Chapter 1

DRISANA

The elevator was taking too long.

I shifted my weight and checked my phone again, still nothing from Carter. No be there soon, no running late, no anything. Just two blue ticks that told me he had read both texts and decided I wasn’t worth a reply.

It was Sloane who convinced me to come tonight.

“Just show up,” she had said this morning, site cross-legged on my bed while I did my makeup. “Surprise him. Carter needs to see you make an effort, Dri. You’re always waiting for him to come to you.”

I told her she was right. What I didn’t say was that I had been waiting on purpose. Waiting was a form of control: you let people come to you, and you never had to reveal how much you needed them. Sloane had never figured that out about me. She thought my distance from Carter was indifference. I let her think that because it was useful.

Four years of friendship. She was the one who sat with me the night my father announced the engagement, who held my hand while I cried, who said, " We’ll figure it out, you’re not doing this alone. She was the one person I had never had to manage too hard. She came back on her own. She stayed without being handled. I had noticed that about her early and decided it made her valuable.

So I did my makeup. Put on the jeans she said looked good on me. Drove across the city to surprise a man I didn’t love because my best friend told me to try.

The elevator opened on the fourteenth floor.

Carter’s door was already cracked open. Not wide. Just an inch. The kind of gap you leave when you are expecting someone.

The living room was empty. TV off. Two used wine glasses on the coffee table, one with a lipstick stain on the rim.

Two glasses.

I heard faint sounds coming straight from his bedroom. I stood outside his door for a long moment. Some part of me was giving myself a chance to turn around. To text him something came up, go home, pretend I hadn’t heard anything.

I pushed the door open anyway. My stomach dropped. My hands went cold. My chest seized like someone had reached inside and squeezed.

My best friend was on all fours on his couch, back arched deep, while he gripped her hips and drove into her from behind. The same bed I helped him pick out three months ago. Her hair stuck to her sweaty back. His grunts mixed with her broken cries. His focus behind her was something he had never once directed at me in eight months.

My bag slipped from my fingers and hit the floor with a thud.

They jerked apart as if someone had electrocuted them. Sloane screamed and yanked the blanket over her naked body. Carter stumbled backward off the couch, dick still hard, eyes wide with panic as he tried to cover himself with both hands.

“Fuck— Drisana, wait, this isn’t what it looks like—”

I couldn’t look away from Sloane. She turned her entire body away from me and clutched the blanket tighter, like I was the intruder in their little moment.

That one movement cracked something ugly in my chest.

The shock wasn’t what I expected. It wasn’t Carter that cracked something open in my chest. Carter had always been like this, always chasing something in a skirt. If he gets kidnapped out of the blue, I’d know he was lured by a woman into the van. I had known that and managed around it because managing around it was easier than confronting it. Carter had never been fully mine and I had accepted that without admitting it.

It was Sloane.

She turned her body away from me. Pulled the blanket tighter and angled herself toward Carter like I was the one who had walked in on something that wasn’t my business. No apology. No reaching for me. Nothing.

That was what broke me open. Sloane was the one person I had never had to manage hard, the one relationship that had always come back on its own, and she had just shown me that I had miscalculated completely. I had let her in further than anyone else and she had used that access with more precision than I ever gave her credit for.

I spun around and walked out. Carter chased me down the hallway.

“Drisana! Baby, please, let me explain! It was a mistake, I swear.”

“Explain what?” I said without stopping. “That you can’t keep your dick in your pants for eight months? Save it.”

He caught my arm. I yanked it free so hard my shoulder ached.

“Don’t fucking touch me.”

“You weren’t even supposed to be here tonight,” he said, breathing fast. “Sloane came over and one thing led to another. You’re always so cold with me, Dri. A man has needs.”

I laughed. The sound surprised even me. “Needs. That is what you are calling it now?”

“You’re never even here!” he snapped, breathing hard. “You act like you’re too good for this relationship. A man gets tired of chasing someone who treats him like a business deal.”

I laughed again. “Poor Carter. Must be so hard for you.”

He reached for me again. I stepped back until my back hit the wall.

“We are done talking,” I said. “The engagement is over.”

“You cannot just decide that,” he snapped. “Our families—”

I walked away before he could finish. The elevator doors closed on his panicked face. I stared at my reflection in the metal panel the whole way down. My face looked normal. Too normal. My jaw hurt from how hard I clenched my teeth.

I got to the underground garage, entered my car, and slammed my head into the steering wheel.

She turned her back. That little wench. She actually turned her back on me. After everything. After I let her in.

I gripped the wheel until my knuckles went white.

She's going to pay for this. Someone has to pay. They can't make me look like a fool and walk away with it.

I'm starting with Carter. That ugly son of a bitch. His family needs this marriage more than we do. Ending it before it even happens will be a disaster for them.

But I needed an approach that would make my father listen. Not anger. Anger would make me look unstable and he would use it against me. Grief would work better. Grief made me look like a victim and victims got sympathy even from men like my father. I had to look pathetic enough if I wanted his pity.

