The afternoon sunlight streamed faintly through the blinds, spilling golden streaks across Skylar’s floor. The city outside was alive with its usual noise, but inside her apartment, silence reigned—a silence heavy with decision, with the weight of her next words.
Her phone sat in her palm like a living thing, its screen dark but expectant. For hours, she had known she needed to call them, her parents—the people who had held her together when the world tried to shatter her before. They deserved to know. They deserved her honesty.
But how could she tell them? How could she explain that she was about to marry a man she barely knew, not out of love, but out of vengeance and survival?
She inhaled deeply, pressing the phone tight against her chest, then finally unlocked the screen and dialed
