Every last trace of pretense left his face.

"Know your place, Willow."

"A girl from some dirt-poor mountain village—how exactly do you see yourself as my wife?"

"Don't make a scene in front of Zelda. It won't look good for anyone."

I had laid every ugly, painful thing about my family bare for him, and now he was throwing it back in my face. He had never once looked at me as an equal. Not from the very start.

I wrenched my arm free with everything I had, so hard he stumbled back a step.

The red marks his grip left on my arm burned, but the cold inside me was worse.

I wiped the tears from my face. The shattered look in my eyes slowly steadied into something still.

"You're right. I come from the mountains. My family is poor. I'm not worthy of the richest man's only son, and I'm certainly not worthy of being Mrs. Simmons."

Each word fell separate and deliberate, quiet but absolutely sure.

"But I'm not cheap enough to be your mistress in the shadows."

His brows knotted tighter, the impatience on his face sharper now.

He stepped toward me again, his voice carrying one last half-hearted attempt at coaxing:

"Willow, stop being stubborn. I can give you money, give you a life a hundred times better than killing yourself at some job. I'll handle things with Zelda. You won't be mistreated."

"She runs the house. You stay outside it. Nobody crosses the line."

I laughed. At myself, for being so blind.

"What I want, you can't afford."

Drew said nothing. He walked to my nightstand and laid a bank card down like he was settling a tab.

"Think it over. There's three million on that card. Once you've come around, I'll give you the PIN."

I was packing when the phone cut through everything—sharp, insistent. Grandma Charity's number.

Dread hit me before I even answered.

"Willow? It's Uncle Ferris."

"Your grandma collapsed. Acute leukemia. The surgery alone is over three million. What are we going to do?"

"I've got eighty thousand saved up, that's my funeral money, it won't last her a week."

Grandma raised me. She was everything I had.

I looked at the bank card on the table. Then I lowered my head.

"Don't panic, Uncle Ferris. I'll figure something out."

I pulled that familiar number out of my blacklist and dialed, swallowing every shred of dignity I had left.

The call cut off almost immediately. I couldn't reach him. But when I turned to the TV, there he was: