Chapter 6 Daisy
DAISY
Thursday afternoon at The Margin starts the way most Thursdays do: Nell reorganizing the display tables because she's convinced front-of-store placement determines whether a book sells or dies, me restocking the romance section with this week's arrivals, and Chaucer the store cat watching us both from his perch on the counter like we're performing for his entertainment.
"The covers keep getting worse," Nell says, holding up a historical romance with a duke who appears to have been photoshopped onto a stock photo of a castle. "This man has never seen a horse in his life. Look at his thighs. Those are office thighs."
"Office thighs can ride horses."
"Office thighs cannot ride horses, Daisy. Office thighs get saddle sores after ten minutes and then write strongly worded emails to their stable managers."
I laugh, and the sound surprises me. I haven't laughed much this week.
The bruise on my temple has faded to nothing, but the deeper hurt hasn't healed as easily.
Adam's been distant since Sunday, which is saying something given that distant is his default setting.
We've shared maybe forty words in four days, most of them logistical.
Did you eat? (No.) There's food in the fridge.
(Okay.) I'll be late. (When aren't you?)
The store bell chimes, and Priya rushes through the door with her phone clutched in both hands like a weapon or a bomb, depending on what it's about to detonate.
"Daisy." She's breathing hard, like she ran here, which she might have, the university is only three blocks away. "Daisy, did you see? Have you seen?"
"Seen what?"
Priya's face cycles through emotions too fast for me to track. Horror bleeds into sympathy, then into fresh anger. "Check your phone. Right now. Check your phone."
"I left it in the back, I was restocking—"
"Use mine." She shoves her phone into my hands. "It's everywhere. Someone leaked it. The whole thing."
"Leaked what?"
But I'm already looking at the screen, and the words are already registering, and my chest is already going tight in the way that means something very bad is about to happen to my ability to breathe.
The headline reads: BILLIONAIRE CEO'S MARRIAGE CONTRACT REVEALED: FIVE-YEAR DEAL, DEBT PAYOFF, AND PRENUP DETAILS EXPOSED.
Below it, in smaller text: Meridian CEO Adam Smith's marriage to Daisy Williams was reportedly arranged five years ago as part of a business transaction, according to leaked documents obtained by multiple outlets.
And below that: a PDF. A photograph of pages. Pages I recognize, because I signed them five years ago.
The marriage contract. The whole thing. Every clause, every term, every cold legal phrase that reduced our relationship to a business arrangement before it even began.
"Who leaked this?" My voice sounds strange, far away, like it's coming from someone else's mouth. "How did they get this?"
"No one knows yet. It broke about an hour ago, and it's just… it's everywhere, Daisy. Twitter, Instagram, all the news sites. Everyone's talking about it."
I scroll down.
The comments start immediately. Hundreds of them. Thousands, probably, though I stop counting after the first few dozen because they all say the same thing in different words.
Gold digger. Married him for money. Poor guy got trapped by a con artist and her debts.
Five years to cash out lmao she planned this from the beginning.
Dog-Eared Daisy is actually Dog-Eared Scammer, who knew romance readers could be so pathetic.
Her father was in debt and she prostituted herself to pay it off. Classic.
Imagine being so desperate you'd marry a stranger for money and then pretend to love him for FIVE YEARS.
"Daisy." Nell's voice, sharp and concerned, cuts through the buzzing in my ears. "Daisy, give me the phone. You don't need to read that."
"They know my name." I can't stop scrolling. I can't stop reading. Every comment is a knife, and I keep reaching for more of them. "They know about the book club. They're talking about my father's debts like… like they have any right—"
This is why you never trust women who read romance novels. They literally cannot tell the difference between fantasy and reality. She thought she could make a billionaire love her.
The husband should sue. She defrauded him.
I feel bad for her honestly. Imagine being so worthless you have to sell yourself to save your daddy's house. That's actual prostitution.
"Daisy." Nell takes the phone from my hands, firmly, and I let her because my fingers have stopped working properly. "Look at me. Breathe."
"They're calling me a prostitute, Nell. Thousands of strangers on the internet are calling me a prostitute because I married a man to save my father's home, and they don't know anything about… they don't know that I—"
My phone starts ringing in the stockroom. Then it rings again. Then a third time.
