against white. I press harder, the sharp, grounding pain a sudden, welcome anchor in the dizzying emptiness. It’s a raw truth in a room built on lies. This pain is mine, a fiercely guarded secret in a world where everything else is meticulously curated. It’s a rebellion whispered in blood, a pact I make with myself in the suffocating silence.
With the pain comes the fire. The room tilts, the chandelier light bending and fracturing into a thousand tiny suns. Sound drops out. Then rushes back in all at once.
A tremor starts in my hands, but it’s not from fear anymore. It’s a building, furious energy. A rage so potent it makes my vision swim at the edges. I look at them—at my father’s satisfied posture, at Trent’s predatory smile, at my mother’s placid, doll-like emptiness—and the sound of my blood is a roaring in my ears. So comfortable in their gilded cage, so utterly convinced of their power. My quiet presence is mistaken for acceptance. A porcelain doll is all they see, not the cracks spider webbing beneath the surface.
But I am not crumbling. I am hardening. This cultivated despair, this barren wasteland they think has broken me, has become fertile ground. A tiny, defiant sprout is pushing through the poisoned earth, its roots fed by betrayal and rage.
