I remembered the first day I laid eyes on her—the same day we stood at that altar and became husband and wife.
Something inside my chest gave way.
It didn’t break apart all at once. It cracked.
A slow, dangerous fracture ran through the control I had built over years of bloodshed, discipline, and loss.
The armor I trusted—relied on—shifted, just enough for something unwanted to slip through.
I had walked into that church prepared for indifference, even contempt.
Instead, she stood there in that ill-fitting wedding dress, veil trembling faintly with each breath she took.
Her eyes—wide, dark, and far too perceptive—held confusion, yes, but also something else. Quiet resolve. The kind that doesn’t beg or bargain. The kind that survives.
It hit me like a bullet.
I had known women. Too many to count.
Women who smiled for advantage. Who offered affection when it bought them safety or status. Who confused fear with loyalty.
Even Maria—my late wife, my partner by arrangement—had been cut from that same cloth. She wanted power. Control. Certainty. She understood the rules and played them well, but everything about her had been calculated.
Elena was nothing like that.
She didn’t ask for anything. Didn’t angle for favor. She didn’t try to soften me or impress me or pretend she wasn’t afraid. Her goodness wasn’t a performance—it existed even when it cost her.
That day, facing her at the altar, my son standing beside her, something brutal woke inside me.
Not love.
Territory.
The urge to keep what had already been marked as mine.
From that moment on, she invaded me.
At night, when sleep refused to come, I found myself replaying the curve of her mouth in my mind—the way her lips parted slightly when she was thinking, the faint crease between her brows when she tried not to show fear.
Her dark hair haunted me, cascading over her shoulders like spilled ink, catching light in a way that made my fingers itch to touch it.
I told myself it was nothing.
I told myself it was vigilance.
I stared at the security feeds longer than necessary, tracing the lines of her face with my eyes under the pretense of protection.
Surveillance, I called it. Responsibility. Control.
But the truth was uglier.
It was fixation.
No woman had ever invaded my thoughts like this. Not Maria. Not any lover before or after.
Elena turned my disciplined, ruthless mind into a battlefield—desire clashing violently with hatred, possession warring with punishment.
I convinced myself it was my vendetta bleeding sideways. That my obsession was simply an extension of my hatred for her family. That if I thought about her constantly, it was because she represented everything I intended to destroy.
