Break me. Please.

Paris

I always thought love would arrive gently. Flowers, warm hands, someone who looked at me like I mattered. Instead, love never came at all-only a deadline. Marry before twenty-one, give my parents grandchildren, or lose everything they ever promised me. Their house, their money, their approval. So I did the practical thing. I found a husband.

Elias Larson is nothing like the man I imagined. He doesn't smile unless his daughters are near. He speaks in clipped words, cold enough to frost the room. He married me for convenience, not affection. I know that every time he looks through me instead of at me. I am a solution to his scandal, a woman to stand beside him at galas and dinners, a pretty lie to repair the image his divorce cracked.

Still, when Maya curls into my lap or Kammy asks me to braid her hair, something inside this hollow arrangement feels less empty. I tell myself I can tolerate Elias the same way I tolerate winter-by waiting for it to pass. But sometimes I catch the tiredness in his eyes, the grief he hides behind cruelty, and I wonder if cold things can thaw after all.

Elias

I did not remarry for romance. Romance is expensive, messy, and temporary. I married because a man in my position cannot arrive alone. Investors prefer stability. Society prefers a wife. My daughters deserve a household untouched by whispers. Paris was convenient-young, polished, eager enough to sign the papers.

She is also infuriating. Too soft. Too hopeful. She thanks servants, smiles at strangers, and looks at me as if she can see the man I buried years ago. I cannot decide if she is foolish or dangerous.

My daughters adore her already. Maya follows her like sunlight. Kammy laughs more when Paris is near. I should be grateful. Instead, I resent how easily she enters spaces I have kept locked.

I tell myself I dislike her. Her innocence. Her stubborn kindness. The way she tolerates my sharp edges without retreating. But hatred should feel simple. Paris never does.