I could hear the faint ticking of the grandfather clock in the hallway, steady as a metronome for all the things you couldn’tsay here. The walls held silence like a secret—polished, pretty, and heavy. When I was a kid, I used to run my fingers along the banister just to see if I could get away with leaving a single smudge. I’d been yelled at every single time.
Now, standing in the same spot years later, I caught my reflection in the hall mirror—totally out of place as usual—and thought how strange it was that a place could look like home but never feel like it.
My father was in his armchair, reading the paper as if global crises were more manageable than family conversations. Mom followed me inside, already suspicious.
“So? Did you and Corwin finally decide on the guest list? You’ve kept the Greyleaf family waiting long enough,” she demanded.
I inhaled for a long moment, holding it inside me before I quickly confessed what I’d come to say—like ripping off a bandage. “Corwin is sleeping with his assistant.”
Silence. For one hopeful second, I thought maybe she’d hug me. Or at leastblink.Instead, my mother sighed, long and theatrical, like I’d just confessed to misplacing her favorite vase.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, you must have misunderstood. Men like him don’t just—”
“He did.” My voice cracked on it. “I walked in on them. In his office.”
Dad looked up from his paper, frowning.
“That’s… unfortunate,” he said, in the same tone he used when the stock market dipped.
My mother pressed her hand to her chest, not out of sympathy, but calculation. “You should have handled thisprivately. You know how this will look if people find out. His family has influence—”
“Mom!” The word burst out of me, sharp and desperate. “He cheated on me. What do you want me to do, send him a thank-you note for the humiliation?”
She stiffened, her face tightening into that familiar look—the one that meant I’d just embarrassed her by being a real person. By beingme.
“Lower your voice,” she hissed. “You’re being emotional.”
I laughed, small and broken. “Iamemotional. I just got cheated on by the man you picked out for me like he was a handbag, and you don’t even care.”
“OfcourseI care,” she said with a sniff, folding her arms over her chest and rapping her long, manicured nails against her forearm. “Now how are we going to handle this?” she asked, narrowing her eyes into empty space.
“I guess we can contact everyone and tell them the wedding’s off,” I sighed, wanting to scrub my palm over my face but knowing that it would smudge my makeup and I just couldn’t handle another insult from my mother.
Her gaze sharpened on me. “Of course not. That’s ridiculous.”
Ifrowned, confused.“Well... they’re going to find out that the wedding’s off. It should come from our side.”
She scoffed. “You’re being silly, Hanna. The wedding’s not off.”
I froze, confusion swirling inside me before realization made its way to the surface.
“Mom,” I said in a slow, low voice. “You can’t seriously still expect me to marry that prick?”
“Language, Hanna,” my father snapped from where he was still reading his newspaper, only chiming in for that moment.
I looked from my mother to my father, baffled and heartbroken. “You’re joking, right?”
“It’s not all aboutyou, Hanna,” my mother said, rolling her eyes as if I was just being dramatic. “This is about the company. The marriage is what’s going to solidify the relationship. Theywon’t want to continue if we don’t have any skin in the game and we need them for the expansion. We needyou,” she added and I stood there, appalled and betrayed.
“You want me to marry the guy who I just walked in on with his assistant?” I hissed. “Because of the fuckingmerger?” I demanded.
“Language,” my father barked, his newspaper snapping shut with his temper.
“You’ve both lost your minds,” I laughed, looking from one to the other again. “I’llnevermarry him.”
“Yes, you will,” my mother’s voice was sharp, walking over to grab my arm the way she always did, tightening until it hurt and I knew she would leave a mark. “Because a man that good-looking wasalwaysgoing to cheat on a woman like you,” she sneered, her eyes dipping to rake over my overweight body with disgust. “So you can deal with this and pretend it didn’t happen or you can go and apologize for overreacting. Those are the two options.”
I sucked in a disbelieving breath, searching the face of the woman who’d birthed me. The unsympathetic glare she was giving me told me everything I’d always known but never wanted to confirm to myself. Shedidn’tcare about me, much lessloveme.
