The Billonaire's Unwanted Bride

"Nobody wants you here. You know that, right?" Fayth didn't stop walking. She kept her head down, her tray level, her steps quiet on the kitchen tile. Behind her, Vivienne leaned against the counter in a silk robe, arms crossed, watching with the patient cruelty of someone who had never once been told no. "I'm talking to you." "I heard you," Fayth said. "Then answer me." She set the tray down. Turned. Looked at her stepsister with the flat, careful expression she had spent years perfecting. "What do you want me to say, Vivienne?" Vivienne smiled. That particular smile. The one that arrived when she sensed she had already won. "Nothing. That's the point. There's nothing you can say. Nothing you can do. You exist in this house because Dad feels guilty, and the moment he stops feeling guilty, you're gone." She pushed off the counter and walked out. Fayth stood in the kitchen alone. She breathed in. Breathed out. She picked the tray back up and kept moving. Because that was what she did. That was all she could do. Keep moving. Stay small. Survive. * * * She had been surviving in this house since she was six years old. That was when her father married Marissa. That was when the rules changed. Not all at once. Gradually. The way you don't notice a room getting colder until you realize you've been shivering for an hour. Marissa had never hit her. She was smarter than that. What she did was quieter. She took things. Slowly. Systematically. The good clothes replaced with dull ones. The mirror conversations that started as advice and became something else. You look better with your hair flat. That shade makes you look tired. Those frames suit your face. By the time Fayth was fourteen she had stopped arguing. By sixteen she had stopped noticing. Now she was twenty-two, and she wore the wrong-prescription glasses and the gray cardigan and the foundation two shades too pale, and she moved through her father's house like a shadow. Present. Harmless. Invisible. Her father watched it happen. He always watched. He never did anything. She passed him in the hallway at nine that morning. He was on his phone. He glanced at her the way you glance at furniture. His eyes passed over her face and moved on without pausing. "Morning," he said. To the phone, not to her. She kept walking. Eight years. Not once. Not once had he asked if she was okay. Not once had he pulled her aside and said he saw it. Not once had he chosen her over Marissa's comfort or Vivienne's pride or his own guilty silence. She had stopped waiting for it. Some people showed you who they were by what they never did. * * * "Guests arriving at three." Marissa appeared in her bedroom doorway at half past nine. No knock. There was never a knock. "Important guests. You will be dressed, clean, and invisible. Do you understand what invisible means?" "Yes," Fayth said. "It means I don't see you. It means they don't see you. It means you sit somewhere out of the way and you do not speak unless someone directly addresses you." Marissa stepped inside. Her eyes swept the room. Cataloguing. Always cataloguing. "And for God's sake, wear the gray dress. You look less like a problem in gray." She left. Fayth stared at the door for a moment. Less like a problem. She had been a problem in this house since the day she arrived. Not because of anything she did. Just because of what she was. The wrong daughter. The first wife's child. The reminder of something Marissa would rather bury. She went to the wardrobe and took out the gray dress. * * * The guests arrived at three, and Fayth felt the house change. She was at the top of the stairs when she heard the front door. She heard Marissa's voice go smooth and deliberate, the way it got for people who mattered. She heard Vivienne's laugh, bright and staged. And then a silence. Short and heavy. The kind that meant something had entered the room that no one quite knew what to do with. She moved to the alcove beside the linen cupboard. The narrow gap where the shadow sat thick and the sightline to the foyer was clean. She had found this spot at thirteen. It had saved her more times than she could count. She looked down. Two people. An older woman, silver-haired, grey dress, the composed posture of someone used to walking into rooms and having them rearrange themselves around her. She was scanning the foyer the way you scan a document you already mostly understand. And a man. Tall. Dark suit. Still in the way that had nothing to do with patience. He stood in the middle of the Carrington foyer like the room was smaller than he was used to, and his eyes moved across everything once, assessing, filing, already deciding. His face was severe. Not cruel. Closed. Vivienne descended the main staircase in white silk, smile fully deployed, chin lifted. The older woman gave her a polite look. The man didn't look at her at all. His gaze swept the room. Rose to the staircase. Traveled up the landing. And stopped. On Fayth. She stopped breathing. The light was wrong. The shadow was too deep. He shouldn't have been able to see her. But he was looking directly at her. Not past her. At her. One second. Two. Three. He didn't look away. Then Vivienne said his name and the spell broke and he turned and it was over. Fayth pressed herself flat against the wall. Her heart was slamming. He couldn't have seen me. It was nothing. But her hands were shaking and she couldn't explain why. Two hours later, her stepmother called her downstairs. And when Fayth walked into that sitting room and saw the older woman's face, something cold moved through her. Because that woman was looking at her the way no one in this house had ever looked at her. Like she had been waiting. Like she already knew her. Like Fayth was exactly who she had come for.