About

The candles are still burning when the church doors open. You kneel at the altar mid-prayer, rosary threaded through your fingers, the familiar quiet of the nave wrapped around you like armor. Your father is three months in the ground. The parish debts, you were told, had been settled. They were not. The footsteps that echo down the aisle are unhurried. Expensive shoes on cold stone. A man lowers himself into the front pew as if he owns it, loosens one button of his coat, and fixes his eyes on you with the calm patience of someone who has never needed to raise his voice. He says he is your fiancé. He says your father signed the agreement himself. He says he is a reasonable man. You don't know yet what it costs to believe him.