The first thing Mikha registers is the light. Too bright, even through her closed eyelids. Her head throbs behind her eyes that makes her want to bury her face in the pillow and never surface.

She groans and blinks one eye open, squinting. The ceiling that swims into view is wrong. It's not the familiar warm white of her room at the Lim estate. It's not the ceiling of the club's private lounge where she's woken up more times than she can count. This ceiling is clean, white, and definitely new.

She rubs her hand over her other eye, pressing the heel of her palm against the ache, trying to piece together the night before. Fragments surface: the clinking of glasses, the weight of Jhoanna's arm around her shoulders, Colet's steadying grip as the world tilted. The white of Aiah's dress. The cold press of a ring sliding onto her finger.

Her hand freezes mid-rub. She lowers it slowly, staring at the gold band wrapped around her ring finger. It catches the light, gleaming and new. The memory slams into her. She got married yesterday. She signed her life away. And this place, this clean, white, unfamiliar room, is where she lives now.

She sits up too fast, and the room spins. She presses a hand to her forehead, waiting for the nausea to pass, and that's when she notices the clothes on the floor. A white shirt and a black shorts. She stares at them, trying to remember taking them off, trying to remember changing at all. But there's nothing. The last thing she remembers is the car ride, the weight of exhaustion pulling her under, and then nothing until this moment.

Her jaw tightens. She didn't change herself. She knows she didn't. She always sleeps in her night-out clothes when she's too drunk to function, or she strips down to her boxer briefs and sports bra when the heat gets to her in the middle of the night. She never, ever changes into fresh clothes before passing out. So that means someone else did it. Someone else undressed her, put her in those clothes, and then watched as she inevitably kicked them off in her sleep.

Aiah.

The name burns through her. She doesn't need Aiah's kindness. She doesn't want it. She didn't ask for it. She hates the thought of those careful, composed hands on her body, undressing her like she was something to be handled, something to be managed. The anger rises, mixing with the throbbing in her head until she can barely see straight.

She hates her parents for making her sign her life away. She hates Aiah for agreeing to this bullshit of a marriage. She hates this house, this room, this bed she didn't choose. She hates the way the sunlight makes everything look clean and new, like a fresh start, when all she feels is the weight of a cage closing around her.

But then she remembers her promise. The whisper she'd breathed against Aiah's ear at the altar, the vow she'd made to ruin her. And slowly, through the haze of anger and hangover, a smile curves across her lips.

She's been thinking about it wrong. All this time, she's been planning to push Aiah until she cracks, to be so insufferable that Aiah would be the one to file for divorce. But that's too easy. That lets Aiah off the hook. That makes Aiah the victim, the poor woman who tried her best with the unhinged heiress and couldn't take it anymore.

No. The real way to break Aiah Arceta is to make her fall. To make her believe that Mikha is trying, that Mikha is softening, that maybe, just maybe, there's something real growing between them. Let Aiah lower her guard. Let Aiah start to hope. Let Aiah fall in love with the idea of a wife who's finally been tamed.

And then Mikha will leave. She'll walk out the door and never look back, and she'll let Aiah choke on the divorce papers. It will destroy her. It will destroy that perfect, unreadable composure. And Mikha will be there to watch it happen.

Her smirk widens, even as her head throbs. The plan settles into her bones, solid and satisfying. This is how she wins. This is how she breaks the woman who thought she could tame someone like her.

She swings her legs off the bed, grabbing the discarded clothes from the floor. Then she walks to the bathroom and throws the clothes into the laundry basket with more force than necessary. The rest of her clothes follows. She turns the shower knob all the way to cold and steps under the spray.

The water shocks her system. She presses her palms against the wall, letting the cold run down her back, washing away the last remnants of sleep and the smell of alcohol. She stays there longer than she needs to, letting the chill numb the anger simmering beneath her skin. When she finally steps out, she feels more human. More in control.

