He is unreadable, his expression a mask I can’t pierce. All the old lessons flicker in my mind: never show fear, never give ground, never let anyone know you’re uncertain. I wear them like armor, but it feels like too little, too late.
He doesn’t speak. He doesn’t need to. I can feel the ground shifting beneath me, sense the future tilting out of my hands. I want to believe I’m ready for whatever comes next, but dread sits heavy in my chest—a warning, a premonition, a truth I can’t yet see.
He begins with the same measured tone he uses to sign contracts and order hits—utterly devoid of affection or warmth.
“Ardaleon has proposed marriage.”
For a split second, I honestly think he’s joking. My mind lurches sideways, off-balance. I let out a short, startled laugh—too sharp, the sound snapping off the stone walls, brittle and raw.
“You can’t be serious.”
It’s absurd. The idea of marrying Leon, after everything—after blood, after humiliation, after being used as a bargaining chip again and again—it’s so far beyond the world I’ve built for myself that for a moment, it doesn’t feel real.
The silence that falls is absolute. My father doesn’t even blink. His face is calm, cold as marble, the calm of a man who has never once doubted the righteousness of his own will.
No one answers my laugh. The empty room swallows it whole, leaving only the hollow rush of my pulse.
Panic claws at my throat, a wild animal desperate for air. “No,” I say, shaking my head, voice rising despite myself. “No. You can’t mean it. You can’t do this.”
He sighs, as if I’m being willfully difficult, as if this is a minor inconvenience and not my entire future.
“Suzy.” He says my name the way he always has when I displease him—soft, warning, final. “This is how it works. This is how it has always worked. Ardaleon’s proposal isn’t just for family. It’s for territory. Safety. Expansion.”
His hands flicker through the air, counting off every benefit like beads on a rosary: “His reach. Our protection. New business—routes, resources, partnerships. He offers guarantees no other rival could. Even your brothers agree this is the smartest move we could make.”
It’s a chessboard, to him. Another acquisition, another merger. He never once looks at me as a daughter. I am a lineon a balance sheet, a commodity to be leveraged, a solution to a problem he’s been waiting to solve.
I feel the walls closing in—everything suddenly too bright, too sharp. I want to scream, to plead, to demand he look at me and see me, not some faceless pawn he can slide across the board. My voice fails me. The words die in my throat, jagged as broken glass.
He watches me struggle, the faintest curl of his mouth betraying a hint of annoyance, or perhaps disappointment.
“You always said you wanted to prove yourself, Suze. That you’d listen to me. Well, I need someone I trust inside the Bratva. Someone smarter than your brothers.” The words land with the force of a blow. For a moment, it almost sounds like praise. It’s not. It’s a verdict, an accusation—a punishment dressed up as opportunity.
My thoughts whirl: all the times I tried to claw my way into his world, to show him I wasn’t just a pretty thing to be hidden or paraded, to make him see that I could be more than a pawn. Every promise, every act of rebellion, now twisted into the chains that bind me.
This is what I get for daring to want power on my own terms.
Dad folds his hands, businesslike. “This is how things work, Suzy. Harsh decisions, made by the mind, not the heart. We all do what we must.”
There is no space for my feelings, no opening for appeal. He isn’t asking me. He’s telling me. The deal is done.
I stare at him across the table, the man who gave me half my blood and none of his tenderness. I see, for the first time, how little of my life has ever truly belonged to me. In this room, in this family, even love is a transaction.
When he finally stands, tugs his cuff links straight, and walks out, the click of the door is quieter than a gunshot but just as final. I’m left alone with the untouched plates, the withered centerpiece, the echo of every argument I’ve ever lost.
I want to scream. I want to overturn the table, to hurl a glass through a window, to stamp my feet and sob like the girl I used to be.
I sit, knuckles white, staring at the place where my father’s hand rested. The tears come anyway, hot and silent, slipping past my defenses. My chest aches with the weight of everything I can’t change.
Maybe this is what I earned for craving power, for thinking I could carve a space in a world that eats girls like me alive.
Maybe this is my punishment for believing I could ever be more than a sacrifice waiting for the right moment.
The room grows colder with every minute. The servants move silently beyond the doors, eyes averted, well trained in the art of seeing nothing. I want to ask them if they pity me, if they think I’m stupid for not seeing this coming. I want to ask if any of them ever got to choose, or if all of us here are just waiting for someone else’s move.
I press my palms to my face, try to steady my breath, but grief rips through me, sharp and merciless. I think about Leon and all the moments between us: the violence, the heat, the ways he made me feel dangerous and seen and furious all at once. I think about the look in his eyes the last time we met, something fierce and uncertain, as if he’d lost something too.
Did he do this for power, or for me? Does it even matter, when the result is the same?
