Then I unlocked it again.
Click.
I stayed there, hand on the knob, staring at it as if it could decide for me. As if it could choose safety over pride.
I exhaled hard and rubbed my arms with cold hands. I still felt cold even in the still air, even wrapped in fabric, even in a bed that cost more than my entire life used to.
I crossed the room, ears straining like I expected him to return—expected him to storm back in with venom and eyes that didn’t feel like poison until it was too late.
I turned off the lamp and slipped into bed carefully.
Sleep didn’t come.
The sheets were soft. The pillows smelled clean. The mattress was huge.
Everything was perfect.
Everything was wrong.
I turned onto my side, then onto my back. I shifted again and again, exhausted but unable to surrender. My mind ran in circles, replaying the night like punishment.
His voice.
His stare.
His breath too close.
And above all, the altar.
The humiliation still burning as if it had happened an hour ago instead of years.
Eventually, exhaustion won.
Not gently.
I fell into sleep the way someone falls into water—without control.
And the nightmare found me first.
It started low, like a cruel whisper that wouldn’t stop.
“I will not marry this woman.”
Again.
Again.
Again.
The cathedral spun around me—vast, cold, dizzying. People in the pews smiled with sharpened teeth. The benches turned into thorns. And Enrico—
Enrico stood at the altar and looked at me with eyes like stone. Distant. Dead.
I tried to run.
My legs wouldn’t move.
They were heavy as lead, pinned to the floor. My belly was huge—pregnant, swollen, impossible to carry. My dress—white and beautiful—was stained dark red with blood, the pain seeping through it like ink.
