Georgia's POV
The first time I step into Josiah's house, our house as he constantly reminds me, I know I've made a deal with something worse than the devil. Devils, at least, wear their intentions like a second skin.
The champagne burns bitter on my tongue as I stand frozen in the cavernous foyer. Marble floors stretch like alabaster glaciers beneath my feet. Chandeliers dangle overhead, crystalline spiders weaving webs of light, their brilliance fracturing across walls that devour sound, breath, hope itself.
The air tastes of lemon polish, old money, and artful deception.
Josiah gestures broadly, his razor-thin smile fixed in place. "What do you think?"
"It's beautiful." The lie comes automatically.
"I had the interior completely renovated two years ago." He moves through the space like he owns it. Which he does. Including me. "Modern design. Clean lines. Nothing cluttered or sentimental."
The Victorian exterior promises sanctuary and history. Inside is architectural schizophrenia, a hollow cathedral of modernity so sterile it makes morgues seem like childhood bedrooms.
"Your bedroom is in the east wing." He leads me up the grand staircase, his hand on my lower back. Guiding. Possessing. "Mine is at the opposite end. A modern arrangement. We each maintain our own space."
My bedroom. My exquisite little isolation chamber. The four-poster bed dominates the space like a pagan altar, sheets knife-edged and pristine.
This isn't a bedroom. It's a mausoleum for the woman I used to be.
"I trust you'll find it comfortable," Josiah says, already turning to leave. "Dinner is at seven. Don't be late."
Nights are the worst.
I lie in that perfect bed, tracing ceiling patterns until my vision blurs. The house's silence settles heavy as a burial shroud. Sometimes I swear I can hear the walls breathing. In, out. In, out. As if the house itself is sentient, watching, waiting for me to split open.
By day, I'm Josiah's perfect acquisition.
I stand beside him at his endless parade of dinner parties, smiling until my face becomes porcelain-fragile. Nodding at the right moments. My presence nothing more than living art added to his impressive collection.
"My wife," he introduces me, his hand curled around my waist, fingers pressing into my flesh through silk and bone. His grip tightens whenever I part my lips. A warning. A reminder.
You're not here to speak. You're here to be seen.
His business associates and their wives appraise me with surgical precision. The women's eyes winter-cold as they catalog my dress, my jewelry, my youth. Searching for flaws. For weakness. For the inevitable hairline fractures that will someday shatter me.
The men look at me the way they look at Josiah's artwork. Appreciative of beauty, but calculating the investment return.
"You've done well for yourself, Mason," they say, and I feel myself shrinking. Condensing. Becoming less than human with every approving nod.
A canvas for his wealth. A mannequin to display his success.
Josiah doesn't cage me all at once. That would be too obvious, too crude for a man who collects beautiful things with precision. No, he dismantles my freedom piece by piece, like a clockmaker disassembling a precious timepiece. Methodical. Patient. Each small restriction justified with honeyed concern.
"You mustn't go into town alone," he says one morning over breakfast. His voice gentle as a psalm but unyielding as bedrock. His fingers trace hypnotic circles on the back of my hand, leaving trails of frost. "It isn't safe. A woman of your standing should be accompanied."
The first brick in my prison wall, laid with such tender care I barely feel its weight.
"I've always gone into town alone." I try to keep my voice steady.
"Things are different now." His pale blue eyes meet mine. Ice over bottomless water. "You're Mrs. Mason. You represent my interests. My reputation. I won't have you wandering unprotected."
"Protected from what?"
"From anything that might harm you." He squeezes my hand. "I'm simply looking after what's mine."
What's mine. Not who. What.
Soon, every journey beyond our iron gates comes with shadows. A driver whose eyes track my movements in rearview mirrors. A maid whose footsteps echo mine through boutiques and galleries. Their presence clings to me like perfume I can't scrub away.
I tell myself I'm being dramatic. That Josiah is merely protective, an older husband looking after his young wife. The lie tastes metallic on my tongue, but I swallow it anyway.
Lies go down easier than truth in mansions built on deception.
His boundaries tighten incrementally. Each new rule presented as a gift rather than a shackle. One by one, he strips away the pieces that make me me. Not by force, but by quiet discouragement. By logic that sounds like devotion but feels like drowning in shallow water.
The gifts begin arriving a week after our wedding. Silk dresses in colors I'd never choose. Diamonds that feel like celestial bodies collapsing around my throat. Perfumes selected to mask my natural scent with something Josiah finds more suitable.
"I hope you find these to your liking," he says, voice smooth as polished obsidian, eyes never quite meeting mine.
Each gift feels less like affection and more like payment. Less like love and more like ownership.
