Chapter 12
My engagement ended the next morning.
Ismeralda knew before I said it.
She removed the ring herself.
Placed it on my desk.
“I loved you.”
“Yes.”
I believed her.
That made nothing easier.
“I was afraid everyone around you would always see me as decorative.”
“That fear was probably justified.”
She looked surprised.
I continued.
“Some men would have.”
“Roland did.”
“He distrusted you.”
“He made me feel like a guest in the house I was supposed to share with you.”
Possible.
Roland looked at people like locked doors sometimes.
He could be unfair.
That did not make kidnapping him acceptable.
“You could have told me.”
She laughed through tears.
“And what? Ask you to order your guards to respect me?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
“Let me see the problem before you manufactured one.”
Silence.
She had never trusted process.
Only outcome.
If respect might not come, she would engineer dependence instead.
Her own guards.
Her cousin’s company.
Her influence over who entered.
Authority built before marriage so nobody could question it afterward.
“I thought once we were married, I’d fix the excesses.”
Classic.
Cruel systems are always temporary in the mind of the person benefiting.
After the wedding.
After stability.
After one more threat.
Then we will loosen it.
Usually they do not.
I looked at the ring.
“We’re done.”
She nodded.
No threats.
No public humiliation.
She left the estate that afternoon.
Not ruined.
May you like
Not harmed.
Simply without the marriage she had tried to secure by making everyone around it less free.
