Eva’s pov

“No, Dad. I’m not doing it.”

The words came out louder than I meant them to, and they landed in the sitting room like something breaking. Margaret’s teacup paused halfway to her mouth. Isabella, curled up on the settee with her phone, looked up for the first time all night like I’d finally said something worth her attention.

My father didn’t look at me at all. That told me everything.

“Eva,” Margaret said, setting her cup down with a click that was somehow louder than my shouting had been. “There’s no need to be dramatic.”

“I’m not being dramatic, Margaret. I’m being told who I’m marrying by a room full of people who didn’t bother asking me first.”

“Nobody is telling you anything. We’re discussing…”

“You’re discussing my life like I’m not standing right here.”

Dramatic. Like refusing to marry a stranger was an overreaction. Like I was the unreasonable one in a room where my entire future had just been handed to me like a party favor nobody else wanted.

Forty minutes ago I didn’t even know his name. Let me back up.

I’d been upstairs when it started, in the small room at the end of the third floor hallway that had been mine since I was eleven, the room with the bad radiator, the room nobody bothered redecorating because nobody expected me to stay long enough to care. I was hunched over a sketchbook, working on a coat collar I’d already erased three times, when I heard Margaret’s voice shift downstairs. Not louder. Different. The careful kind of quiet people use it when they’re saying something they don’t want the staff repeating.

I’d learned to listen for that shift a long time ago. I cracked my door and caught fragments through the stairwell my father’s voice, tight in a way I didn’t recognize. Arthur Cole. Personally. He wants an answer by Friday.

“He can’t be serious,” Margaret’s voice, sharper now, cutting through the murmur. “A marriage? At his age, with his health?”

“That’s exactly why, Margaret. He wants it settled before…” My father’s voice dropped again, too low to catch the rest.

“And you told him what?”

“I told him I’d discuss it with the family. What was I supposed to say, no? To Arthur Cole?”

“You were supposed to say you’d need time to think, not agree to summon everyone downstairs like we’re announcing a merger.”

“It practically is a merger, Margaret.”

I knew that name. Everyone did. Cole Group, steel, shipping, three generations of money so old it barely bothered advertising itself anymore. I had no idea, standing in my doorway in socked feet, why it was suddenly attached to mine.

Then someone knocked. A staff member I didn’t recognize, sent to fetch me. “Your father’s asking for you downstairs. Now, please.”

“Did he say what it’s about?”

“No, miss. Just that it was urgent.”

Twenty one years in this house, and my father had never once sent someone up three flights of stairs for me on a random Tuesday. I went down anyway. I always did.

The sitting room felt like a stage set when I walked in, the good china behind glass, the fire that never actually burned real wood, everyone arranged like they were waiting for a photographer. Nobody told me to sit.

“There you are.” My father didn’t quite look at me, already turning back toward the fireplace.

“Come in, Eva. Close the door.”

“What’s this about?”

“Just come in. Please. You’ll understand in a moment.”

“I got a call this afternoon,” my father said. “From Arthur Cole.” A pause. “He wants to formalize things between our families. Permanently.” He looked at Isabella. “A marriage. Between you and his grandson, Adrian.”

Isabella’s phone slid off her lap.

For a second nobody breathed. Then Isabella laughed a short, disbelieving, already reaching to smooth her dress like the whole conversation had personally inconvenienced her.

“I’m not marrying a stranger, Dad. I have a life.” A small private smile. She was thinking about the minor European royal she thought nobody knew about. “Cole Group or not. No.”

“Isabella, you haven’t even heard the terms.”

“I don’t need to hear the terms. The terms are to marry a man you’ve never met. I’ve heard enough.”

“Isabella…” my father started.

“I mean it.” She stood. “Not happening.”

“You always mean it,” my father said, tired, “right up until you don’t.”

“That’s different. That’s my life. This is…” she gestured vaguely at the room “…somebody else’s life you’re trying to hand out like party favors.”

“Isabella, please. Think about what this actually means for the company.” My father’s voice had an edge of pleading in it I rarely heard. “For everyone who works there.”

“I have thought about it. I thought about it for exactly the two seconds it took you to say his name.” Isabella crossed her arms. “So Grandpa Arthur’s dying and suddenly needs to see everyone married off before he goes. That’s tragic. It’s also not my problem to fix with my own life.”

