HIS RING, MY PRISON

CHAPTER TWO (LIANA’s POV)

The house had never felt this quiet.

Not even during those nights when creditors called and Father pretended not to hear the phone ringing in his study.

Tonight, the silence was heavier, like the walls themselves were holding their breath, waiting for me to understand what I had just been told.

An arranged marriage.

My father’s debt.

My life, traded like a signature at the bottom of a contract.

I stood in the middle of the hallway, the echo of his words still burning in my ears.

For a moment, I thought I might laugh. Or scream.

Or both. Instead, I went to his study.

The door was half, open, and the soft amber light from his desk lamp spilled onto the floor like a confession.

He was there, still in the same position he’d been when he told me, head bowed slightly, fingers tracing the rim of an untouched glass of whiskey.

“Father,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady.

He looked up slowly, and for the first time, I saw age in his face, not the kind that comes from years, but from surrender. His eyes, once sharp with ambition, looked dulled, hollowed out by guilt.

“Liana,” he said softly, as if saying my name could make this easier.

I stepped closer. “Tell me it isn’t true.”

His silence was answer enough.

“How could you?” My voice cracked, splintered into something I barely recognized.

“How could you sell me off like, like property?”

He didn’t flinch. That hurt more than if he’d shouted back.

“It’s not what you think,” he said. “Cassien Ravenscroft…he’s…”

“A businessman,” I spat. “A stranger. Someone who doesn’t even know me.”

“He knows our name,” Father said quietly. “He knows what it used to mean.”

That broke something in me. Because I remembered too, what our name used to mean before greed, before failure, before he gambled everything on a deal he couldn’t win.

“You think giving me to him will fix that?” I whispered.

“I think,” he said, his voice trembling just slightly, “it will keep you safe.

He can protect you, Liana. In ways I no longer can.”

The sound of those words, safe, protect, was unbearable.

My father, who had once been the strongest man I knew, was now asking another man to take care of me.

“You didn’t even ask what I wanted,” I said, my throat tight.

“You didn’t even try to fight.”

He didn’t answer. He just looked at me the way people look at something they’ve already lost.

I left before the tears could fall.

Mother’s room smelled faintly of lavender and the past.

I found her by the window, her hands folded neatly in her lap, staring out into the garden where the evening wind moved through the roses.

She didn’t turn when I entered.

I stared at her perfectly made bun with hope, hope that somehow she was not aware of this, that she going to fight for me.

But I knew my mother, to her, my Father’s words were law, and she wouldn’t dare disobey him.

Even though I knew that she was aware, I still needed her to say it, I still needed her to be aware of how much I expected from her.

“You knew,” I said.

She closed her eyes. “He told me after dinner.”

“And you said nothing?”

“What could I say?” Her voice was soft, but not weak.

“Your father made a choice.”

“A choice?” I laughed bitterly. “He made a deal with the devil.”

Mother turned then. Her eyes were wet but steady, the kind of sad that had learned how to endure.

“Sometimes survival doesn’t look like choice, Liana.”

I wanted to scream that she was wrong. That this wasn’t survival, it was surrender.

But the words wouldn’t come.

“I thought you’d fight for me,” I whispered.

Her gaze softened, her dark emerald eyes which I knew that were once filled with love emitted nothing but sadness and regret, but there was something unreadable behind it, something like pity.

“I did,” she said. “But fighting men like Cassien Ravenscroft isn’t what saves you. It’s what destroys you.”

The name hung in the air like a sentence. Cassien Ravenscroft.

Even saying it felt heavy, like invoking a storm.

Mother stood and came closer, her fingers brushing a strand of hair from my face. “You’re stronger than you think,” she said. “You’ll survive this too.”

“I don’t want to survive it,” I said, tears finally spilling. “I just want to be free.”

She pressed her lips together, eyes glistening. “Freedom comes in strange forms, my darling. Sometimes it wears a ring.”

By midnight, I sat in my room, staring at the reflection in the mirror.

The girl looking back at me didn’t look broken. She looked calm, distant, like she’d already made peace with something irreversible.

The dress I wore shimmered faintly under the low light, soft ivory satin meant for formal dinners, not farewells.

My engagement, I realized, would be announced tomorrow.

And I would smile, because that’s what the daughter of a Delacroix does.

The clock ticked, steady and merciless.

I thought about running, about packing a small bag and disappearing into the night, somewhere beyond the reach of debts and deals and names.

But then I remembered the look in my father’s eyes, the quiet shame in my mother’s, and I knew I couldn’t.

They had built their whole world around a crumbling empire. I was the last piece still holding it up.

So I stayed.

I watched the moonlight crawl across the floor, pale and cold, until it reached my feet.

And I whispered, to no one but myself,

“Tomorrow, he comes.”