The storm outside had not yet broken, but the sky pressed dark and heavy against the tall windows of Knight Manor.
Adrian Knight sat in the leather chair opposite his father's mahogany desk. The smell of cigarette and aged brandy hovering around the air.
This room had always felt more like a throne room than an office, where verdicts were passed, futures dictated and tonight, Adrian was the one standing trial.
Sir Edward Knight, silver-haired and sharp-eyed, regarded his son with a calmness that was more dangerous than anger.
In one hand, he cradled a glass of amber liquid, the cut crystal glowing like molten fire. He looked every inch the king who would burn his own empire to preserve its legacy.
"You need to get married," Edward said, his voice steady, almost casual.
The words slid into the silence like a blade.
Adrian's cold demeanour didn't change, he just stared at his father trying to process what he just heard. "I beg your pardon?"
"You heard me" Sir Edward said and leaned back, crossing one leg over the other with measured elegance.
"You can't be serious," Adrian said and gave a short, humorless laugh.
"Do I look like a man who jokes about his family's legacy?" his father returned smoothly, lifting the glass to his lips.
Adrian's pulse quickened. He had spent thirty years carving his own path, part rebellion, part indulgence.
The tabloids had branded him reckless: women draped on his arm, champagne-soaked nights, boardrooms he walked into late, daring anyone to question his name. And yet, for all his flaws, he had assumed the empire was his birthright.
But now…
"This is about appearances, isn't it?" Adrian's voice dropped, sharp with defiance. "Optics, a wife to parade in front of investors so they stop calling me a liability." Adrian shot fiercely at his father.
Edward's gaze hardened. "This is about responsibility. The Knight fortune cannot be led by a man who believes commitment is optional. You've wasted enough years proving you could have any woman. Now you'll prove you can keep one."
Adrian's jaw worked as he tried to steady the rage curling inside him.
He wanted to slam his fists on the desk, to shout that he was no boy to be ordered about. But the truth hung between them like smoke, his father's words were not empty.
"And if I refuse?" He asked, staring directly into his father's eyes.
Edward set his glass down with deliberate precision, the soft clink echoing in the silence. "Then the inheritance passes to Charles."
Charles!! Adrian nearly spat the name. His cousin had always been a vulture, circling, waiting. To hand everything over to him would be an insult of the highest order.
In defiance, Adrian's voice dropped to a growl. "Who is she?"
Edward's lips curved in triumph. "Her name is Selena Hayes, intelligent, proper, her family owes me a debt of gratitude."
Of course, a deal disguised as marriage. His father's chessboard extended even here.
He stared at his father for a while and said "I won't do it". With that Adrian rose lazily from his chair, legs scraping against the polished wood.
Edward didn't flinch. He expected it, he knew the kind of person Adrian was. He came prepared and he wasn't ready to back down.
"You won't be my heir then" Sir Edward said, words sharp as knives wrapped in velvet, his eyes, steel-gray and pitiless, holding Adrian in place.
The words didn't just fall. They thundered final as the crack of a judge's gavel.
And for the first time in years, Adrian Knight felt the ground beneath him vibrate.
Selena Hayes pressed her palm against the cool glass of her mother's drawing room window, staring out at the gardens she had once loved.
The roses were overgrown now, vines curling like desperate fingers against the stone walls.
She felt much the same, trapped, suffocating.
"You don't understand, Selena," her mother insisted from behind, her pearls rattling against nervous fingers.
"Sir Edward saved this family years ago. Without him, we would have lost everything. This marriage is not optional. It is repayment."
"Repayment you say, Or punishment? I've had my whole life planned out, I haven't even graduated from school. My art, dreams that belonged to me and now you expect me to surrender them for a man I've never met?" Selena turned slowly to face her mother, her ocean eyes blazing.
Her mother's voice softened, though her spine remained rigid. "Sometimes sacrifice is the only path forward. You'll learn to live with it."
Selena's chest tightened. Learn to live with it. As though her existence could be bartered, her body signed away like property to an unknown end.
And yet… deep down, she knew her mother was right about one thing.
The Hayes name was drowning under debts, under whispers of ruin. Without Edward Knight's protection, they would sink. She was about to be the collateral used to help her family out of impending ruin.
Selena drew in a breath and turned back toward the window. Somewhere, in the looming shadow of Knight Manor, a man named Adrian awaited her. A stranger. A husband.
She didn't know what he looked like, she didn't even care to know, but she already resented his hold over her future.
She never for once thought that her future would turn out that way, she heaved another sigh and looked at the roses intently.
She thought about what her mother had just told her again and smiled bitterly, life was really full of mysteries.
She was going to settle down with someone she knew absolutely nothing about because of a stupid repayment.
By the end of the month she would get married to an unknown man and nothing would ever be the same.
"Selena you have to get going" Her mother's voice emanated from behind her.
"Going?, going where?" She asked, puzzled , turning to look at her mother's face.
"We are sending you to knights' Manor today" Her mother delivered the news.