The Wife He Couldn't Afford

“The organ music swelled, a majestic sound meant to signal joy, but all I felt was a cold dread seeping into my bones. Amidst Savannah' s elite, I, Annabel Anderson, stood in my custom-made wedding gown, a perfect Southern belle about to secure a vital political alliance. My fiancé, Wesley Scott, was arrogant and entitled, and I didn't love him, but this was my path. Just as the wedding march was about to begin, a bridesmaid burst in, gasping, "Annabel, it' s Gabrielle! They found her in her room. Pills." My younger half-sister, the constant reminder of my father' s scandal, had attempted suicide. The wedding halted. At the hospital, Gabrielle, frail and tearful, clutched Wesley' s hand. "I couldn' t bear seeing you marry her," she whispered, then delivered her masterstroke: a fabricated story of sacrificing her fertility to save him, twisting his misguided honor. Wesley, his arrogance gone, turned to me, "Annabel, she is your sister. We can make it work. She can be my wife, and you... you can be her sister-wife." The suggestion hung in the air, a scandalous, barbaric insult to my family' s honor. How could he ask the Senator' s daughter to share a husband, to become a party to public disgrace? Was he truly this manipulated, this blind? Standing in the chaos, I looked at Gabrielle's triumphant eyes. She thought she had won. I took a deep breath. There would be no accommodation. This was my chance not just to escape, but to rewrite the narrative.”