UNDER MY CONTROL ✔ (Under Heavy Editing)

Chapter : 2

The world outside her window had forgotten her already. The scandel has subsided, news channel have moved on to some other topics and people have no interest in the gossip related to her, anymore for now.

Only the wind remembered her name, whispering it through the gaps in the glass, dragging along the scent of rain and roses that were dying in the courtyard below, reminding her current reality of being a prisoner every passing second.

Amy Jiang sat on the edge of her bed, her hands trembling in her lap, the silk nightgown crumpled beneath her weight.

The room was too quiet. The kind of quiet that didn’t soothe but suffocated. Every clock tick was a knife, slicing through the thin wall between sanity and despair.

Beyond the locked doors, men in black stood like shadows carved into the marble halls. Her father believed they were his men—loyal, vigilant, hired to protect his precious daughter until her wedding. But Amy knew better.

They weren’t her father’s men at all.

They were his.

Wang Yibo’s.

Every corner of this mansion was a cage disguised as a home. Even the air she breathed now seemed filtered through his will. The man was controlling everything and everyone around her.

She hadn’t seen him in weeks, but his presence lingered like a phantom. She could feel it in the way the guards’ eyes refused to meet hers, in the subtle click of the lock every time she reached for the door handle, in the way her meals arrived precisely on time—never late, never early—as if someone was timing her heartbeat.

Her parents said it was for her protection. But she knew better that it was surveillance.

Amy pressed a shaking hand to her temple, trying to will away the dizziness. Her father’s booming laugh echoed faintly from downstairs, followed by the sugary voice of her stepmother. They were entertaining guests again, business partners, investors, anyone foolish enough to believe that marrying their daughter into the Wang family was a blessing, not a deal signed in blood.

They knew nothing about the truth.

Not about the deal she had made with Yibo.

Not about Yibo's grude with Xiao Zhan.

Not about the nightmare that began the night she ran away from her wedding three months ago.

They were too blinded by greed to care about her happiness, will and consent. They never noticed the cracks in her smile or the way her fingers shook when someone mentioned Yibo’s name.

To them, she was merely a key to their success.

To her, she was a prisoner being dressed for her own funeral.

.

..

The engagement had been decided without her consent, of course.
Wang Hai Kuan, Yibo’s elder cousin, was to be her husband.

A man she’d never met before the first meeting, a man whose silence was heavier than Yibo’s threats.

The entire deal had been orchestrated by Yibo himself, presented to both families as an act of charity. He told the Wangs and Jiangs that this marriage would “restore their image,” that Amy, the “poor girl whose engagement was once ruined,” deserved another chance at a good life.