"Rhys, both Ursula Pruitt and Joan have adored you since childhood. Tonight, you will choose your bride."
Rhys tugged at his tie, already bored. "If I can't marry Janet, does it really matter who I pick?"
His mother's expression hardened. She pulled him aside, but her hissed words carried:
"Marriage is a transaction. That Janet Fox—keep her on the side if you must, I don't care. But the family needs this alliance."
Janet Fox.
Rhys's golden canary.
A bar server. Nobody, really—until a year ago, when someone slipped Rhys a drug and Janet became his convenient antidote.
Since then, they'd burned hot and reckless, a cheap drama ripped straight from late-night television.
But the Gilberts would never accept a girl with no pedigree. So Rhys, ever the dutiful son when money was involved, agreed to marry for the family.
He barely glanced at either of us before raising a lazy hand in my direction. "Fine. I'll take Ursula."
I knew exactly why.
The Pruitts were old academic aristocracy—respectable, refined. I'd been groomed to be agreeable, to swallow grievances, to never make a scene.
The perfect wife to look the other way while he kept his little songbird in a gilded cage across town.