Burned and Crowned

Back in my room, I leaned against the door that I locked tight, listening to him bellowing into the phone out on the balcony.

He was laying down the law to my teacher, insisting my college choices had to be his choices!

"A girl in computer science? That'd be a laughing stock for the Harlows! Yeah, I'm the one who calls the shots here!"

I let out an icy laugh.

The head of this family? Not my head, not anymore.

At 2 a.m., I fashioned a rope out of bed sheets and shimmied down from my second-story window.

My ankle twisted on impact, a sharp jolt of pain shooting through me, but I bit down hard and hobbled through the darkness to a private clinic.

The night-shift doctor eyed my ballooning ankle, "What happened here?"

"Family discipline.

"I need a damage report, and make it quick," I demanded.

By 4 a.m., I had it in hand, a medical report with the hospital's official stamp: torn ankle ligaments, two weeks off my feet.

If push came to shove, that piece of paper was my ticket to showing the world just how the Harlow family's so-called godfather treated his Principessa.

No 'godfather' wants his dirty laundry aired.

I snuck back in through the window as dawn was breaking.

Nine a.m. was the school's cutoff.

Dad strutted out with the family decree, freshly printed, with just one choice for me: Columbine Art History.

"Come on, we're going to the family lawyer to make it official, and then you'll do as I say, marry into the Marshall family after you graduate!" he ordered.

I did not budge from my seat.

"Are you defying me?" he advanced, reaching to drag me up.

I shrugged him off and pulled out the real application form from my backpack, the one I printed in secret last night. It read "Camford University, Computer Science Department."

His eyes widened in shock, his hand lunging to rip the paper.

I stepped back, my voice icy, "Tear it if you want. I've got ten more copies, and one in the cloud."

He stopped dead, looking at me like I was a stranger.

"And one more thing," I said, slapping a medical report on the table, "Mr. Harlow, if you keep trying to control me and threaten me with violence, I'll go public with this. You don't want the world to find out that the Harlow family's Principessa has to be bullied into marriage, do you?"

He just stared at the report, his hands shaking.

I never saw him like that: scared, angry, in disbelief, and even a bit afraid.

Turns out, he was not invincible. He was scared of losing face.

Mom came running, begging, "Harriet, please, he's your father! He's only trying to set you up for the future. Even if he's a bit rough around the edges, it's all for you!"

"Mom," I faced her, "whose side are you on? Mine or the family's?"

She hesitated for three long seconds.

Those seconds shattered my last hope.

"I'm with your father," she whispered, "he's the head of this family."

"Alright," I nodded, "you stick with him. I'll be the black sheep."

I grabbed the application form and hobbled out the front gate.

Their shouts and sobs chased after me, but I was done looking back.

That house, their version of 'it's for your own good', I was leaving it all behind.

The moment I left the manor behind, my phone buzzed, a coded message from James, our family's tutor.

"Harriet, your dad's on the warpath. He's threatened to erase me from Norchester if I don't sway you to his way of thinking: change your college choice, agree to a strategic marriage. He's even rallied the Blood Oath Brotherhood in Engleton against you, to teach you the price of defiance."

My fingers clenched around the phone until they turned pale.

That was his master stroke.

I thought I broke free, but he was spinning a new web all along.

What was waiting for me in Engleton?