Chapter 1

I spent five years grooming my sister-in-law, my husband's younger sister, to marry into a great family. The day before her engagement, she came to find me.

"Sister, I'm not going through with it. This whole world was never what I wanted. I won't be your family's tool for climbing into power."

There were dozens of relatives watching in the family group chat, all waiting to see how I, the matchmaker, would climb down.

I smiled and pulled out her dowry list. "Fine. As long as you've thought it through. I won't force you."

That same night she posted on Instagram: Escaping an arranged marriage into money, and it feels like winning. It nearly hit ten thousand likes.

The angrier I got thinking about it back in my room, the more it stung. Then my mother pushed the door open and said just one thing.

"Angry about what? She won't marry him? The people who would are lined up past the moat."

She thought she'd bowed out beautifully. She thought this family couldn't pull off the match without her.

But once the engagement date came and went, I passed the match to my niece from my own side of the family.

That girl took the marriage contract Minnie Gilbert had sneered at, and three months later she was sitting dead center of high society.

That was when Minnie came crying her heart out, begging me, saying she wanted back in.

I didn't even lift my head.

"It's already off, the marriage is already settled. You think this is a game of house, that you can pick and choose?"

……

Minnie walked in just as I was setting the pair of imperial-green emerald earrings into their velvet box.

They were the centerpiece gift I'd prepared for her engagement tomorrow.

She didn't knock, and behind her trailed that broke ex of hers with the band, Geoffrey Delgado.

He'd dyed his hair a loud gray-blue and wore a T-shirt full of holes.

His chin was tipped high, and the way he looked at me was the way you'd look at some relic of a feudal age.

I raised my eyes.

Well now. He'd brought his true love along to make a statement.

"Sister, I want to call off the engagement."

Minnie stood ramrod straight, pitching her voice loud, making sure the relatives playing cards in the side room could all hear her.

She wore a cotton dress washed pale, not a trace of makeup on her face, deliberately arranging herself into that pure, untouched-flower look.

The living room went quiet for two seconds.

The clatter of the mahjong tiles in the side room stopped too, and several pairs of ears pricked up at once.

I ignored her, snapping the clasp of the jewelry box carefully shut with a crisp little click.

Only then did I lift my head, my gaze settling calmly on her face.

"Your reason."

"This world isn't the one I want." She took a breath, forcing her voice higher. "I don't like going to those dull cocktail parties every day. I don't like putting on a fake smile for a room full of phonies."

"I want to be my real self. I don't want to be trapped in the gilded cage you people have arranged for me."

Each line she spoke climbed another notch, as though she were Joan of Arc defying fate itself.

"I won't be your family's tool for climbing into power."

When that last line landed, the mood in the living room dropped cold.

The lid of the box in my hand snapped shut with a click.

Two years ago, the first time I took her to meet Steve James, she was so nervous she couldn't even hold her knife and fork steady.

I was the one who taught her, step by step, how to taste wine, appreciate art, ride.

From a country girl who couldn't tell Burgundy from Bordeaux into a socialite who could hold any conversation.

She complained the etiquette lessons were boring and dozed off in them, and I sat through every single one with her, marking out what mattered.

When the family objected to her and Geoffrey, I was the one who smoothed it over, who gave her every bit of dignity and freedom she got.

And in the end, she says I treated her as a tool.

Five years of my heart's work, thrown to the dogs.

I pushed the box aside.

"You've thought it through?"

"I've thought it through!" she answered without a flicker of hesitation.

"No one's forcing you?"

Her brow creased, an offended look crossing her face.

"Sister, that's very disrespectful. I'm capable of independent thought and judgment."

Behind her, Geoffrey let out a snort, not loud, not soft, pitched exactly so I'd catch it.

He drawled it out with that particular don't-care swagger of a rock kid.

"It's Natalie, right? What century is this, and you're still running the whole arranged-marriage act?"

"Minnie isn't your family's asset. She's a living person. She has the right to choose her own love."

Natalie this, Natalie that, said like we were old friends, the challenge in his eyes not hidden in the least.

"Fine."

I drew the waiver out from under the coffee table, the one I'd had drafted long ago releasing her from the match, and pushed it across.

"Sign it. Sign today, effective today. Once tomorrow's engagement banquet passes, don't say I didn't warn you."

Minnie froze.

She'd probably assumed I would plead, or cry, or call her an ungrateful wretch.

Sorry.

I've run this household for ten years. All the coming and going, every kind of two-faced creature there is—I've seen them all.

The one thing I'm best at is taking the messes other people make and cleaning them up until they look flawless.

"You... you're not even going to talk me out of it?" Half of Minnie's nerve had drained away.

"Don't you have independent judgment?" I asked back. "You're an adult. I respect your judgment."

Her face stiffened, as though she'd been slapped, not hard, but not gently either.

A very faint laugh drifted from the side room and was quickly swallowed back, probably some distant cousin who loved a good show and didn't mind the trouble.

Minnie bit her lip and picked up the pen.

When she signed, she put twelve times the force into her wrist, the nib nearly tearing through the paper, as though she were declaring war on someone.

Done, she flung the pen down on the table with a clack.

"Thank you, Sister, for respecting my choice."

"Respect. Of course I respect it."

I pulled out the dowry list meant to go to the James family, and in front of everyone, fed it into the shredder.

"Bzzzt!"

That astronomical dowry list I'd drafted with my own hand, ready to send to the James family, turned in the blink of an eye into a heap of meaningless paper scraps.

Minnie watched it happen, wide-eyed, and the faint flush of victory in her eyes was swallowed at once by shock.

"Sister, you... you didn't have to do it that fast, did you?"

I ignored her, picked up my phone, found the James butler's contact, and called straight through on voice.

Right in front of her, I put it on speaker.

The line connected quickly, and the butler's respectful voice came through. "Ms. Henson."

"Mr. James's household," I said evenly.

"Let Mr. and Mrs. James know that Minnie, for personal reasons, has decided to withdraw from the match."

"The relevant agreement has been signed. I'll handle everything from here. The engagement banquet goes ahead unchanged. We'll simply be swapping out the bride."

The other end fell silent for a beat, then came an even more respectful reply. "Understood, Ms. Henson. I'll see to it at once."

I hung up and slid the signed waiver into a folder.

"You came here today to cut this off clean, didn't you? I'm giving you my full cooperation."

Minnie's lips moved, but not a single word came out.

That little face that had preached "freedom" was drained of all color now.

I pointed at the door.

"Anything else?"

"No."

"Then go. Don't hold me up. I've got things to handle."