It all started when my father, calm yet insistent, leaned forward and said, “Alex, it’s time you settled down.” His tone was less like a chat about my future and more like he was closing a business deal.
“You’re nearly 30,” he continued. “If you want to take over the company one day, you need to show some commitment—a wife, a family. You can’t manage everything on your own.”
I almost burst out laughing. “So, you’re saying I have to get married or lose everything?”
“Exactly,” my mother added, her eyes sizing me up as if I were one of her failed investments. “We can’t trust the company to someone who treats life like a never-ending party.”
That was the spark that ignited my rebellion. All my life, my parents had controlled every detail—from where I went to school to who I associated with—and now they wanted to force me into a traditional marriage? I decided then and there that I would marry—but not in the way they expected. I’d choose someone who would challenge their high-society ideals, someone who wouldn’t fit into their narrow vision of success.
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