“It’s not that simple…”

“Then explain it to me. Actually explain it. Don’t just say survival like it’s supposed to scare me into saying yes.” Isabella’s tone had gone flat, almost bored, the way it always did when she’d already decided she’d won. “What exactly happens if you say no to Arthur Cole? Does the whole company collapse tomorrow? Or does it just become slightly less convenient for you?”

My father didn’t answer that. Which was, in its own way, an answer.

“That’s what I thought.” Isabella turned toward the door like the conversation was already over.

“Wait.” Margaret’s voice, mild and unhurried, stopped her mid step. “Nobody’s said anything about you having to fix it.”

And that was when Margaret’s eyes moved. Slow. Deliberate. Sliding across the room like she already knew exactly where they were going to land. They landed on me.

“There is another option,” Margaret said, and smiled the smile she wore in photographs… pleasant, practiced, and never once, in my whole life, good news for whoever it was aimed at. “Arthur didn’t specify which daughter. He simply said a Sinclair daughter.” She turned to my father for confirmation, already certain of it. “Isn’t that right, Henry?”

My father, staring hard at the rug: “That’s … yes. That’s what he said.”

“Well, then.” Margaret’s smile widened. “There’s no problem at all.”

“Hang on.” Isabella actually turned back around at that, curious now, the way she got when something stopped being boring. “You mean her? Like … actually her?”

“Why not?” Margaret’s voice was light, reasonable, like she was suggesting a change to the seating chart rather than a person’s entire life. “She’s the right age. She’s unattached. And frankly, Isabella, it solves your problem rather elegantly, doesn’t it.”

“It’s not my problem if it’s happening to someone else.” Isabella dropped back onto the settee, already reaching for her phone again, already losing interest now that the pressure had lifted off her.

“I’m right here,” I said, to no one in particular, because it felt important, suddenly, to say it out loud. “You’re all talking like I already left the room.”

I felt the room narrow to a single point behind my sternum. Twenty one years of being talked about instead of to in this house, and this was somehow worse than all of it combined my entire life, handed off in a single sentence, in a room where nobody had asked me a real question yet.

Isabella actually laughed again, relieved now that the pressure had lifted off her. “Oh, this is perfect. Problem solved. You’re welcome, Eva.”

My father still wouldn’t look at me.

“Does he know?” I heard myself ask. “Adrian. Does he even know his grandfather is deciding who he’s marrying tonight, like it’s a menu order?”

“Arthur will handle Adrian,” Margaret said smoothly, like that answered anything at all.

“That’s not something you need to concern yourself with.”

“That’s convenient. Nothing ever seems to be something I need to concern myself with, right up until it’s my whole life on the table.”

Not something I need to concern myself with. As if the man I’d apparently be marrying wasn't the single most concerning part of any of this.

And that’s when I said it. The words that had been building in my chest since the moment

Margaret’s eyes found me across that room.

“No, Dad. I’m not doing it.”

Margaret set down her teacup. That terrible, patient smile didn’t move an inch.

“That’s sweet, darling.” Her voice was almost gentle, which made it worse. “But this was never really a question. Not for you.”

“Then why go through the motions of asking at all?”

“Because it’s kinder this way. You’ll thank me for it eventually, whether you believe that tonight or not.”

Behind her, the mantel clock ticked once, twice, marking time I suddenly understood I didn’t have nearly as much of as I’d thought. Three days. Somehow, impossibly, that already felt like it wasn’t going to be enough.

“One more thing.” Margaret’s voice stopped me at the doorway, light as ever, almost an afterthought. “Adrian doesn’t know yet. Arthur hasn’t told him.”

I turned back. “What?”

“His grandfather is telling him tonight, apparently. Around the same time we’re telling you.”

Margaret’s smile didn’t waver, but something in her eyes did, the closest thing to a warning I’d ever seen her give me. “I wouldn’t expect him to take it nearly as well as you have, darling. From what I hear, Adrian Cole doesn’t like being told what to do. Especially not by a dying old man who’s already decided everything for him.”

I stood frozen in the doorway, my hand on the frame, my whole plan for the next three days rearranging itself around a single fact I hadn’t considered until that exact moment.

I wasn’t the only one about to be told my life had been decided without me.

I just had no idea, yet, how much angrier the other person was going to be about it.