POV Caroline
"Tomorrow you will meet him. The Calloway son. I expect you to be presentable."
My mother delivers the verdict from her chair by the fireplace, a glass of wine in her hand.
Six weeks since we buried Will, and Helen Ellsworth has not softened by a single degree.
"I'm always presentable," I say, though the words scrape against the nausea rising in my throat. "You trained me for that, if nothing else."
"Presentable for a European gallery opening is not the same as presentable for meeting your future husband." She takes a measured sip of her wine. "You've been looking pale lately. Are you eating properly?"
"I'm grieving, Mother. It affects the appetite."
"Grief is not an excuse for neglecting your appearance. The Calloways will be assessing you tomorrow, and I will not have them thinking the Ellsworth daughter is fragile."
Her gray eyes sweep over me.
"I'll have Dr. Harmon send something for your complexion."
"I don't need Dr. Harmon. I need time to process the fact that my twin brother is dead and you're selling me to his killer's family."
Mother's expression doesn't change, but something flickers behind her eyes.
"We've discussed this," she says, her voice flattening. "Lucy Calloway was not a killer. She was a woman driving on icy roads who made an unfortunate mistake. The Calloways lost their heir just as we lost ours. Blame serves no one."
"It serves me. It gives me somewhere to put this."
I press my hand against my sternum, where the rage and grief have been coiling together for weeks.
"You're asking me to sit across from a man whose sister took my twin from me and pretend I want to spend my life with him."
"I'm not asking you anything. I'm telling you what will happen." Mother sets down her glass. "The merger between our families has been in negotiation for years. Your brother understood its importance. He was willing to marry Lucy Calloway to secure it."
"Will loved Lucy. That's different from being sold like livestock."
"Will loved what the marriage represented—stability, alliance, a future beyond our family's constant infighting."
She rises and moves toward the window, her reflection ghosting across the dark glass.
"James Calloway is the only heir now. You are the only heir now too. The merger will proceed, with or without your cooperation."
"And if I get on a plane back to Vienna and never speak to any of you again?"
"Then you do so without resources, without protection, and without the family name that has opened every door you've ever walked through." She turns to face me. "I'm not your enemy, Caroline. I'm trying to ensure your future."
"My future was in Vienna. Will was working on a plan to give me real power in the company. He told me to wait until spring, and everything would change."
"William told you many things. Not all of them were possible." Mother's voice softens. "Your brother protected you from certain realities of this family. Perhaps too well. Now those protections are gone, and you must learn to navigate without them."
"Navigate what, exactly? A marriage to a stranger? A lifetime of smiling at Calloway family dinners while Lucy's portrait hangs on the wall?"
"A partnership with a man who, by all accounts, is handsome, brilliant and driven. You could do far worse, Caroline. Many women in your position have."
The nausea surges without warning. I feel the blood drain from my face, feel sweat prick along my hairline.
And I know with terrible certainty that I am about to be sick.
"Excuse me," I managed, already moving toward the door. "I need some air."
"We're not finished discussing—"
"I need air, Mother."
I make it to the bathroom with seconds to spare. The door locks behind me, and then I am on my knees on the cold tile, retching into the toilet while my body convulses with a violence that feels like punishment.
The first wave passes. Then the second. Then a third that leaves me shaking and hollow, my forehead pressed against the porcelain.
Grief, I tell myself. The body processes trauma in strange ways.
But this is not the first time this week.
The nausea started a few days ago—subtle at first. Now it hits in waves that double me over at unexpected moments. Food tastes wrong, metallic and strange. Certain smells make my stomach clench with immediate rebellion.
I sit on the floor and wait for the shaking to stop.
My purse lies where I dropped it by the sink. I need mouthwash, mints, anything to erase the taste of bile. My fingers dig through the contents until they close around a familiar wrapped package.
Tampons.
I stare at them, and the realization comes slowly, then all at once.
My period was due three weeks ago.
I run like clockwork—have since I was thirteen. Never late. Never irregular.
I stopped taking birth control years ago because it made me gain weight and I was not sleeping with anyone anyway.
The night at the club. The stranger.
I try to remember… did we use protection? The memory is blurred, alcohol-soaked, fragmented.
I remember his hands, his control, his rules in the morning.
I do not remember a condom.
I did not take Plan B. Did not even think of it.
I was burying my brother. I was drowning in grief so heavy it made breathing feel optional. I was not thinking about anything except survival.
The symptoms click into place like tumblers in a lock.
Nausea. Fatigue so crushing I can barely stay awake past nine. The way certain smells make me gag. The tenderness I blamed on my period that never came.
I sit on my mother's bathroom floor, tampons clutched in my white-knuckled fist, and do the math.
Six weeks.
Six weeks since I let a stranger take me to his hotel room because I wanted to feel something other than death. Six weeks since I used my body like it did not belong to me, like it was just a vessel for carrying pain that needed to be drowned.
Now, apparently, it belongs to someone else.
No attachments, he had said over breakfast. No expectations. No second meetings.
I press my palm flat against my stomach—still flat, still unchanged—and feel the floor tilt beneath me.
Tomorrow, I will meet my arranged fiancé. I will perform the role of dutiful daughter, potential wife, asset to be traded. And somewhere inside me, a cluster of cells is dividing and multiplying, becoming something I never asked for and do not want.
My mother's voice echoes through the door.
"Caroline? The Harringtons are arriving for dinner in an hour. I need you dressed and downstairs."
I do not answer. I cannot answer.
Because I am staring at the tampons in my hand, counting the days since that night, and realizing that the trap I thought had closed around me is so much worse than I imagined.