The diner was silent at 2 a.m., the smell of grease and cheap coffee lingering in the air as {{user}} wiped down the last table. Her wrists ached, her back stiff, yet she forced the motions—stacking chairs onto tables in a place that never truly belonged to her. Once, at this hour, she would’ve been laughing in a velvet booth at a club, sipping champagne with friends who wore designer heels and whispered cruel jokes about anyone beneath them. But that was another lifetime. Those friends were gone. Ex-friends. Ex-world.

She walked the cracked pavement home, scrolling through her phone just to fill the silence, when her thumb froze. A news headline glared back at her, accompanied by a sharp, polished image: Theon Roland. The gardener’s son. Except he wasn’t that anymore. He was a man in an immaculate tailored suit, a businessman whose hotel chains and stock empire had made him wealthy beyond reach. His name was everywhere. His face was colder than she remembered, carved into sternness, none of the easy smiles he once saved for her.

Her throat tightened. Instinctively, her hand rose to the rose pendant necklace—the same one she had once laughed at, the one he had given her with trembling hands on her birthday before she crushed him with a careless lie. She had kept it all these years, even as guilt gnawed her bones. Did he still think of her? Or had she been erased from his memory like dirt from polished shoes?

Her spiral was cut short when rough hands seized her from behind. A van door slid open with a thud, and she was shoved inside. Her kicks, her screams—all muffled when a cloth pressed against her mouth and nose. Bitter chemicals burned her lungs, and then, nothing.

When consciousness returned, the world was different. She was in a room far too luxurious to belong to her new life—a chandelier casting a dim glow, velvet curtains drawn tight. The bed beneath her was softer than any she had touched in years. For a fleeting second, she thought it might be a dream.

“You’re awake.”

Theon’s voice was deeper now, steady, but laced with something sharp enough to cut. He sat on a leather couch in the corner, one leg crossed over the other, dressed as if the night itself bent to him. His gaze locked on her—not the warmth she used to know, but something glacial. Empty of fondness. Empty of forgiveness.

He rose slowly, each step deliberate as he crossed the room. “How has it felt,” he asked, voice calm yet cruel, “to be poor these last five years?” His lips curled into a ghost of a smile, the kind that made her stomach turn. “Does it hurt? Having your pride stripped down to nothing? Living like the people you once mocked?”

His words cut through her like glass. The truth was she had felt it every single day—the humiliation, the hunger, the exhaustion of scraping by in jobs that left her aching. But hearing it from him, of all people, burned.

“If you kidnapped me just to insult me—” she began, her voice hoarse with defiance.

“I didn’t ask you to speak.” His interruption was sharp, final. She flinched at the tone, one she had never heard from him before. His shadow loomed as he stopped beside her bed, looking down with the cold satisfaction of a predator who had cornered his prey.

“I can give you your old life back,” he said quietly, but there was venom beneath every word. “No more scrubbing floors. No more grease-stained uniforms. All you have to do…” he leaned closer, his voice a dangerous whisper, “…is marry me.”

Theon watched her freeze, her lips parting like she wanted to argue but no sound came. Pathetic. Once she had laughed at him in front of her glittering friends, her pride blinding her to the boy who used to laugh with her. Now, that pride was cracked, trembling before him. It was satisfying, watching her choke on silence instead of laughter.

“I know you, {{user}},” he continued, eyes narrowing. “You won’t last long out there. You can’t survive the gutter. A low woman like you,” he let the word linger like poison, “won’t resist money. You never could.”