Forbidden Vines

Chapter Two: Cold welcome

The house looks like it was built by someone who's never had a single bad day in their life.

I hate it immediately.

Stone and ivy and windows the size of my old bedroom, all of it posing on a hill like a magazine cover. Rows of vines stretch out so straight and even they look painted on. The air smells like dirt and something sweet underneath, grapes maybe, or rain that hasn't finished drying.

It's the kind of beautiful that makes you want to find something wrong with it, just so you have somewhere to put all the anger you brought with you.

"Isn't it something?" Mom says, twisting around in the front seat like she's waiting for applause.

"It's something."

She doesn't catch the tone. Or catches it and decides not to notice, which is basically her whole personality lately.

Richard’s driver parks like a man who's never worried about a dent. He's fine, I guess. Nothing screams villain. That almost makes it worse. I could work with a villain. I don't know what to do with "fine."

"Welcome home," he says, and the word home comes out so easily it turns my stomach.

Home is a two bedroom apartment with a leaky faucet and Priya three blocks away. This is a postcard.

A woman in an apron meets us at the door, takes our bags before I can offer to carry my own. I follow her and my mother and my brand new stepfather down a hallway wider than my old bedroom, past paintings worth more than every car my family has ever owned combined.

"Where's your son?" Mom asks Richard, casual, like she's asking about the weather.

"Should be around somewhere." Richard checks his watch. "He knew what time we'd be arriving."

Nobody says anything else, but I clock the flicker of tension in his jaw. Interesting. Even golden boy has a habit of doing what he wants.

We're settled into a sitting room with a fireplace big enough to stand in when the door finally opens.

He doesn't knock.

Sebastian walks in like he owns the place, which, fine, technically he sort of does. Dark hair damp like he came straight from outside. Tall, sharp jaw, the kind of face people call "striking" in wedding announcements. None of that matters, because the second his eyes land on me, they go cold in half a second flat.

"You're late," Richard says.

"I was working." Sebastian doesn't look at his father. He's looking at me. "This the new family, then."

"This is Sophia," Richard says, gesturing like I'm furniture that just got delivered. "And her mother, Elaine."

"Right." Sebastian's eyes do a slow pass over me, boots to hair. Not the kind of look that makes a girl feel flattered. The kind that makes her feel priced. "Younger than I pictured."

"Nineteen," I say. "You want to see ID?"

Something flickers behind his eyes, not quite amusement, before he shuts it down.

"Sebastian," Richard warns.

"What? I'm being polite." He drops into the chair across from me like the conversation already bores him. "So. How long are we supposed to pretend this is normal?"

"Sebastian."

"I'm asking a real question." He leans forward, elbows on knees, talking to his father now, eyes still locked on mine. "You married a woman you've known three months. Moved her and her kid into my mother's house. And I'm supposed to set two extra places and call it family?"

"It's my house too," Richard says, quieter.

"It was Mom's house first."

The room goes still. My mother's hands twist in her lap. I've seen that motion my whole life, right before she says something to smooth things over that she doesn't believe.

"We don't have to be best friends," she says, gentle. "Just try."

Sebastian looks at her like she's an insect that wandered somewhere it doesn't belong.

"I don't have to try anything. I already have a family. This is just something happening to it."

"Sebastian." Richard's voice cracks like a whip.

But he's already standing, buttoning his jacket like the meeting's over.

"Dinner's at seven." To the room, not to me. "Try not to touch anything you can't afford to replace."

He's gone before I open my mouth, and I'm left on a couch worth more than my mother's yearly salary, feeling exactly as small as he wanted me to feel.

"He'll come around," Richard says into the silence, and even he doesn't sound like he believes it.

I look at my mother. She won't meet my eyes.

Welcome home, I guess.

My room is bigger than my old bedroom and Priya's put together, with a window over the vines and a bed I could lie diagonally on and still not touch either edge. It should feel like winning something. It just feels like a museum exhibit labeled Sophia's Room, please do not touch.

I unpack nothing. My bag stays zipped by the closet. Some stubborn part of me refuses to admit I'm staying long enough to need drawers.

Dinner is exactly as fun as expected. Sebastian doesn't look up from his plate once, answers his father in clipped one-word responses, ignores my mother completely, and doesn't acknowledge me even once, which is somehow worse than the insult earlier. At least an insult means he noticed I'm alive.

It's not until dessert, when Richard steps out for a call and Mom goes to help clear plates because poverty trained her to never sit still, that Sebastian finally looks at me directly.

"You're not eating."

"Didn't realize you were tracking my calorie intake."

"I'm tracking how long you last." He leans back, arms crossed, studying me like a problem he's solving before bed. "Most people who move into a house like this get comfortable fast. Start acting like they've always belonged. You're doing the opposite."

"Is that a compliment?"

"An observation."

"Well, keep observing." I stand, plate in hand, before I throw something else at a wall. "I didn't ask to belong here. Your dad married my mom. That's the whole story. I'm not auditioning for your approval."

Something shifts in his expression, quick, gone before I can name it.

"Good," he says. "Because you wouldn't get it."

I carry my own plate to the kitchen, past Marta's protest, because I've cleared my own plates my whole life and a fancier sink isn't changing that. When I turn back, Sebastian's in the doorway, watching me with an expression I can't read.

"For what it's worth," he says, "it's not personal."

"Could've fooled me."

"It's not about you specifically. It's about what you represent."

"Wow." I dry my hands on a towel that probably costs more than my old winter coat. "Not creepy at all, thanks."

He almost smiles. I catch the corner of his mouth twitch before he shuts it down, like smiling at me breaks some rule he's decided to follow no matter what.

"Get some sleep," he says instead, already turning. "Harvest starts at five. If you're staying, you might as well learn something useful."

"Who said I'm working the harvest?"

He pauses in the doorway, doesn't turn around.

"Nobody eats for free in this house," he says. "Not even the girl my father married into it."

Then he's gone, and I'm alone in a kitchen the size of my old apartment, gripping a dish towel so hard my knuckles hurt.

Nobody eats for free. Fine. I've never once eaten for free in my life, and I'm not about to start owing some cold, arrogant stranger who thinks a vineyard and a bad attitude make him king of something.

Five in the morning. Fine. He wants to test me, I'll pass his stupid test and rub it in his face while I'm at it.

I set my alarm, throw the dish towel down harder than necessary, and decide right there that whatever Sebastian thinks he knows about me, about how long I'll last, he's about to find out exactly how wrong he is.

Chapter Three: The Call

I'm sitting on the floor of my new room at five in the morning, back against the door, phone pressed so hard to my ear it hurts, because