Chapter 5 Daisy
DAISY
Sunday lunch at the Smith estate requires three forks and an advanced degree in passive aggression.
The dining room could seat forty, but there are only four of us at the polished table: Victor at the head, Ingrid at the foot, Adam to my left, and me trying not to touch the bruise on my temple while pretending everything is fine.
The bruise has faded from purple to a sickly yellow-green over the past three days.
I've covered it with makeup and a carefully arranged section of hair, but I can still feel it throbbing if I move my head too fast. Adam hasn't mentioned it.
Adam hasn't mentioned anything: not the hospital text, not my pale face at breakfast the next morning, not the bottle of iron supplements now sitting on my nightstand.
To be fair, he's barely been home. Meetings. Calls. Whatever crisis is currently demanding his attention. When he sleeps, it's late and silent, his body on one side of his bed while I lie awake in the guest room wondering when my room stopped feeling like mine and started feeling like exile.
"The soup is excellent today," Ingrid says, because someone has to say something and Victor certainly won't. "Henri has been experimenting with the recipe."
"Lovely," I manage. The soup is some kind of butternut situation, rich and perfectly seasoned, and I have no appetite for it at all.
Victor eats methodically, eyes on his phone between bites.
Adam is doing the same thing, the family resemblance is striking when they're both ignoring the actual humans in the room.
Two men, two screens, two women making small talk across the void.
Adam's phone buzzes. He glances at it, frowns, and pushes back from the table.
"Excuse me," he says. "I need to take this."
"Adam." My voice comes out rougher than I intend. "We're in the middle of—"
But he's already gone, disappearing through the study door with the phone pressed to his ear. The door closes behind him with a soft click that somehow sounds like a verdict. Between the soup and the fish course, Victor sets down his phone.
"Daisy," he says.
I look up, surprised to be addressed directly. Victor rarely bothers with me during these meals. I'm furniture to him: decorative, functional, and not worth conversation.
"Yes?"
He reaches into his jacket and withdraws an envelope. Cream-colored, expensive paper, the sort reserved for news that changes things. He slides it across the table toward me, bypassing Ingrid entirely, his expression perfectly neutral.
"A retention bonus," he says. "For your continued contributions to the family's interests."
I stare at the envelope. I don't touch it.
"I'm sorry?"
"The Brandt renewal is approaching. Klaus is sentimental, as you know, and your presence at negotiations has been useful.
This is recognition of that usefulness." He picks up his phone again, already losing interest. "The number should be satisfactory.
Direct deposit can be arranged if you prefer discretion. "
"Victor, I'm not sure I understand what you're asking me to do."
"I'm not asking you to do anything you haven't already agreed to do.
" He sets the phone down again, gives me his full attention in a way that makes my skin prickle.
"You signed a contract, Daisy. You committed to five years.
The Brandt dinner is Friday. This is simply... incentive to remain committed."
"You think I need to be bribed to show up at dinner?"
"I think everyone has a price at which their commitment becomes more reliable." He gestures at the envelope like it's nothing, like it's a restaurant check he's covering out of politeness. "Consider it insurance. For both of us."
My hands are shaking. I press them flat against my thighs under the table, willing them to be still.
"And if I don't take it?"
"Then you don't take it." He shrugs, but his eyes stay fixed on mine. "Though I'd wonder why a woman in your position would turn down financial security. Unless you're confident that my son's affection is enough to sustain you. Are you confident of that, Daisy?"
The question lands exactly where he wants it to, right in the soft center of every insecurity I've ever had about this marriage. About whether Adam actually wants me here or just needs someone to fill a role. About whether I'm a wife or a prop.
"Adam loves me."
"Adam needs a wife who doesn't embarrass him at corporate functions.
Adam needs a partner who understands discretion.
Adam needs someone Klaus Brandt finds charming enough to overlook an extra two percent on the renewal terms." Victor picks up his wine glass, swirls it thoughtfully.
"Love is a generous interpretation of those requirements. "
"You don't know anything about our marriage."
"I know everything about your marriage," he corrects mildly. "I wrote the contract."
"Victor." Ingrid's voice cuts across the table, sharp in a way I've never heard from her. She's always so composed, so perfectly controlled, and now she's looking at her husband with what might be anger. "That's enough. This is inappropriate."
"It's practical." Victor doesn't look at her. "The Brandt deal is worth several hundred million. A modest investment in stability seems prudent."
"She's your daughter-in-law."
"She's a business asset. There's no need to pretend otherwise."
"I'm sitting right here," I say, and my voice comes out steadier than I expected. Almost sharp. "You can stop talking about me like I'm a line item on a budget."
"But that's precisely what you are." Victor sets down his wine glass.
"I don't say that to be cruel, Daisy. I say it because understanding your position clearly will serve you better than romantic delusions.
You provide a service. You're compensated for that service.
The envelope simply makes the arrangement more explicit. "
"The envelope makes it feel like you're paying me to stay married to your son."
"Aren't I?"
The question hangs there, ugly and honest.
"Victor, stop." Ingrid's hand comes down flat on the table, rattling the silverware.
I've never seen her lose composure like this, and the shock of it momentarily distracts me from my own humiliation.
"You will not sit at my dinner table and treat this girl like she's a contractor we're negotiating with. "
"This girl signed a contract—"
"And she's honored every term of it. She's been gracious at every event, patient with every demand, and more tolerant of your condescension than I would have been at her age.
" Ingrid's voice is ice. "She is Adam's wife.
