Chapter 1
The marble didn't feel like marble at first. It felt like ice pressed straight through the thin silk of my dress, through the skin of my knees where I'd gone down. Somebody had dropped a champagne flute and didn't clean it up, or maybe someone threw it, and the little shards caught the chandelier light and scattered it across the polished floor around me. My hair had fallen forward and my cheek was burning where the bruise was darkest, and the slit in my light blue dress had ridden up and the air hit the marks on my shoulder and chest. The whole ballroom had gone quiet except for breathing.
Jonah's hand was still locked around my upper arm. His tuxedo was perfect, white pocket square folded sharp, his dark hair styled like nothing had happened. He was leaning over me like I was something he'd knocked off a table and was deciding whether to pick up.
My name is Elise and I was twenty-six on the night my husband made sure everyone kept watching.
The clock on the far wall said 8:47 and the caterers were still holding trays by the curved staircase. I could see the ornate railing behind Jonah, the warm glow from the chandelier pooling on the stone. He didn't raise his voice. He didn't need to. He looked down at me on that debris-strewn floor and said, "You are nothing without me." The words landed the way his grip did, tight and practiced. I stared at the little reflective pieces of glass near my bare feet and I heard my own voice come out before I could stop it, small and scraped raw. "I never wanted this life."
Jonah didn't let go. His other hand smoothed his jacket at his torso, eyes closing for a second with that slight smile he used when people were watching. He tilted his head and said it like a law he'd already written on the house itself. "This is my house, my rules." The guests lining both sides of the room didn't move. Their formal dresses and suits made a wall. I could feel every bruise on my face and wrists throbbing against the cold air, and I tried to shift my weight and the marble bit harder into my knees.
I didn't know what he'd do if I tried to stand. I didn't know what they'd do if I didn't.
"You made a mistake," he said, quiet enough that only I and the nearest guests could hear it, and his fingers tightened again. I swallowed and looked up past his shoulder toward the staircase because the air had changed by the entrance. A draft cut through the warm ambient light. Someone had opened the outer door wider and a man in a dark overcoat was coming through the guest line, not fast, but not hesitating. I couldn't see his face clearly yet, backlit by the hall, but two women near the front turned their heads sharp and their eyes went wide, mouths open.
One of them whispered it, then the other said it louder, like she couldn't help naming what she saw. "That's father, that's her father."
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Jonah heard it. His smirk thinned for half a second and his head turned just enough to check the sound. His grip didn't loosen. If anything it anchored me harder to the floor. He looked back down at me, eyes off-camera for a second, then back on me, and his voice dropped to that calm that had always meant I wasn't supposed to answer anyone else. "Now you will answer to me."
My father's shape was still half behind the staircase, still moving through the guests who were now staring between us and him. The door behind him was still opening wider and I hadn't been let go and I hadn't stood up and no one had yet said my name out loud.
