Married to My Enemy's Son

My father gave me two choices that night: marry the son of his greatest enemy, or watch our family fall into ruin. I chose the first. I didn't know that meant choosing the last, as well. The scent of roasted meat filled the dining room as I walked in, but my stomach didn't react at all. Something was wrong. I knew it before I even saw my father’s face. For twenty-two years, I had learned to read Richard Ashford by the way he sat. Tense shoulders. Hands folded too neatly on the table. Eyes staring at the oysters on his plate as if they held the answers to his problems. Tonight, all those signs were there. "Elara." His voice was flat, too flat. Like someone who had been practicing saying my name without wavering. "Sit." I pulled out the chair across from him, looked at him for a moment, then poured water into my glass. Slowly. Giving myself time. "You asked me to fly home from London two days early," I finally said. "Even though my thesis presentation is next week. So this isn't about a sudden family vacation." My father didn't smile. Usually, he would smile when I spoke like that—*you think too much, Ela*—but tonight there was no smile. There was nothing. "There are things we need to discuss." He put down his fork. The sound of silver hitting porcelain sounded incredibly loud in a room that suddenly felt very small. "Things I have put off for too long." My heart started to beat a little faster. "Father—" "Our family is in debt to the Voss family." I stopped pouring the water. *Voss.* That name wasn't just any name in Jakarta. Nathan Voss was the tycoon who built half the skyscrapers in this capital, a man known more for what he didn't say than what he did. The Ashford and Voss families had partnered decades ago—or so I had heard from whispers at family events. But "debt" was not a word anyone had ever used. "What kind of debt?" my voice was calmer than I expected. My father finally looked at me. And in that second, I saw something I had never seen on his face in my entire life. Guilt. "Twelve years ago," he said slowly, "our company was almost bankrupt. Not almost—it was. I had lost everything on paper. Creditors were chasing us, stocks were falling, banks were rejecting our proposals." He paused. "Nathan Voss saved us." "I know that." I frowned. "You told me about the restructuring—" "What I never told you," he interrupted, quietly, "was the price." The air in the room seemed to change. It felt heavier. Like the moment before a storm. "The price," I repeated the word carefully, "was what?" My father took a long breath. Like someone who had been standing on the edge of a cliff for twelve years and had finally decided to jump. "You." One word. And my world turned upside down. No one screamed at our dinner table that night. I didn't scream. My father didn't scream. We just sat there—two people separated by a dozen plates and one truth that was twelve years too late to be spoken—while our roasted meat cooled quietly before us. "You," I finally said, my voice sounding foreign to my own ears, "have promised me away since I was ten years old." "Nathan didn't collect until now. He—" "You promised me," I repeated, slower, "without my knowledge, while I was still a child, as payment for a business debt." My father closed his eyes. "Elara—" "I just want to make sure I heard correctly." I crossed my arms over my chest. The only way to hide the fact that my fingers were trembling. "Because it feels like something that only happens in low-quality novels, and I want to convince myself that my father, who sent me to London to study business law, actually did this." "Nathan only reached out last month." My father’s voice sounded old, suddenly. Older than I remembered. "His son—Damian—is going to take over the Voss Group. Nathan wanted to... cement the ties between our two families. Officially." "By taking your daughter as his son's wife." "By marrying you two, yes." I nodded slowly. Once. Twice. A hollow movement of my head while my brain worked hard to process something too big to be processed in one night. "And if I refuse?" I asked. My father didn't answer directly. That was already the answer. "How big is the debt?" I pushed. "Elara—" "How much, Father?" He named a figure. I placed my water glass back on the table with a very careful movement so that it wouldn't shatter. The amount he mentioned wasn't just a number that could be settled by selling assets. That amount was the entire company. The entire legacy that my grandfather had built from scratch. The Ashford name that hung on the city's buildings. And that name didn't just belong to my father. It belonged to hundreds of employees who depended on it. "When?" my voice sounded strange, too calm for this situation. Perhaps I had already crossed the limit of my brain's ability to panic normally. "The first meeting, next Saturday. The wedding is scheduled—" "Next Saturday." I stood up. The chair slid back with a sound that was too loud. "My thesis presentation is Friday." "Elara—" "So I can still finish that first." I grabbed my bag from the back of the chair, a mechanical movement I did without really thinking about it. "After that, I will marry your enemy's son. Because apparently, that is how this family works." "I had no choice—" I stopped at the dining room door. Turned around once. "We always have a choice, Father." My voice didn't tremble. I was quite proud of myself for that. "You just chose the one that was easier for you." I walked out before he could answer. My room at the end of the second-floor hallway felt foreign that night. I sat on the edge of the bed, looking at the suitcase I hadn't unpacked—the suitcase from London, still smelling of cheap hostel soap and autumn rain—and tried to feel something normally. Angry? Yes. But angry at what, exactly? At my father for doing something that hurt me? At Nathan Voss for collecting a debt in a currency that shouldn't be collectible? At a world that apparently still operated with logic I thought had died centuries ago? I took a breath. Let it out. *Damian Voss.* I typed that name into the search bar of my phone. The results appeared in a row—business articles, magazine profiles, one or two photos at a gala event. The new twenty-seven-year-old CEO of the Voss Group. A face that looked better suited for a magazine cover than a boardroom, even though the look in his eyes in every photo said otherwise. Those eyes said he wasn't a man who liked small talk. I closed my phone. Fine. We have that in common, at least. I am not going to cry tonight. Crying won't change the debt amount, won't turn back time, and more importantly—crying means giving this situation power it doesn't deserve. What I am going to do is this: I will finish my thesis presentation with the best grade I can get. I will return to Jakarta with my head held high. And I will enter this marriage with my eyes open and a mouth ready to fight. Because if Nathan Voss thinks he can buy the compliance of the Ashford family by saving my father's business, he hasn't met his daughter yet. And if Damian Voss thinks he is getting an easy-to-manage wife— I looked at my London suitcase one more time. Then I began to unpack it to repack the clothes I would need to wear next Saturday. He is about to understand just how wrong that assumption is. Saturday came too soon. And behind the door of the meeting room on the forty-second floor of the Voss Tower, someone was waiting for me—someone who hated me even before he knew my name. I knocked on the door.