I never planned to marry—especially not like this.
My mother used to say marriage should feel like poetry: unpredictable, thrilling, a spark of madness. What I signed that afternoon was not poetry. It was a contract. A lifeline thrown from the most unexpected source—a servant.
The ink had barely dried on my father’s death certificate when the creditors came knocking. They came like wolves, hungry and merciless, demanding repayment for debts I never knew he had. The house I grew up in, the only thing he left behind, was two weeks from auction. My job at the art gallery barely paid for groceries, let alone a quarter-million in debt.
I sat at the kitchen table, staring at a stack of final notices, my head pounding. Rain lashed against the windows of our crumbling brownstone. My hands tremb