The diamond choker he fastens around my neck one evening after another silent dinner feels like a collar. Like a brand. Like a garrote tightening with each shallow breath. His fingers are winter-cold against my skin as he secures the clasp, his gaze fixed on the diamonds, not on me.
"It suits you," he says, the words falling between us like stones into still water.
I touch the stones, feel them pulse against my throat like tiny frozen hearts. "It's beautiful."
"Good. You'll wear it when we entertain next week."
He's already turning away, cologne lingering between us like an invisible wall.
My books gather dust on shelves, replaced by slim volumes on etiquette and household management. Letters to old friends are composed but never sent, later found in the wastebasket, ink blurred as if they'd been read before being discarded.
Even my reflection becomes a stranger wearing my face.
"You should wear your hair up," Josiah remarks as I prepare for yet another dinner party. He hovers in the doorway, his reflection looming behind mine in the vanity. "It looks more refined that way."
And so I do. My fingers twist strands into submission until my scalp screams with silent rebellion, skin pulled taut across my cheekbones. Just as I pin every part of myself into place for him, molding myself to fit the hollow space he's carved out for me in his perfect world.
In the dead of night, when the mansion settles into watchful silence, I stand at my bedroom window. Palm pressed against glass so cold it burns like dry ice. Beyond the manicured gardens and wrought iron gates lies a world I'm forgetting. Where I once moved freely, laughed without restraint, existed completely.
Which will break first? This perfect house? My perfect facade? Or my imperfect, starving heart?
What Josiah doesn't understand, what men like him never understand, is that even beautiful cages eventually become torture chambers.
And even the gentlest prisoners eventually learn to pick locks.
Days melt into weeks. Weeks bleed into months. My life settles into a rhythmic emptiness, each moment planned and predictable as a funeral dirge.
Each morning, I wake in that grand four-poster. Sheets crisp as new bills. The space beside me vacant. Josiah prefers his own quarters most nights, visiting mine only when desire or ownership needs physical expression.
I dress in whatever the season or his preferences dictate. Silk that whispers across my skin but weighs heavy as medieval armor.
The breakfast ritual begins precisely at eight. Josiah reads the Los Angeles Times while I push food around bone china. My appetite buried beneath the weight of another empty day. Silver scrapes against porcelain, each sound another tiny fissure in our silence.
"You're not eating," he says without looking up.
"I'm not hungry."
"You need to maintain your figure." He turns a page. "We have the charity gala next week."
I force down a bite of toast. It tastes like ash.
Sometimes I wonder if he notices I'm disappearing. If he cares that the woman he married is evaporating, leaving behind only the perfect shell he purchased.
After breakfast come the meaningless distractions. Correspondence with women I barely know, each sentence another small death on monogrammed stationery. Fittings for dresses I don't want, standing still as pins prick my skin. Tiny violations that remind me I can still feel something, anything, even if just fleeting pain.
Hours drip by, viscous as honey turned bitter. Afternoons in the library, staring at leather-bound books without seeing them. Once, reading transported me beyond boundaries to worlds where women chose their own fates, loved without restraint, lived fully.
Now words blur, dissolving before I can grasp them. I close books and let them rest on my lap, hands idle, thoughts heavier than the silence enveloping me. The grandfather clock marks time with merciless precision, each second another piece of myself dissolving into the ether.
I stop journaling. Stop thinking beyond the immediate moment. Stop existing beyond the parameters of Josiah's expectations.
Evenings require diamond earrings that pull at my lobes like tiny anchors, lips painted in shades Josiah prefers. Across endless dining tables, I nod at his remarks, offering perfect responses, playing my part in this elaborate performance of matrimony.
"You were quiet tonight," Josiah says after one dinner party, pouring himself scotch.
"Was I?" I arrange my features into something resembling interest.
"The Hendersons asked about you. About your family." He swirls the amber liquid. "I told them you're adjusting well to married life."
"That was kind of you."
"It's the truth, isn't it?" His eyes find mine, cold and assessing. "You are adjusting well."
It's not a question. It's a statement. A command.
"Of course." I smile. Perfect. Empty. "I'm very happy."
"Good." He drains his glass. "Keep it that way."
Then bedtime. The moment I dread most.
If Josiah comes to me, I close my eyes and endure. Lying still beneath him like carved marble. The weight of him pressing me into the mattress, stealing air, stealing self. His hands mapping my body like territory he's conquered, breath hot against my neck, whispering words of possession disguised as devotion.
If he doesn't visit, I trace ceiling cracks with my gaze, wondering if I might dissolve into them. If the house might swallow me completely, mercifully.
I don't cry. Don't rage.
I simply fade, colors bleeding from a masterpiece left too long in merciless light.