The dress was a prison.
I stood in front of the floor-length mirror, my reflection staring back at me like a stranger. White silk cascaded down my body in waves of expensive fabric that felt more like chains than clothing. Pearls were sewn into the bodice—each one worth more than my mother's entire house. Diamonds glittered at my throat, cold against my skin.
Cold. Like the man I was about to marry.
"Miss Elara, you look breathtaking," the maid whispered, her hands trembling as she adjusted the veil over my face.
Breathtaking. Yes, that was the goal, wasn't it? To take my breath away. To steal every part of me until nothing remained but a beautiful corpse standing at the altar.
I didn't respond. My voice had abandoned me three days ago when my father had handed me over like a debt payment. "The Russo family needs this alliance, Elara. One daughter for the survival of our entire bloodline. It's a fair trade."
Fair. He used that word as if selling his only daughter to the most dangerous man in the city was a transaction at a marketplace.
I touched the diamond necklace at my throat. A gift from the groom. They said it was worth millions. I thought it looked like a collar.
"Ten minutes, Miss," another voice called from outside the door. "The cars are waiting."
My heart slammed against my ribs. Ten minutes until I walked down the aisle toward a man whose name made politicians tremble and criminals flee. Ten minutes until I became Elara Russo—no, Elara Blackwood—wife of Adrian Blackwood, the infamous Mafia King who had built his empire on blood and silence.
I knew his reputation. Everyone did.
They said he had killed his own uncle to take control of the Blackwood empire. They said he had burned down an entire warehouse with twelve men inside because one of them had looked at him wrong. They said he had never loved anyone—not once in his twenty-nine years of existence.
And now, he was going to marry me.
"Why?" I had asked my father when he first told me. "Why would he choose me?"
My father had avoided my eyes. "Because he demanded the most beautiful daughter of the Russo family. And you, Elara… you are the one he saw."
He saw me. At a charity gala three months ago. I had been standing by the window, wishing I was anywhere else, when I felt eyes on me. I turned, and there he was—Adrian Blackwood, across the room, his gaze cutting through the crowd like a blade.
He didn't smile. He didn't wave. He simply looked at me, and in that moment, I felt like prey being measured by a predator.
Three days later, the engagement was announced.
"Miss?" The maid's voice pulled me back. "It's time."
I nodded once, mechanically. My feet moved beneath me, but I didn't feel the floor. The hallway stretched endlessly before me, lined with guards in black suits, their faces blank. They were his men. Everything in this world was his.
The church doors loomed ahead—massive oak structures carved with angels that looked more like monsters. Through the small gap, I could see the altar. I could see him.
Adrian Blackwood stood in a perfectly tailored black suit, his dark hair swept back, his jaw sharp enough to cut glass. He was beautiful in the way a storm was beautiful—magnificent from a distance, devastating up close. His eyes found me immediately, even through the veil, even through the distance.
Those eyes. Cold. Grey. Empty.
The doors opened.
Walk, I told myself. Just walk.
The aisle stretched before me like a path to my own execution. Hundreds of guests lined the pews—wealthy families, crime lords, politicians—all watching with hungry eyes. They weren't here to celebrate love. They were here to witness an empire being sealed with a wedding ring.
I kept my eyes forward. I didn't look at my father, who sat in the front row with relief painted across his face. I didn't look at my mother, who was crying into her handkerchief—though I couldn't tell if they were tears of joy or guilt.
I looked only at Adrian.
As I reached the altar, he extended his hand. His fingers were long, elegant, dangerous. I had heard stories about what those hands could do. I placed my palm in his, and his grip was firm—not painful, but inescapable.
"You came," he said, his voice low enough that only I could hear.
"I didn't have a choice."
His lips curved into something that wasn't quite a smile. "None of us do."
The priest began speaking—words about love, about devotion, about two souls becoming one. Each word felt like a lie wrapped in scripture. Adrian and I stood facing each other, two strangers about to be bound by law and blood.
"Do you, Adrian Blackwood, take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife?"
His eyes never left mine. "I do."
The words were simple. Final.
"And do you, Elara Russo, take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband?"
The silence stretched. I felt every eye in the church boring into me, waiting. My father shifted in his seat. My mother held her breath.
Say it, something whispered inside me. What other choice do you have?
"I—"
The world shattered.
The sound came first—a deafening crack that split the air like thunder. Then came the light, blinding and white, exploding from the center of the altar. The stained glass windows burst inward, raining colored shards over the screaming guests. The floor beneath me opened, a gaping wound in the marble, and darkness poured out like blood from a fresh cut.
Adrian's hand tightened around mine. I felt his arm wrap around my waist, pulling me against him with crushing force.
"Don't let go," he commanded, his voice cutting through the chaos.
"What's happening?!" I screamed, but my voice was swallowed by the roar of whatever was pulling us down.
The darkness rose like a tidal wave—thick, suffocating, alive. It wrapped around my ankles, my knees, my waist. I could feel it pulling, dragging me into an abyss that had no bottom.
Adrian's face was inches from mine. For the first time, I saw something other than coldness in his grey eyes. I saw… fear. Not for himself. For me.
"Whatever happens," he said, his jaw clenched, "stay with me."
I wanted to laugh. Stay with him? I was being dragged into hell with the devil himself.
But I held on.
The darkness swallowed us whole.
I fell.
For a moment—an eternity—I was nowhere. Nothing. Just a consciousness floating in an endless void. I couldn't see, couldn't breathe, couldn't be. Every part of me was unraveling, thread by thread, until I wasn't sure I existed at all.
Then something caught me.
A hand. Warm. Solid. His.
My eyes flew open.