Chapter 4

The room was dark, but I couldn’t sleep.

The weight of the silence pressed against my chest, thick and smothering, until I felt like I was drowning in it. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the way Kenneth had left the dining room—back straight, eyes forward, not even sparing me a glance. As though I were invisible.

And maybe I was.

I sat at the edge of the bed, the hem of my nightdress pooling around my ankles, staring at the faint glow of the moon through the curtains. My hands trembled in my lap, though I wasn’t cold. I was restless.

I told myself not to cry, but the tears came anyway, hot, angry, unwanted. They slid silently down my cheeks, falling onto my palms. I pressed my fingers into my skin until it hurt, until I could feel something other than emptiness.

It was supposed to be easier, wasn’t it? Marriages like this weren’t about love. They were about names, contracts, survival. I had known that when I said yes, or rather, when I was forced to say yes.

But knowing it didn’t make it hurt less.

Somewhere down the hall, I heard a door slam. My head snapped up. The sound echoed through the still house like a warning.

I stood, moving toward my own door before I could stop myself. The hallway stretched before me, dark and endless, lined with shadows that seemed to shift as I walked. I followed the faint glow of light spilling from a room at the far end.

The study.

I paused outside the half-open door, my breath caught in my throat.

Kenneth was inside.

He stood behind a massive desk, his hands gripping the edge as though it were the only thing holding him together. His jacket was gone, his shirt sleeves rolled up, revealing scars along his forearms, faint, jagged, like memories carved into his skin. His head was bowed, his hair falling into his face, and for the first time since I met him, he didn’t look composed. He looked broken.

A glass sat nearby, amber liquid glowing under the lamp. He lifted it with a hand that wasn’t quite steady and swallowed the contents in one harsh motion.

I should have walked away. I should have gone back to my room and pretended I hadn’t seen him like this. But my feet stayed rooted.

And then I heard him speak.

“She shouldn’t be here,” he muttered, his voice hoarse, raw.

The words weren’t meant for me. They were meant for the silence. For himself.

My stomach twisted.

I stepped back, heart pounding, terrified he’d notice me. The door creaked under my movement, betraying me.

His head snapped up. His eyes, dark, stormy, wild, locked onto mine.

For a moment, neither of us moved.

Then his voice cut through the air, sharp as a blade. “What are you doing here?”

My lips parted, but no sound came out.

“I asked you a question,” he said, his tone low, dangerous.

“I… I couldn’t sleep,” I whispered.

He exhaled harshly, running a hand down his face. For a second, I thought he’d yell, or worse, throw me out. But instead, he turned his back to me, shoulders rigid.

“Go back to your room, Melinda.”

Something in the way he said my name, like it was both a command and a plea, made my chest ache.

I lingered, wanting to ask a hundred questions. Why did he look so haunted? What ghosts chased him through this house at night? What scars were buried under the ones I could see?

But I didn’t ask.

I turned and walked away, the silence between us heavier than any words could have been.

When I woke the next morning, sunlight filled the room, warm and bright, but it did nothing to thaw the ice inside me.

The tray of breakfast was waiting again, untouched from the maid’s careful hands. This time I forced myself to eat, if only to keep from fainting. Each bite was flavorless, but I swallowed anyway, determined not to let the house win.

Afterward, I found myself wandering again. The mansion was a maze of corridors and grand rooms that seemed designed to intimidate rather than invite.

But this time, I wasn’t entirely alone.

Voices drifted from the foyer.

I crept closer, staying just out of sight.

“…the press is already circling,” a man’s voice said. “They want pictures. Proof that the marriage is real.”

Kenneth’s voice followed, clipped, sharp. “They’ll get nothing. Not yet.”

“You know that’s not how this works,” the man countered. “They’ll smell blood. They always do. If you don’t play your part, if you don’t give them the show they want, everything you built will crumble. And she”

“Enough,” Kenneth snapped.

The silence that followed was suffocating.

My heart raced. I pressed myself against the wall, trying to steady my breath.

So that was it. This marriage wasn’t just about me. It wasn’t even about him. It was about appearances. About saving something bigger, his business, his reputation, maybe even his family name.

And I was the pawn.

The conversation ended with footsteps retreating. When I peeked into the foyer, Kenneth was alone, his expression carved from stone.

For a second, his eyes flicked toward the staircase where I hid. I thought he’d seen me, but he didn’t say a word. He simply turned and walked away, his back as straight and unyielding as ever.

The day blurred into monotony. I explored the gardens, their beauty as hollow as the house itself. I traced my fingers over roses that smelled sweet but felt sharp, thorns pricking my skin until I pulled away.

Everywhere I went, I felt the walls pressing closer, as though the mansion wanted to swallow me whole.

By evening, I was exhausted, not from activity, but from the sheer effort of existing here.

Dinner was the same as before. The table stretched endlessly, the silence between us more suffocating than words could ever be. This time, I didn’t bother asking questions.

But as I pushed food around my plate, I caught him watching me. Not openly, not long. Just fleeting glances, as though he wanted to read something in my face but didn’t dare linger.

When our eyes met, he looked away quickly, jaw tight.

And I realized something.

For all his coldness, for all his walls and sharp words, Kenneth Diego was just as trapped as I was.

The difference was, he had chosen to build his prison.

And I had been forced into mine.

That night, when I returned to my room, I didn’t cry.

Instead, I stood before the mirror, studying the woman staring back at me. Her eyes were tired, her face pale, but there was something new in her gaze.

Not just sorrow.

Resolve.

If I was going to survive this, if I was going to endure being the unwanted wife of Kenneth Diego, I couldn’t let this house, this man, this arrangement break me.

I would endure.

I would outlast.

And maybe, just maybe, I would find the cracks in his walls.

Because even stone could shatter.

And if Kenneth Diego thought he could ignore me forever, he was wrong.