Eye for Adrian

The sound of my father’s voice has always been heavier than any silence. It filled rooms before his footsteps even reached the doorway. It carried weight, the kind that pressed into my chest and made breathing a quiet act of rebellion. That evening, the air in our dining room was warm with The smell of roasted lamb and cinnamon-spiced rice. The chandelier light fell in golden circles over the table, glinting off my father’s wedding ring as he cut his meat with the precise movements of a man who believed precision was proof of strength. My mother sat beside him, her eyes lowered, her fork barely touching her plate. I knew the rhythm of our dinners. My father spoke of his work, of politics, of the stupidity of men who thought themselves clever. I nodded where expected. My mother smiled where she was supposed to. But that night, he skipped the small talk. “Ever,” he said, setting down his knife. “You’ll be married in three weeks.” The words slid into the room like a blade slipped beneath the skin, quiet, cold, irreversible. I stared at him, the fork in my hand suspended midair. “Married?” I repeated, as if maybe I had misheard him over the clink of cutlery. “To Mr. Adrian Cole,” he continued. His tone held no room for questions. “A man of means. A man of influence. He is… blind. Which is irrelevant. He requires a wife who can represent him well. You will do it.” I looked at my mother, desperate for even the smallest sign of resistance. Her fingers tightened around the stem of her glass, but she kept her eyes down. That told me everything — she had known, and she had not stopped it. “I don’t want—” “You will,” he interrupted. The two words landed like a gavel on a courtroom bench. His eyes, dark and sharp, pinned me in place. “You are my daughter. You will honor my decisions. You think you know what you want in life, but you don’t. I do.” Something in me twisted — not just anger, but the familiar ache of a freedom I had never tasted. It was the same ache I felt when I saw girls laughing in cafés, or heard my university classmates talking about travel plans. I had been raised inside my father’s boundaries, each one a wall I could not see over. And now, he has built a new one. “Why him?” My voice was small, but I forced the words out. His lips curled into a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Because it’s a good match. For the family. And because I said so.” I didn’t know then that ‘good match’ meant my father’s debts were tangled with Adrian Cole’s fortune, and that I myself was the repayment. I only knew that my life had just been signed away like a contract I had never agreed to. The rest of the meal passed in silence, though my father continued eating as if nothing had shifted. My mother’s breathing was shallow. I could taste the lamb on my tongue, but it turned to ash the moment I tried to swallow. That night, I lay awake staring at the ceiling, tracing the cracks in the plaster like a map leading anywhere but here. In three weeks, I would belong to a man I had never met — a man whose blindness would not make him any less dangerous to my heart. And so began the countdown to the day my life stopped being my own.