"I'll get it," Priya says, and she disappears through the doorway while Nell guides me to one of the reading chairs, the overstuffed ones we keep in the romance section for customers who want to browse.
"Sit," Nell says. "Head between your knees if you need to. I'm getting you water."
"I don't need water."
"You're gray. You need water."
Priya returns with my phone, her face even more troubled than before. "It's someone named Lorraine? She's called four times."
I take the phone. "Hello?"
"Finally." Lorraine's voice is brisk, efficient, completely unsurprised by the apocalypse happening online. "I've been trying to reach you for an hour. We need to coordinate."
"Coordinate what, exactly? The public execution of my dignity, or just the cleanup afterward?"
"The response." Lorraine doesn't acknowledge my sarcasm.
"We're going to release a joint statement, something about how your relationship began unconventionally but blossomed into genuine love.
I've already drafted it. Then we'll schedule a soft interview, maybe that morning show you like, and you'll do a photo spread: casual, intimate, lots of touching.
We need to humanize this before the weekend. "
"Humanize it." I feel Nell's hand on my shoulder, steadying. Priya has gone still behind the counter, openly listening. "You want me to sell a romance narrative while the internet is calling me a prostitute."
"I want you to control the story before the story controls you. There's a difference."
"Is there? Because from where I'm standing, it sounds like you want me to perform for the cameras again. Pretend everything's fine. Smile pretty for the press."
"That's literally what you agreed to do when you signed the contract, Daisy.
" Lorraine's voice sharpens. "The whole point of this arrangement was mutual benefit.
Meridian gets a polished public image, you get financial security and social access.
The contract being leaked doesn't change the fundamental terms. It just means we have to work harder to maintain the illusion. "
"The illusion." I laugh, and it scrapes my throat. "Right. The illusion that I'm a real wife and not just a really expensive accessory."
"You are a real wife. You're also a strategic asset. Both things can be true."
"Oh my god." I press my free hand against my forehead. The bookstore feels too small suddenly, the shelves closing in. "Do you hear yourself? Strategic asset. That's how you talk about me. That's how all of you talk about me."
"I talk about you the way the situation requires. Sentiment doesn't protect you, Daisy. Strategy does. And right now, the strategy is a soft interview and a photo spread and looking very much in love with your husband."
"What if I don't want to look in love with my husband right now? What if I want to look exactly how I feel, which is humiliated and exposed and furious?"
"Then you'll make the story worse." Lorraine's tone goes cold. "You'll confirm every narrative the press is spinning. The gold digger. The social climber. The girl who traded her dignity for a bank account. Is that what you want? Because I can cancel the interview if that's the image you'd prefer."
Nell makes a small sound of outrage beside me.
"What I want," I say, each word deliberate, "is for someone in this family to acknowledge that what happened to me is wrong.
Not inconvenient. Not a PR challenge. Wrong.
I want someone to say, 'Daisy, I'm sorry your private life got weaponized for clicks.
' I want someone to be angry on my behalf instead of immediately pivoting to damage control. "
"I am doing damage control on your behalf. That's my job."
"Your job is protecting Meridian. I'm just a variable in that equation."
Lorraine pauses. When she speaks again, her voice has a new edge, almost personal.
"You know what your problem is, Daisy? You want to be the victim and the beneficiary at the same time.
You want the lifestyle and the sympathy.
You want people to feel sorry for you while you're living in a penthouse and wearing designer clothes and attending galas that most people will never get within a mile of.
The internet isn't being unfair to you. The internet is pointing out the obvious: that you made a transactional choice and got caught. "
I flinch, and Nell’s grip tightens on my shoulder.
"That's not—"
"It is. You sold a fantasy, Daisy. You sold the image of a perfect couple, a Cinderella story, true love in the penthouse. Now people know it was manufactured, and they're angry. That's not misogyny. That's disappointment. You can't blame them for feeling cheated."
"I can blame them for calling me a whore."
"People are cruel when they feel lied to. You'll have to weather that."
"Weather it." My voice cracks, and I hate it. I hate that she can hear me breaking. "You make it sound like a rainstorm. Like I just need an umbrella and it'll pass."