She is part of this family. And you will treat her accordingly, or you will finish your meal in the study. "
Victor's expression doesn't change, but the air in the room shifts. He reaches for his phone again, a clear dismissal. "I wasn't aware you'd become so sentimental, Ingrid."
"I wasn't aware you'd become so comfortable being cruel to young women who can't fight back."
"I can fight back," I say quietly, but neither of them acknowledges me. I might as well be invisible again, caught between their power struggle, a pawn in someone else's chess game.
"She can take the envelope or leave it," Victor says. "The choice is hers. I'm simply offering options."
"You're offering an insult wrapped in money."
"Same thing, in this family."
Ingrid goes quiet. The truth of that statement settles over the table like dust, the acknowledgment that money has always been the language the Smiths speak, that affection and contempt and everything in between gets filtered through zeros on a check.
I look at the envelope. Still sitting there, equidistant between us, radioactive.
"I'm not taking it," I say.
Victor's eyebrow lifts a fraction. "No?"
"No. I don't need a retention bonus to show up at a dinner. I don't need to be bribed to do what I already agreed to do. And I definitely don't need you reminding me that my husband might only value me for my usefulness, because I think about that enough on my own without your help."
"Well." Victor picks up his phone, swipes at the screen. "At least you have some fire. I was beginning to wonder."
"Victor," Ingrid warns.
"What? It's a compliment." He doesn't look up. "Doormats are boring. If she's going to be part of this family, she might as well be interesting."
I press my hands harder against my thighs. I stare at the envelope still sitting on the table. It won't fix anything, but it counts for something. The envelope stays untouched.
"Excuse me," I say, and I push back from the table, and I walk out to the terrace because I can't breathe in that room for one more second.
The estate gardens are immaculate in the afternoon light, all trimmed hedges and flowers and a stone balustrade overlooking lawns that stretch toward distant trees.
I grip the railing and try to stop shaking, but the tremors won't quit.
My whole body feels like it's vibrating at a frequency designed to shatter glass. Paid to stay.
Victor is paying me to stay married to his son through a business deal.
Like a contractor. Like a consultant. Like someone whose presence is tolerable only when it serves a purpose.
Adam is still in the study. He hasn't heard any of it.
I hear footsteps behind me, lighter than Adam's, and I know before I turn that it's Ingrid.
"Daisy." She stops beside me at the railing, her hands folded in front of her. She's wearing soft blue today, a color that brings out her eyes, and up close I can see the fine lines at the corners of her mouth, evidence of a lifetime of maintaining composure in that household. "I am so sorry."
"It's fine." It's not fine. Nothing about this is fine.
"It's not." She reaches out and takes my hands, both of them, her grip surprisingly strong. "Victor has been like that for forty years. Longer, probably. He sees everything in terms of transactions and leverage, and he's never understood that people aren't chess pieces to be moved around a board."
"He's not wrong, though." The words taste bitter. "I am here because of a deal. Your son needed a wife for Klaus, and I needed—" I stop, not wanting to finish that sentence, not wanting Ingrid to know how desperate I was when I agreed to this.
"I know why you're here." Her voice is gentle. "I know about your father's lawsuit, the arrangement, all of it. Victor told me five years ago when Adam announced the marriage."
I stare at her. "You knew?"
"Of course I knew. My husband doesn't make moves without documentation." She squeezes my hands. "But Daisy, listen to me. Whatever the terms were at the beginning, whatever brought you two together, that's not what I see when my son looks at you."
"What do you see?"
Ingrid's eyes are bright, earnest. "I see a man who has never let anyone close, who has built walls so high I couldn't reach him even when he was a boy, and who looks at you like you're the only door in those walls.
I have never seen him the way he is with you.
Not once, not with anyone." She pulls me closer, her grip fierce.
"He's in love with you, sweetheart. He just doesn't know how to say a single thing he feels. "
I want to believe her. God, I want to believe her so badly it aches.
"Then why doesn't he show it?" I whisper. "Why doesn't he ever just... show up?"
Ingrid's face softens with what might be old, familiar grief.
"Because Victor taught him that feelings are weaknesses, and weaknesses are exploited.
Because he learned very young that the safest way to protect something precious is to pretend it doesn't matter.
" She releases my hands. "I'm not excusing him.
I'm explaining him. There's a difference. "
"Explaining doesn't help when I'm standing alone at a dinner table being treated like staff."
"I know." She touches my face briefly, a maternal gesture so unexpected it makes my throat tight. "Ignore Victor's envelope. Leave it on the table, let the staff clear it, never speak of it again. That money is a test, and the only way to pass is to refuse to play."
"And Adam?"
"Adam will figure it out, or he won't. But either way, you need to decide what you're willing to accept. Not from Victor, not from the family, from the man you married."
She leaves me on the terrace with the air cool on my face and the gardens spreading out below, and I stay there until the trembling stops.
Until I can breathe normally again. Until I hear the study door open and close and Adam's footsteps crossing the house toward me.
He appears in the terrace doorway, phone finally pocketed.
His expression is distracted, still half-in whatever conversation just ended.
"Ready to go?" he asks. "I've got a call at three."
He's on his phone again before we reach the main road. Some email that demands immediate attention, some crisis that can't wait. His mother says he loves me. His father pays me to stay.
And the man himself sits beside me in silence, thumb scrolling through messages, not knowing about either one. He doesn't ask about the bruise on my temple or the envelope on the table or anything at all, really.
I have never been more confused in my life.