I asked Mr White for a day off. The air in Mr. White's office was stale, he sat quietly. But the permission he granted me—a simple nod to leave early—felt like a door opening to a freezing wind.
"My mom's in the hospital," I'd said, a half-truth wrapped in necessity. My heart hammered with a five-year-old anxiety as I reached the ground floor.
My phone rang. Wesley's name flared against the darkness of my screen.
His voice was smooth, a velvet cloak hiding a steel blade.
"Lilith, it's me... Your mom isn't in the hospital."
My breath hitched. "What? Then where is she?"
"Discharged today. She's home," he said, the words sterile and clipped.
"Okay. Thank you." I hung up, my mind racing. Wesley—always watching, always knowing exactly when to insert himself into my life.
Home. The word was a curse. Five years ago, my father, the patriarch of the gilded cage, had banished me. Never step foot in this house again.
But Mom was "ill." A mother's distress, real or fabricated, was a hook I couldn't cut free from.
If I couldn't give money, I could at least give defiance.
I went back to my pathetic little apartment, changed into the only black dress I owned that felt remotely powerful, and summoned courage I didn't possess.
The cab dropped me outside the towering mansion, a monstrous monument to the family I disowned.
The gate required a password. I typed it out, numbly—the same sequence I'd used since I was eleven. They hadn't changed it.
They hadn't expected me back.
I entered the house not as a guest, but as a ghost returning to haunt the living.
"What are you doing here?" That familiar voice, sharp as a switchblade.
My father and my brother, Harrison, emerged from the shadows, their faces masks of cold disdain.
"I'm here to see my mother."
Harrison's laugh was a dry rattle.
"Your mother? Wasn't it clear five years ago that you no longer have a family?"
"It was crystal," I spat back, the bitterness a familiar taste on my tongue. "Your father said I no longer had a father. He said nothing about a mother."
"You're still a piece of shit after all these years," Dad murmured, his eyes full of contempt.
I turned my back on them, starting for the stairs. A hand clamped down on my arm, spinning me around.
A stinging blow crossed my face.
Harrison. The baby of the family slapped me. I smiled, a slow, dark expression that confused him.
I had prayed for this moment. I massaged my fist and drove it into his face, hard enough to drop him to the Italian marble floor.
"Pathetic," I sneered, looking down at his crumpled form. "Still depending on Daddy for everything."
"Oh my gosh, baby, are you alright?" A porcelain doll with too much makeup rushed to his side. "How dare you hit my fiancee?"
Fiancee? The absurdity of it made me laugh. She raised her hand to strike me.
I caught her wrist mid-swing and slapped her with her own momentum. She stumbled back into Harrison's waiting arms.
"You are so mannerless," my father snarled, lifting his hand toward me, ready to assert his dominance as he had five years ago.
Not today. I caught his wrist in an iron grip. "Just because you slapped me five years ago doesn't mean you'll repeat it. I'm not that little girl you threw out. The person you're seeing today is mature."
I abandoned them for the stairs, seeking a maid for the truth.
"Did the mistress go to the hospital?" I asked a cowering servant.
"No, miss. The mistress isn't sick."
"Interesting." I murmured as I made my way her room.
I found her in her bedroom, looking perfectly healthy, the news of her "hospitalization" already a foul taste in my mouth. Fury propelled me through the door without a knock.
"Lilith? What are you doing here?" Her surprise was genuine, but her color was high.
"So you're surprised to see me?" I sneered, shutting the door behind me, trapping us in this opulent prison cell.
"No... no, it's just that I wasn't expecting you to drop by so soon. I thought you'd call me and inform me about your visit."
"Uh-huh," I dragged out the word, the sarcasm dripping like venom.
"So you could prepare yourself and pull up a good performance?"
"It's not what you think, Lilith," she said, wringing her hands, the picture of a concerned, if slightly guilty, mother.
"Really? Well, you better start explaining, because I don't understand anything right now."
The confessions tumbled out, weak justifications for a manipulative act.
"I just wanted to see my baby. It's been five years, Lilith, and you didn't bother to call or visit during the holidays, and I got worried."
"So the only thing you could come up with is being sick?" My voice was low and dangerous.
"It was the only option I had. I knew that you would never attend dinner even if we invited you."
"So you faked your illness? You literally went too far, Mom."
"I know."
I paced the room, the anger turning to a heavy, suffocating disappointment.
"Of all the illnesses in the world, you picked Leukemia? You could have lied you had a cold, or a cough, perhaps a fever, but no. You picked leukemia. Do you know how worried I was when I heard about it?"
"I'm sorry. I know I shouldn't have lied to you, but you gave me no choice."
I sighed in frustration, the weight of the manipulation pressing down on me.
"Well, since you're alright, I need to leave."
"Stay for dinner, please."
"I can't"
"This is a Mother's request to her daughter"
She used the "mother's request" card. A cheap blackmail, but effective.
Dinner was a silent war. The four of them—Dad, Harrison, the fiancee, and Mom—stared at me while I sat in the dining room where I used to belong.
"So now she comes to our house to eat because she can't afford her own food?" Harrison sneered, his voice a venomous whisper that carried easily across the polished mahogany table.
The candlelight flickered, casting long, hungry shadows.
"Harrison, watch your tongue," mom said as she tried to ease the tension.
