Married In

I said yes in a garden strung with fairy lights and a string quartet, and for three weeks after, everything my new husband promised felt true. Sebastian Thorne kissed my knuckles on a beach in Capri and called me his whole life. I believed him the way brides are supposed to believe things.

Then the honeymoon ended, and Thorne House swallowed us both.

The estate sat behind iron gates an hour outside the city, hedges clipped into perfect walls, a fountain that never stopped running even in the rain. Staff lined the steps to greet us like we were arriving royalty. Sebastian squeezed my hand. "Almost home," he said, and something in his voice wasn't quite relief.

His mother waited at the top of the stairs. Constance Thorne didn't hug me. She held my face in both hands, studied it like she was pricing a painting, and said, "Welcome, Naomi. You'll do."

I laughed, thinking it was a joke. Nobody else laughed.

Dinner was silver and silence, four courses I barely tasted while Constance asked about my family, my job, whether I planned to keep working "once things settled." I said I hadn't thought that far. She smiled like she already knew the answer.

Afterward, Sebastian walked me to our wing, past a hallway of portraits — stern men in dark suits, women who all seemed to be looking slightly past the camera, like something behind it worried them. I asked who they were. "Just family," he said, too quickly, and steered me toward our door.

I should have slept well that night. Instead I lay awake listening to the house settle, unfamiliar creaks in unfamiliar walls, until Constance's voice drifted up from the hall below, low and certain, talking to someone I couldn't see.

"Tomorrow she signs the paper," she said. "Everyone does."

I sat up. "What paper?"

The voices stopped. Nobody answered.