I strained my eyes at the red light. Stared a little harder. Held my breath until my face flushed. It made my eyes water. It ruined my make-up but I didn’t care. Black tears streaked down my cheeks. I took some wipes from my car dashboard and wiped my nose several times with them to make it red.

I pulled out a mirror from my bag to see my final pathetic look. Yes, I looked pathetic even more pathetic than I intended. Father won’t want his golden daughter looking like a fool.

*

My father was in a meeting when I got to the mansion. His assistant stepped in front of the study door. I walked around her.

“Drisana.” My father’s voice went low and warning. “What is the meaning of this?”

“I need five minutes.”

He looked at me, then at the four men seated across from him. “Tomorrow,” he said to the room. They left.

I purposely crashed into the couch to make my pitiful attempt look legit. I let my voice crack slightly on the first sentence. Not too much. Just enough.

“Carter— Carter cheated on me.” I looked down at my hands. “With Sloane. I walked in on them in his bedroom twenty minutes ago.”

My father said nothing.

“How can she do this to me after everything we have done together?” I wiped my not-watering nose with a tissue. “I want to call off the engagement,” I said.

“That’s not going to happen.”

I looked up. Let my eyes stay glassy. “What?”

“I said what I said, Drisana.”

“He cheated on me with my best friend.” I let my voice fray. “Tonight. While I was on my way to see him–”

“Men make mistakes.” He folded his hands on the desk. “That is not sufficient reason to unravel months of planning.”

The tears weren’t coming. I had miscalculated again. He wasn’t looking at me like a grieving daughter. He was looking at me the way he looked at everything, like a problem that required a solution, not a feeling.

I dropped the performance. There was no point.

“The engagement stands,” he said. “Carter’s family will be informed that discretion is expected going forward. You are being dramatic. This marriage was never about love. You’ve always known that.”

My hands were flat against my thighs. I pressed them down hard to stop the trembling.

“What if I just refuse?” I asked. “What actually happens if I say no?”

He looked at me like I had asked something embarrassing.

“You won’t,” he said simply. “Because you are my daughter. And you understand what this family requires.”

He turned to the window. Conversation over.

I stood, straightened my top, and picked up my bag.

“You’re right,” I said. “I do understand what this family requires.”

He nodded once, satisfied, not hearing what I actually meant.

I walked out.

I drove straight home.

I need to bury myself in at least three bottles of wine. Today is not it for me. Something is wrong. My control over people has never slipped before, not even as someone as Sloane. She wasn’t all that smart and couldn’t even make a decision for herself.

She had outsmarted me. Even when I don’t want the marriage, I still see it as a stepping stone to grow powerful. Powerful enough to leave the golden Daughter acts behind and be free of father’s orders.

The room was dark except for the nightlight plugged in by the door, the one I had never been able to sleep without since I was ten years old. I stared at it for a moment.

I sat on my bed for a while. The flat heavy thing that had been sitting in my chest since the elevator was still there, unchanged. I pressed my fingers against my mother’s ring and twisted it once without thinking.

I needed something to take my mind off all of these dramas.

Then I picked up my phone.

I had been talking to him for almost eight months. I still didn’t know his name. The first time he texted me was the day my father announced the arranged marriage. I was so angry that I threw a tantrum and walked out on him.

I was home alone, refusing to see anyone when a text came in from an unknown number. I thought it was a spam message not until he praised me for being brave. I just needed someone to talk to, and stop being the golden daughter for once, and just be only Drisana.

I know texting strangers is bad but still. If that stranger gave me the comfort I so much craved. To hell with being wary of them. He didn’t hurt me or ask me for money. Or do anything shady. Well… except for that one time, he hacked into my laptop and watched me through the camera, I didn’t know until a few days later when he “casually” mentioned my ring habits, or that time he broke into my car and left a bag of honey chips because I said I was craving one.

But anything outside that was completely safe. I’m not a fool. He might actually think we are on the same page but we aren’t. I’m only using them for the time being. The moment they start getting useless, I’ll discard them as fast as I can. But for now, this is for my mental health's sake. I need something or someone that makes me feel like Drisana without asking for anything.

I typed without overthinking it.

*Bad night.*

The response came in under a minute. It always did.

*Tell me about it.*

I stared at those words for a moment.

*You know what? Never mind. It will pass. Let’s talk about something else instead.*

The last thing I want is to pour too much emotion into this and start warming up to Mr Slaker again. I did it once before. I’d rather not talk about it. I’d never do it again.

I named him Mr Stalker out of habit.

His response came in.

*What’s on your mind?*

I typed the question I had been sitting on for eight months.

*Who are you?*

I hit send before I could stop myself. Then I stared at the screen. My chest went tight. My fingers curled around the phone. I shouldn't have asked that. I knew I shouldn't have asked that.

The three dots appeared. Disappeared. Appeared again.