She dries off and walks to the closet. It's huge, bigger than her old one, and it takes her a moment to find her side. Her tailored suits hang in neat rows, her leather jackets on their own rack, her plain shirts, shorts, and sweatpants folded on shelves. It's all familiar, all hers, arranged by her mother with how neatly folded it is.

And then she sees Aiah's side. Dresses in muted colors, blouses pressed and hanging in perfect order, a row of heels that look like they've never touched dirt. It's all so neat, so controlled, so utterly Aiah. Mikha's fingers curl into her palm. She wants to burn it all. She wants to watch the fabric curl and blacken and turn to ash.

But it can wait. She has an act to put on. She forces her hands to unclench, forces the tension out of her shoulders. She pulls on a fresh white shirt and a pair of black sweatpants, the fabric soft and familiar against her skin. She runs a hand through her damp hair, slicking it back, and meets her own eyes in the mirror.

Her reflection stares back at her, pale and sharp-jawed. She looks like herself but she feels like a stranger. She exhales slowly and lets the mask slide into place. Blank. Calm. Unbothered.

She opens the bedroom. The living room opens up before her, huge and modern.

She turns her head and finds Aiah sitting at the dining table. A bowl of a soup steams in front of her, and she's eating slowly, methodically, like everything else she does. She looks up when she spots Mikha, her dark eyes unreadable. She's wearing a simple beige blouse, her long wavy black hair falling in past her shoulders. She looks composed. She looks like she slept perfectly. Mikha hates her for it.

"I made lunch," Aiah says, her voice flat, neutral.

Mikha's first instinct is to snap. To tell Aiah exactly what she can do with her lunch and her kindness and her perfect, put-together presence. But she stops herself. She lets the words die in her throat. Because that's what Aiah expects. That's what everyone expects from her. The chaos. The outburst. The tantrum.

If she wants her plan to work, she needs to thread this carefully. She needs to be unpredictable in a different way. She needs to make Aiah wonder.

She makes her face blank, letting the mask settle. Without a word, she walks to the kitchen, her eyes scanning the counters until she finds the cabinets. She pulls out a plate, a spoon and fork, a bowl. She moves slowly, deliberately, letting Aiah watch her. Letting Aiah see that she's not going to fight. Not yet.

She catches glimpses of the house through her peripheral vision as she moves. The state-of-the-art appliances. The wine cooler built into the island. The glass walls that separate the living spaces. She doesn't care. She doesn't fucking care about this shitty house or the money her parents threw at it to make it look like a home. It's a cage, just with better decor.

She sits down at the dining table across from Aiah, scooping rice into her plate, and ladling sinigang into her bowl. The sour smell of tamarind and pork rises up, warm and comforting. She can feel Aiah's eyes on her, watching her every move. She doesn't look up. She just starts eating.

The sinigang is good. She doesn't want it to be, but it is. The broth is rich and tangy, the pork tender, the vegetables cooked just right. She eats mechanically, not letting any reaction show on her face. She can feel Aiah's gaze sharpen, a subtle narrowing of her eyes. This isn't what Aiah expected. Aiah expected fire. Aiah expected her to rage and storm and make a scene. Instead, she's just sitting here, eating sinigang like it's the most normal thing in the world.

Good. Let her wonder.

They eat in silence. The only sounds are the clink of utensils against ceramic and the soft hum of the air conditioning. Aiah finishes first, setting down her spoon and dabbing her lips with a napkin. She stands, picks up her plate, and carries it to the kitchen. Mikha watches her from the corner of her eye, watching the way she moves, fluid and unhurried. Aiah washes her plate, dries her hands, and walks back to the table.

"I'll just be in the office room if you need anything," she says.

Mikha wants to say that she needs Aiah out of her life. She wants to say that she needs Aiah to stop looking at her like she's a project to be fixed. She wants to say a lot of things, but she stops herself. She nods instead, her eyes fixed on her food so Aiah won't see the way her jaw tightens.

Aiah turns and walks toward the office room. The door clicks shut behind her.

Mikha exhales. Her hands are trembling slightly, and she presses them flat against the table to steady them. She can do this. She can play this game. She's been playing games her whole life.

