“Don’t. I’m not the one who dragged my name through the tabloids.”
“You mean when your friends helped my father force me into this fucking engagement?”
His jaw tightens. “If you’d behaved like a normal daughter of a presidential candidate—if you hadn’t whored yourself out to that circus of degenerates—your father wouldn’t have had to get involved.”
I try to shove past him, but he grabs my wrist.
“Let go of me.”
“Don’t walk away when I’m speaking to you.”
“You don’t get to do this,” I hiss. “You don’t get to erase everything I built and then pretend it’s for my own good.”
“You’re lucky you’re not rotting in some summer house on an island, Mara. You should be thanking me.”
I laugh, sharp and bitter. “For what? For babysitting me? For pretending you’re better than?—”
“Don’t say their names.”
“What? Jasper? Talon? Dredyn?” I say, shoving each syllable in his face.
His eyes darken. “Do you think I want this? Do you think I enjoy being paraded around with someone the media calls mentally unstable? Every paper’s running headlines about my fiancée being ‘unfit,’ ‘erratic,’ ‘a bipolar slut with no self-control.’ You think that’s good for my image?”
He scoffs. “I had to sit across from my father while he explained why I’d have to marry you anyway. Why it would look worse if I backed out. Do you know how humiliating that was? I’ve spent weeks cleaning up your mess.”
“Maybe you should’ve said no,” I snap.
“I tried,” he says coldly. “But yourdaddywas very persuasive. And mine cares too much about political optics to let me walk away. So, here we are.”
I stare at him. “I didn’t ask for this.”
“No,” he snarls. “You just made it inevitable.”
“You’re disgusting.”
“I should throw you over that desk and fuck the humiliation out of you. Wouldn’t be the first time you opened your legs for a lesson, would it?”
“Go ahead.” I raise my chin. “Prove what kind of man you really are.”
We stare at each other, and his hands twitch like he wants to hit something, but he doesn’t. Instead, he exhales, then smiles—a slow, poisonous thing.
“You want to finish your degree? Sure. Once you’ve posed forVogue. Once you’ve kissed me at the altar. Once you’ve smiled enough to make people forget the word ‘bipolar.’”
I shove his chest, but he doesn’t even flinch. “You think you’re winning? You think this is control?”
“I think,” he murmurs, brushing hair off my face, “you don’t get to want anything unless I say so.”
He plants a kiss on my temple, the same sick ritual he uses to end every argument. Then, he turns off my desk lamp with a flick of his fingers.
“Dinner’s ready,” he says over his shoulder. “Don’t be late.”
I wait until he’s gone, then I slam my fist into the dresser so hard the lamp rattles. He wants me small. They all do.
But I’ve learned something valuable.
Cages make you memorize every bar. Every seam. Every flaw.
And glass... glass shatters beautifully.
