They say you don’t marry a man; you marry his family. In my case, I married into a fortress, and I was the prisoner they forgot to lock up.
The atmosphere in the Blackwood Estate was always heavy, a dense fog of unspoken criticisms and rigid expectations that clung to the velvet drapes and the cold, polished marble floors. It was a Tuesday evening, the kind of evening that felt identical to every other in my three years of marriage to James. The dining room was silent, save for the scraping of silver against china.
At the head of the table sat Victoria, my mother-in-law. She was a woman carved from ice and old money, her face a mask of permanent disapproval. Tonight, she was wearing The Necklace—a cascading river of diamonds that reportedly belonged to a grand-duchess before finding its way to Victoria’s wrinkled, manicured neck. It wasn’t just jewelry; it was a weapon. It caught the chandelier light and threw it back as cold fire, a reminder of the wealth I didn’t come from and the standards I could never meet.
“Tasteless,” Victoria murmured, dropping her spoon into the bowl with a deliberate clatter that echoed like a gunshot in the large room.