She finishes her meal, scraping the last of the broth from her bowl. She washes her dishes. Then she walks back to the bedroom, grabbing her wallet and car keys from the nightstand.

She needs a drink. She always needs a drink. The thought of numbing the edges of her anger, of drowning the constant, gnawing rage, is almost enough to make her smile. She walks to the front door and reaches for the lock.

It doesn't budge.

She frowns, trying again. She twists the manual lock, but the door stays firmly shut. She tries three more times, running her fingers over the surface, searching for another lock she might have missed. There's nothing.

Her heart starts to pound. She turns the knob, pulling hard, but it doesn't give. She tries it again, rattling it, but nothing happens. The door is still locked.

She steps back, staring at the door. She forces herself to calm down. She forces her voice to stay even as she walks to the office room and knocks softly on the door.

"Come in," Aiah's voice filters through.

Mikha pushes the door open. Aiah is sitting at her desk, a pair of glasses perched on her nose, her attention on a stack of papers. She looks up when Mikha enters, her expression curious but guarded.

"Why is the door not opening?" Mikha asks. Her voice is calm. She's proud of how calm it sounds.

Aiah blinks. Then she sets down her pen, removing her glasses and folding them carefully. "Your parents put a lock where only my fingerprint can open it."

Something inside Mikha snaps. And for a moment, she sees red. She wants to yell. She wants to curse at her parents, at Aiah, at the whole fucking world for conspiring against her. She wants to throw something, to break something, to make this beautiful, sterile house feel as shattered as she does.

But she stops herself. She clenches her jaw so hard her teeth ache, forcing the anger down, forcing it deep into her chest where it can simmer and burn. She takes a breath. Then another. And then she chuckles, low and humorless, shaking her head.

"They're treating me like an animal," she says.

Aiah's eyes soften for a fraction of a second. Mikha sees it, the brief crack in that perfect composure, before Aiah's face goes neutral again.

"Where were you going?" Aiah asks.

Mikha wants to shout that it's none of Aiah's business. She wants to scream that her new wife doesn't get to ask her questions, doesn't get to pretend she cares. But she stops herself. She forces a casual shrug. "I was going to buy some whiskey."

"There are beers in the fridge."

Mikha wants to say that beers don't numb her. She wants to say that she doesn't fucking want beers, that she needs something stronger, something that will actually dull the edges of this nightmare she's living in. But she exhales deeply instead, letting the air rush out of her lungs, and nods.

"Okay."

She turns to leave, and that's when she sees it. The office room has glass walls. All of them. And beside this office, through the transparent barrier, is a gaming room. Her gaming room. Her books are there, stacked on shelves, her computer setup arranged just so. It's all been moved here, transplanted into this glass cage where Aiah can see her at all times.

Mikha wants to put her fist through the glass. Of course her parents did this. Of course they made sure that even when she's in her own space, Aiah can watch her. Even when she's playing her games, hiding from the world, she'll be on display.

She can see the pool through the windows beyond, the water glittering in the afternoon sun. For a wild, fleeting moment, she thinks that drowning herself might be the best option. Just sink to the bottom and let the water fill her lungs. Let it all be over. Let her parents deal with the consequences of what they've done.

She doesn't do it. She's too angry to die.

She leaves Aiah's office without another word, her footsteps heavy on the floor. She walks to the kitchen, opens the fridge, and grabs six cans of beer. The metal is cold against her palm, and she pops one open as she walks, drinking deeply. The liquid is bitter and not nearly strong enough, but it's still something.

She walks into her gaming room, dropping onto the couch. She stares out at the pool, at the sun glinting off the water, and takes another long pull from the can. She can feel Aiah's gaze on her through the glass, a weight she can't escape. She doesn't care. She doesn't fucking care if Aiah is watching.

She needs to numb herself. She needs to stop feeling the rage and the helplessness and the crushing weight of being trapped. She needs to stop before she starts crying, before she breaks down and lets Aiah see just how much this is destroying her.