I refused to touch the food—a feast I could never afford on my meager salary. Instead, I watched them, a captive audience to their cruelty.
"I just can't believe you'd allow this... thing to eat with us," Harrison continued, his gaze a physical blow.
"Don't worry," my father stated with chilling benevolence. "It's a good thing to give to the poor and needy who can't afford to feed themselves properly." His eyes, cold and calculating, met mine.
They were talking about me, an object of charity in my own childhood home.
"Honey, why haven't you touched your food yet?" Mom asked, her voice a practiced mask concern.
"I had dinner before coming," I lied, the shame a bitter taste in my mouth.
"Are you sure? Cause from what I was told, your salary isn't enough to cover your rent," Dad said, a hint of dark satisfaction in his tone. He knew my desperation; he thrived on it.
"Such a shame," Harrison drawled, leaning back in his chair, a predator enjoying the hunt.
"If only some people had married Harrison, perhaps their life wouldn't have been this miserable."
He spoke as if I were a prize to be won, a transaction for a better life. The audacity ignited a familiar, simmering rage within me.
"If only God gave some people sense, they wouldn't have been this useless and stupid at the same time," I retorted, finally finding my voice.
My eyes locked with his, a silent promise of war. He knew exactly who I meant.
"All of you, stop it please," Mom pleaded, her composure finally cracking.
"Can't we have a peaceful family reunion?"
"You call this a reunion?" Harrison laughed, a harsh, grating sound.
"I've seen way more better family reunion than this," added his fiancée.
"Who ever told you that you're part of the family?" I snapped at her, drawing her into the crossfire.
"Don't involve my fiancée into this," Harrison's voice was a low growl.
"I'm sick of this family," I said, pushing my chair back abruptly, the legs scraping loudly against the floor.
"And we are sick of you," Harrison shot back, standing to match my height, his presence looming over the table.
"Life was peaceful when you were chased out of the house. I mean, if you had married Wesley, things would have been different. You would have taken over the company and not me."
His words hung in the air, a dark secret exposed. He had always wanted the power, the control. I had only ever wanted freedom.
"Do I look like someone who wants the company?" I spat, turning towards the door, the shadows now my only allies. "You can have it all to yourself."
"For one night! Let's have dinner like a normal family for one freaking night!" Mom yelled in frustration.
A maid interrupted the hostile environment. She whispered something coherent in dad's ears. Dad had a visitor.
Minutes later, Wesley walked in. What the hell is he doing here?
He sat down beside me, a smooth, possessive move that immediately set my skin crawling. His presence felt heavy, suffocating.
I stood to leave, but his hand wrapped around my wrist, warm and inescapable.
"Leaving so soon? I just got here."
I sat back down, trapped between the devil and the deep blue sea.
"Have you informed her about it yet?" Dad asked Wesley, a strange excitement in his voice.
"No, not yet," Wesley replied, looking at me with those cold, knowing eyes.
"Tell who what?" Harrison's fiancée asked.
"Tell Lilith about her engagement with Wesley," Harrison said with a smirk.
The water I was drinking sprayed across Harrison's face. Engagement? My mother smiled nervously. My father looked smug.
Wesley tightened his grip on my hand, his thumb tracing my wrist. The dark romance had begun, and I was the unwilling heroine, bound by invisible chains to the one man who orchestrated my entire life.
I stared at Wesley, and then the laugh ripped out of my throat, harsh and entirely devoid of humor.
I laughed until tears pricked the corners of my eyes, wiping them away with a shaky hand.
"That's so funny," I managed to choke out, the sound echoing the bitterness in the dining room.
"Engagement... I'm getting engaged? To Wesley? For real?" My laughter dissolved into gasps for air, a hysterical soundtrack to their shocked silence.
His gaze never wavered, tracking me with an unnerving intensity. The room suddenly felt colder.
"I'm in love with you, Lilith," Wesley said, his voice a low, steady rumble that cut through the silence.
I stopped laughing instantly, the air thick with tension.
"Please, Wesley, cut the crap. What do you take me for, huh? Do you think I'm a fool who can't read the handwriting on the wall? I know my father paid you to do all of this, but it won't work."
A muscle twitched in his jaw, but his expression remained carefully neutral.
"Lilith, I'm serious. I do love you."
"Since you guys have nothing better to do other than plan my life for me, I suggest I leave."
I yanked my hand from his grip and bolted from the oppressive dining room, ignoring the calls from my mother.
I reached the street outside the mansion gates, the night air chilling my skin. I fumbled for my phone to call a taxi.
"Lilith!" Wesley's voice carried through the dark. I ignored him, my back rigid.
He ran up behind me, grabbing my hand, his touch sending an involuntary shiver down my spine.
"Lilith, you have to believe me," he pleaded, the polished veneer cracking slightly.
"I admit that five years ago, on the altar, I wasn't ready to get married. But it doesn't mean I never loved you. I've loved you ever since, and now that I'm all grown up, I've been able to make my own decisions, and I've decided that I want to spend the rest of my life with you."
I clapped slowly, sarcastically, my applause a sharp sound in the quiet night.
"Let me guess... you paid someone to write that down for you, right?"
"No," he said, stepping closer, his shadow falling over me.
"Wesley, look for another girl, because I'm clearly not interested."
But as I looked at his face in the pale moonlight, I knew this wasn't the end. The game had just begun, and the rules of this dark romance were entirely his.