The dress still hung on the back of her bedroom door, untouched—white satin and lace, a cruel reminder of what was supposed to be the happiest day of her life.
Nia stared at it with dry eyes. She'd already cried herself empty. Her phone was off. Her curtains were drawn. The city outside moved on, oblivious to the war happening in her chest.
Seven days. That's all that was left before she was supposed to say "I do."
Instead, she got "I can't."
No warning. No explanation. Just a voicemail from the man she'd trusted with her heart, telling her he wasn't ready. That he was sorry. That it wasn't her—it was him.
Classic.
The kind of pain that catches you off guard. The kind that makes everything before it feel like a lie.
She should've seen it. The distance. The shift. The hesitations disguised as silence. But Nia had been too busy believing in love stories she helped create for others. Too busy stitching dreams together for brides who still believed in forever.
She never thought she'd become the broken one.
Her best friend called it a "healing escape." Nia called it a distraction. One weekend out of Nairobi. One night of forgetting.
But what happened next wasn't just forgetting. It was erasure.
Of logic. Of control. Of every rule she'd lived by.
And when she woke up the next morning, tangled in silk sheets beside a stranger—his name, Luciano De Rossi, struck fear and fascination in equal measure—she knew something had gone very, very wrong.
Luciano De Rossi.
A name cloaked in danger.
And now,
somehow… legally tied to hers.