It had been twenty-one years since I’d last breathed the air of a Rowe family event.

I had missed the milestone birthdays, the corporate galas, the extravagant funerals.

I hadn’t even attended my grandmother’s memorial — I’d stood across the street in the freezing rain instead, listening to the eulogies leak through the cathedral’s heavy oak doors.

The last time I saw my father, Alden Rowe, he stood in the doorway of the family estate with my two packed suitcases in a puddle at his feet. An autumn storm was washing out the gutters.

My mother hovered behind him in the foyer, pressing a monogrammed handkerchief to her mouth, looking more embarrassed by the watching neighbors than devastated by my leaving.

My older brother, Griffin, leaned against the banister, a satisfied smile on his lips, watching the scene like a play he’d written himself.

I was nineteen.

“You are a disgrace to this family,” my father said, his voice cutting through the rain. “You were meant to marry Easton Bell. That was your one responsibility.”

“I don’t love him,” I pleaded, my voice trembling but defiant.

“You were not raised to chase something as useless as love, Maren. You were raised to fulfill a duty.”

“I won’t do it. I won’t be sold.”

That was the moment I watched the vault inside my father lock for good. He kicked my bags further into the rain. “Then go,” he sneered. “Become nothing.

And don’t you dare come crawling back when the world shows you exactly how little you’re worth.”