POV Caroline
You are nothing without this family, Caroline.
The words loop through my skull as the car pulls away from the cemetery, my mother's voice from a decade ago still sharp enough to draw blood.
I was seventeen. I'd applied to a university in London without permission—filled out the forms myself, written the essays in secret. When Mother found out, she didn't rage. Helen Ellsworth doesn't rage.
She simply made three phone calls, and by dinner, my acceptance had been rescinded.
You are nothing without this family.
She proved it, too.
When I tried to get a job at twenty, she had me blacklisted from every publishing house in Manhattan. When I dated a man she hadn't approved, she ruined his career so thoroughly he left the country.
When I finally escaped to Vienna, she let me go—but only because Will negotiated for months. The time is right now.
Will is dead. And I have no one left to negotiate on my behalf.
The house swarms with black-clad relatives when we arrive at the reception the next day—the whole poisonous constellation descending with casseroles and sharp-edged sympathy.
"—heard Helen's already arranged a replacement engagement. The Calloway son, apparently."
The voice stops me cold in the hallway. Aunt Vivian, her vowels slick with performative sympathy.
"Efficient," Aunt Celeste replies. "The body's not even cold."
"Caroline's been useless in Vienna for years—at least now she'll serve some purpose."
My aunts are discussing my sale like livestock at auction. "Do you think she knows yet?"
"Knowing Helen? She probably told the girl at the graveside."
Their laughter follows me as I push toward the drawing room where my mother holds court. She stands by the fireplace and when sees me approaching, something flickers in her gray eyes—calculation, perhaps, or warning.
"Caroline. You should be circulating."
"Is it true? What Vivian and Celeste are discussing in the hallway like I'm breeding stock?"
Her hand closes around my elbow. "Not here."
She steers me into the library, shutting the door behind us with a soft click that sounds like a cell door closing.
"The merger cannot be lost. The families have agreed on a solution."
"I don't care about the merger."
"Your caring is irrelevant. The merger was the purpose of William's engagement. That purpose remains."
"William is dead, Mother." The words scrape my throat raw. "The purpose died with him."
"Purpose doesn't die. It transfers." She turns me to face her. "The Calloways have a son. William was to marry Calloways’ daughter. Now you will marry Calloways’ son."
I stare at her. "You can’t be serious."
"I am always serious, Caroline."
"I won't—"
"You will." Her eyes are gray as the headstones, cold as the January wind. "You are an Ellsworth. This is what we do."
"You're selling me to the family of the woman who killed my brother?"
"Lucy was driving on icy roads. It was an accident."
"She was behind the wheel." My voice cracks. "She was supposed to protect him."
"And now she's dead. Blame serves no purpose. The merger serves a purpose. Your marriage serves a purpose. Your feelings are irrelevant." She walks to the door. "Compose yourself. Whatever you're feeling, you will not embarrass this family."
The door closes behind her and the walls start pressing closer with every breath. I barely make it to the bathroom before my composure cracks.
The lock clicks shut and I grip the marble counter, staring at my reflection. Pale. Hollow. A woman who buried her twin brother last morning and learned she's been bartered away like livestock.
The first wave hits without warning.
My chest tightens like a fist closing around my lungs.
The walls press inward, the marble counter turns slick under my palms, and suddenly I can't breathe, can't think.
No. Not now.
I slide down the cabinet until I'm sitting on the cold tile floor, knees drawn to my chest, hands shaking so violently I can hear my rings clicking against each other.
Will's voice echoes in my memory: "Breathe with me, Caro. In for four. Hold for four. Out for four. I've got you. I'm right here."
But he's not here. He's never going to be here again.
I press my forehead to my knees and count anyway. In for four. The air stutters and catches. Hold for four. My lungs burn. Out for four. It comes out ragged, broken.
Again.
I don't know how long I sit here on the bathroom floor in my dirty funeral dress, breathing in fours, pretending my dead brother is counting with me.
Long enough that my hands stop shaking and the crushing weight on my chest lightens into something I can carry.
I do it alone. There's no one left to help me.
I pull myself up and run cold water over my wrists the way Will taught me, letting the shock anchor me back into my body.
You're okay, I tell myself. You survived. You'll keep surviving.
The words feel hollow without his voice behind them.
I think about Vienna. My apartment with the window boxes. The café where no one knows my name. Three years of building something small and invisible and mine, and now it's slipping through my fingers like sand.
Will understood. Will was the only one who understood.
Caro and Will against the world.
I pull out my phone with trembling fingers and scroll to our text thread.
‘I have a plan. Give me until spring, and I'll make sure you never have to come back here unless you want to. Trust me.’
I'd trusted him. I'd waited. I'd let myself believe my brother would save me the way he'd been saving me since we were children.
A knock rattles the door. "Caroline? The Harringtons have arrived, and Aunt Celeste is asking for you."
"I'll be right out."
"You'll be out now. I won't have you hiding in bathrooms while guests wait."
Her heels click away down the hall.
I stare at my reflection one more time. The woman in the mirror looks exactly like what she is: a trapped animal in couture black.
I haven't cried since I was fourteen. The year I learned that tears in this family are ammunition, not release. I'd sobbed at a dinner party—some cruelty from Mother I can't even remember now—and watched every adult in the room catalog my weakness for later use.
So I stopped. Built walls so high that when Father died five years ago, I stood dry-eyed at his grave and felt only a distant ache.
But this Will's absence feels like someone has reached into my chest and ripped out everything vital.
They're never going to let me leave again.
I think about the stranger from that night. His rules. His walls. His careful distance from anything that might hurt him.
No attachments. No expectations. No second meetings.
Maybe he had the right idea. Maybe the only way to survive is to stop wanting things that can be taken away.
But even as I think it, stubbornness flares in my chest.
Will believed I could be free.
I fix my makeup. Straighten my spine. Become the Ellsworth they expect.
And somewhere beneath the performance, I make myself a promise: I will find a way back to Vienna. Whatever it takes, I will not let this family consume me whole.