Prologue #2
The room erupts. Applause, the bright percussion of champagne flutes, a swell of voices I can’t separate into words.
My mother is beaming across the table—the full, radiant smile she reserves for moments that reflect well on her, the one that never quite reaches her eyes.
She looks happier than I have seen her in years.
I don’t move.
“Chloe, darling.” Her voice finds me through the noise, low and close.
I realize she’s materialized at my side without my noticing, her hand pressing into the small of my back with the precision of someone who has done this before—guided me into the correct position, the correct expression. “Smile.”
I smile. My face doesn’t feel like mine.
Royce rounds the table toward me and the guests’ gazes follow him warmly, like he has already earned his place in this family—like this was decided long before tonight.
Everyone in the room knew it but me. He stops in front of me and extends his hand, and when I take it, his grip is just slightly too firm, just slightly too long.
He uses our connection to pull be into his side, and I’m engulfed in a musky cologne that makes my nose itch.
I keep smiling. The applause goes on and on, and I stand in the middle of it like a person who has just been told the terms of a deal they were never asked to sign.
Once the room settles, we sit and the first course is served. I barely eat and can’t focus on anything as the numerous courses are served. Once dessert is cleared and the guests begin mingling again, I find my mother at my elbow. My father and Royce are not far behind her.
“Why don’t you boys talk among yourselves for a moment,” she says lightly, the way she says everything in company—easy, gracious, utterly in control. She steers me a step away from the table with a hand at my elbow, and the moment we’re out of earshot, her grip tightens.
“Is this the thanks your father and I get for caring?” The warmth is gone entirely, her voice dropping to something hard and precise that I’ve heard all my life and never gotten used to.
“We have worked to give you every advantage. We have built something for this family. What do you think that art degree is going to do for you, Chloe? What kind of future does it actually buy?” She doesn’t wait for an answer.
“A man like Royce will provide for you in ways you can’t provide for yourself. You should be grateful.”
“I don’t know the man.”
“Your father and I know him, that is enough!”
“That’s not—” I stop, pressing my lips together, trying to keep my voice below the level of conversation going on around us. “Arranged marriage hasn’t been a thing for decades. You can’t just do this. You can’t make me marry someone I just met.”
“You have six months to get to know him before the wedding. That’s more than enough time for you to get used to the idea.”
“I can’t do this.” The words come out steadier than I feel.
I’m too young to get married, and…my career just started.
I haven’t even had the chance to try yet.
You can’t ask me to give all of that up for a man I don’t love,” I say firmly, putting my foot down as I did four years ago when I refused to study law and insisted on going to art school.
“Then you’ll have to find a new place to live.”
I gasp at her words, the implication of them. “You’re kicking me out.”
It isn’t a question, but she answers it anyway.
“Four years ago, your father and I made the foolish mistake of indulging that degree. We watched you spend four years on something with no future, and we said nothing because we thought you’d come around on your own.
” The disappointment in her eyes is old and practiced, and it lands the way it always does, somewhere under my ribs.
“You are no longer seventeen, Chloe, so listen carefully. You don’t get to stomp your foot and wait for us to relent.
” A pause. “Marry Royce Simpson, or you are dead to us. That is the choice.”
My mouth opens, but nothing comes out. Emotions choke my throat, cutting off anything I want to say. It’s tempting to storm out and leave. Oh, how I would love to rebel and leave home, prove to them that I don’t need them anymore, but…I need them.
I just graduated. I have no job prospects, no income, no savings, and a portfolio that hasn’t sold a single piece outside of a student showcase.
New York City would swallow me whole before I figured out how to make rent, and by the calm, certain look on my mother’s face, she knows exactly that.
She has always known exactly that. This conversation was never a negotiation.
No, I don’t have any choices here. There is only one answer, and we both know it.
I look back through the dining room to where Royce stands with my father and the other men, laughing at something with the ease of a person who has never once doubted his place in a room.
He is handsome, polished, utterly sure of himself—and there is something behind his eyes, some quality I clocked the moment he took my hand, that makes me certain he is nothing like the people I watch from my bedroom window.
The couples who stumble home at dawn laughing too loudly, who hold hands like it means something, who look at each other like they can’t quite believe their luck.
Royce doesn’t do any of those things. I’m certain he never has.
I’m going to have to marry him anyway.