Chapter Eleven - Suzy
Every other weekend, the ritual is the same: I pull up to my father’s estate with a carefully rehearsed smile, a neutral dress, and a list of acceptable topics spinning through my mind.
There’s always the strained civility of the dining room—polite laughter like brittle glass, my brothers squabbling over business deals or family grudges, Dad presiding at the head of the table with the cold, steady weight of authority.
It’s never warm, never easy, but at least it’s familiar. I know how to perform the part of dutiful daughter, how to nod at the right moments, how to make my father’s pride flicker in the corners of his eyes, even if it never fully catches.
But today, the air feels wrong before I even set foot inside. My cab rolls up the long, graveled drive just as another car—a sleek black thing with impossible tint and a rumble like a distant storm—glides past in the opposite direction. For a split second, as we draw parallel, my breath stops.
I see him: Leon. His hand on the wheel, face caught in a slant of afternoon light, mouth set in that line I know better than I should.
For a single, heart-stopping instant, our eyes almost meet through glass.
The moment is gone as quickly as it comes; my cab lurches forward, Leon’s car slips away, and all I’m left with is a rush of cold panic, the kind that coils around my spine and refuses to let go.
I stumble out, barely thanking the driver, pulse fluttering in my throat. The front steps stretch ahead like a judgment, the columns too white, the silence too heavy.
I expect shouting, maybe the tail end of an argument, something dramatic to fit the adrenaline in my veins. Except when I push open the door, the quiet inside is worse than any storm.
The dining room is set, everything in its place, but nothing touched. Dad sits at the head, posture perfect, hands folded over the tablecloth. My brothers flank him—one to his left, one to his right—both staring at plates gone cold, fingers drumming silent, anxious rhythms. No one looks up.
Cutlery gleams, crystal winks, but the scene is frozen, a tableau of statues rather than a family.
For a moment, I just stand there, heart thudding so loudly I’m sure they can hear it. My heels click too sharply on the marble. I clear my throat, force my voice to work.
“What was Leon doing here?” It comes out harsher than I meant, sharp and accusing.
I expect an explosion, Dad’s infamous temper, my brothers’ sniping, maybe even a lie.
Instead, my father doesn’t even glance my way.
He simply gestures to the empty chair at his right, the command in the line of his hand absolute. “Sit.”
The word lands like a slap. My brothers keep their heads down, lips pressed tight, hands twisted together in their laps.
Something has happened here—something big enough to suck all the oxygen from the room. My anger bubbles up, hot and helpless, but the dread is worse. I move to my chair, every muscle tight, senses straining for any hint of what I’m about to face.
The meal continues in silence, a torture of fork scrapes and glass chimes, the food cooling untouched between us. Dad doesn’t speak, not even to offer one of his usual dry remarks.
My brothers don’t risk a single glance in my direction. I barely taste anything, my hands resting in my lap, knuckles white. I can feel the heat of my own frustration, my need to shatter the hush and force someone—anyone—to explain.
Finally, Dad sets down his glass, flicks his gaze to my brothers. “Leave us.”
They rise as one, scraping chairs, heads bowed. The door closes behind them with a hush that feels like the shutting of a tomb, sealing me in with all my fear and my questions. The silence that follows is heavier than any punishment I remember.
My father stares at me across the table, face carved from stone. The moment drags, stretching so thin I can barely breathe. I want to demand answers, to rage and cry and slam my fists on the linen.
Something in his eyes stops me—something I haven’t seen in years, or maybe ever.
I steel myself, jaw clenched, fingers curled to fists under the table. I try to hold his gaze, to be braver than I feel.
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 line on 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?
I picture a wedding with a contract instead of vows, a marriage sealed in strategy and blood.
I picture myself at his side, not as a wife, but as an asset—useful, clever, expendable.
I picture the cage he would build for me, one made of silk and steel, and the slow, careful suffocation that would follow.
I think about what it would mean to wake beside him every morning, to match wits and wounds, to live every day on the edge of war and want.
I let myself grieve for the life I’ll never have—the one where I choose who I love, where I am more than a means to someone else’s end. The tears keep coming, unstoppable, wracking my body with silent sobs. I don’t bother to wipe them away. There’s no one left to see.
I think about saying no. I think about running, about disappearing, about burning it all to the ground rather than letting myself be bartered one last time.
My father’s voice rings in my head—cold, logical, final. This is how things work. This is what it means to be a White, to be a daughter, to be smart enough to matter, but never smart enough to escape.