YOU CALLED ME NOTHING. NOW BOW.

Episode three: Bait, Not bride

Clara arrived at my front door looking like she had not slept in days.

Her eyes were red and her hands would not stop shaking as she walked past me into the living room. She did not sit on the couch. She stood in the middle of the room, arms wrapped around herself, turning to face me with an expression I had never seen on her before. Fear.

"Clara, you are scaring me. Sit down."

"I can not sit." She pressed her palms together in front of her mouth. "Shaznay, what I am about to tell you... I should have said it a year ago. Before the wedding. I was a coward. I was afraid."

"Afraid of what?"

"Of Tonia." Clara met my eyes. "Everyone is afraid of Tonia."

I shook my head. "She is manipulative, yes. She threatened me this morning. But afraid? Clara, she is my stepsister. She is not a monster."

Clara let out a sound that was half laugh, half sob. "That is exactly what a monster wants you to believe."

She walked to the window and looked out as if checking whether someone had followed her. Then she turned back and spoke fast, her words tumbling over each other.

"Do you remember how the contract marriage happened? The way it was told to you?"

I nodded. "Grandfather Sylvanus made the offer to Benjamin. Benjamin told me. I agreed."

"That is the story everyone knows." Clara's jaw tightened. "But that is not how it happened. Two weeks before the offer, I was at Tonia's apartment picking up a book I had lent her. She was in the shower. Her phone rang, and the screen showed a name I recognized. Sylvanus Williams."

My forehead creased. "Tonia knows Grandfather Sylvanus?"

"She does. And I should not have, but I was curious, so I looked at her messages. There were dozens of texts between them. Not friendly messages. Negotiation messages. Tonia was the one who suggested your name for the contract marriage. She went to Sylvanus first."

The floor tilted beneath my feet. "That makes no sense. Tonia loves Richard. She has loved him since before I ever met him. Why would she push me to marry him?"

Clara grabbed both my hands. "That is exactly the question I have been trying to answer for a year. Why would a woman who wants a man push another woman into his arms?"

I stared at her, my mind racing.

"Unless," Clara said slowly, "she never intended for you to stay."

The words settled over me like cold water.

"Think about it, Shaznay. Tonia wanted you inside that family. Not as a wife. Not as a partner. As a pawn. Something to use and then throw away."

"But use me for what?”

Clara released my hands and sat down, finally, on the edge of the couch. "I do not know. I spent a year trying to figure it out, and I could not. All I know is that your marriage to Richard was Tonia's idea from the beginning. And whatever she is planning, it is not finished yet."

My mind went to the birthday dinner. To the shares. To grandfather Sylvanus who always looked at me with sad, knowing eyes. To the threatening text from the unknown number. "You do not know what you are. They do."

"Clara... Tonia came here today. She told me to sign divorce papers before the birthday dinner. She threatened my baby."

Clara's face went white. "Your baby?"

"I am eight weeks pregnant."

Clara covered her mouth with both hands. Tears spilled from her eyes. "Oh, Shaznay. Oh no."

"What? Why are you crying?"

"Because now you can not just walk away." Her voice cracked. "And walking away might be the only thing that keeps you alive."

A chill ran through my spine. "Clara, what are you not telling me?"

She wiped her face. "There is more. Last week, I ran into Emilia at a restaurant. She was drunk, talking loud on her phone. She said something that froze my blood."

"What did she say?"

Clara looked at me with eyes full of pity and terror. "She said: 'Once Shaznay is out of the picture, the inheritance reverts to whoever Richard names as his wife. And by then, that will be Tonia. The old man can not live forever.'"

"Inheritance? What inheritance? I have no inheritance. I am an orphan."

Clara shook her head. "That is what everyone believes. But what if it is a lie? What if there is something about your past that people know and you do not?"

The room spun. I thought of the file I found in Richard's empty study... no. That was before he cleared it out. I had never looked in his drawers before because I respected his space. But now his things were gone. Except...

"Wait here," I told Clara.

I ran upstairs to Richard's study. The desk was cleared, yes. The bookshelves empty. But there was one drawer I had noticed last night. The bottom drawer on the left side. It had a lock on it. And when I pulled, it did not open. Whatever Richard took with him, he left that drawer behind.

I went to the kitchen, found a butter knife, and worked the thin lock until it clicked open.

Inside, there was a single manila folder. I pulled it out and opened it.

A photograph fell into my lap. Me, as a baby. Maybe three or four months old, wrapped in a white blanket with gold embroidery. Behind the baby in the photo, I could see a large room with crystal chandeliers and oil paintings on the walls. A room I had never been inside. A room that belonged to people with serious money.

I flipped the photo over. On the back, written in neat handwriting:

"Subject located. Do not proceed until further notice. Signed: V."

"V." My heart hammered. Who was V?

I looked through the rest of the folder. There were three more pages: a birth certificate with my name blacked out and a different name written beneath it. A hospital record from a city called Westbrook. And a single typed letter addressed to Sylvanus Williams that read:

"The child is alive. She is with the Benjamin family. We are monitoring the situation. When the time is right, we will bring her home."

My hands were shaking so hard the papers rattled. Clara appeared in the doorway.

"Shaznay? What did you find?"

I looked up at her with tears I could no longer hold back. "Someone has been watching me my whole life. Grandfather Sylvanus... he knows who I am. He has always known."

Clara took the papers from my hands and read them. Her face was drained of color.

"This letter is dated twenty-four years ago," she whispered. "From before you were even adopted by Benjamin."

I stood up, my legs unsteady. The birthday dinner was in four days. Grandfather Sylvanus was planning to announce something. Dorinda wanted to stop him. Tonia needed me gone before it happened.

And somewhere in the middle of all these secrets, my baby was growing, innocent and unaware that the world was trying to erase us.

"I am going to that dinner," I said.

Clara grabbed my arm. "Shaznay, did you hear what I said? They might kill you."

"Then they will have to do it in front of two hundred witnesses." I looked down at the photo of baby me in that golden room. "Because I am done hiding from the truth.”