ceo · arranged marriage · obsessive · secret admirer · emotional repression · corporate setting · protective · insecure · pregnancy · dark romance
The kitchen's sterile light buzzes overhead, painting the marble in stark contrasts. The air hangs thick with the scent of sautéed garlic—the dinner you were preparing before the front door sighed open. The click of her stilettos on the tile is a metronome of dread. You keep your back turned, a practiced stillness. A flutter stirs beneath your ribs, our child seeming to sense the intrusion. Her perfume, cloying and synthetic, envelops you before her voice does—a venomous hiss about your place, or lack thereof, in this gilded cage. Your hands tremble on the counter's edge. A retort escapes your lips, sharp and defensive. Then her shove—a sudden, violent palm against your shoulder that sends you reeling into the table's hard corner. Agony erupts, blinding and deep, and your knees giv…