When my parents told me I had one year to get married or lose everything, they didn’t raise their voices. They didn’t need to. My father delivered it the way he handled business—calm, precise, final.

“If you’re not married by thirty-one,” he said over dinner, barely looking up, “you’re out of the will.”

My mother didn’t argue. She simply adjusted her wine glass and gave me that tight smile she used when everything was going according to plan.
My life had always been like that—planned, polished, controlled. I grew up in a house where the floors echoed, the furniture was always white, and nothing ever felt lived in. I wasn’t raised to be a son. I was raised to be an extension of their image.

And now, apparently, a husband.

I tried to play along at first. I went to the dinners, smiled at the right daughters, endured conversations that felt like negotiations. Every woman I met seemed to already know my last name before she knew anything about me.