Forced to love

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Forced to Love (Episode 3)

Grace’s hand trembled on the chair blocking her door.

“Please,” Daniel’s voice came again, low. “I’m not here to hurt you. I just want to understand what my father did.”

Against every instinct Linda and Robert had beaten into her, Grace slid the chair away. She opened the door two inches.

Daniel stood in the hall, no suit now, just a plain t-shirt and tired eyes. He didn’t try to push in. He stayed behind the threshold like she was the one with power.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Grace said. “Vanessa will—”

“Vanessa left,” he interrupted. “Twenty minutes after you went upstairs. Said she won’t be part of a ‘family that trades girls like property.’ She’s not wrong.”

Grace didn’t know what to say to that. No one had ever called it wrong before.

“Can I ask you something?” Daniel said. “Did you want this? Any of it?”

The question broke something open in her chest. No one had asked her that. Ever.

“No,” she whispered. “I just wanted to finish school. I wanted… I don’t even know anymore.”

Daniel nodded, jaw tight. “My dad told me he ‘handled a domestic situation’ while I was in London. I thought he hired a housekeeper. Not this.” He ran a hand over his face. “I’m sorry. I know that doesn’t help, but I’m sorry you’re here because of him. Because of my family.”

“They paid for Emily,” Grace said, the name bitter on her tongue. “Two hundred thousand. So she could go to university. I was the payment.”

Daniel went still. “He bought you.”

She flinched at the word, but it was true. “Yes.”

Silence stretched between them. Then Daniel did something unexpected. He stepped back.

“Get some sleep, Grace. Lock the door if you want. But tomorrow… if you want, meet me in the library at noon. No one goes in there. We can talk. Or I can help you call someone. Whatever you want. Your choice.”

Your choice. Words she’d never heard together.

He left, and she locked the door. But she didn’t push the chair back.

The Next Day — Library, Noon

Grace almost didn’t go. Eighteen years of obedience told her to stay hidden. But the nineteen-year-old girl who’d said “I’m not a child” yesterday made her feet move.

Daniel was already there, sitting on the floor surrounded by books. He looked up and smiled — not a pity smile, not a cruel one. Just… human.

“I wasn’t sure you’d come,” he said.

“I wasn’t either.”

He slid a book toward her. To Kill a Mockingbird. “My mom’s copy. She died when I was ten. She used to read in here. Said books were the only place a girl could be free and no one could stop her.”

Grace touched the cover. She hadn’t held a book that wasn’t a textbook in five years. “Your mom sounds kind.”

“She was. Dad wasn’t always… like this. Not until after she died. Then it was just business. Money. Control.” He hesitated. “Grace, I can’t undo what he did. But I can get you out. I have my own place in the city. I can set you up with an apartment, help you enroll in school. No strings. You don’t owe me anything. You don’t even have to see me again.”

Her throat closed. Out. School. Free. Words that didn’t belong to her life.

“And your father?” she asked. “He won’t just let me go. He paid for me.”

Daniel’s eyes darkened. “Let me handle my father. That contract he made your parents sign? I had my lawyer look at it last night. You were underage-adjacent, no legal counsel, coerced. It’s not worth the paper it’s on. If he fights it, I’ll make sure the whole country knows Charles Harrison buys teenage brides.”

Grace stared at him. No one had ever fought for her.

“Why?” she asked. “Why would you do that for me? You don’t know me.”

Daniel was quiet for a long time. “Because I watched my mom disappear in this house long before she died. And when I saw you last night, holding that soup, looking like you were waiting for someone to hit you… I saw her. I won’t let this house take someone else.”

Grace opened the book. The pages smelled like dust and possibility.

“I want to finish school,” she said finally. “I want to be more than what they said I was.”

Daniel’s smile this time was real. “Then let’s start there.”

Upstairs, Charles Harrison watched from the balcony as his son and his “wife” walked out to the car together. His phone was already in his hand.

He wasn’t done fighting.

End of Episode 3