That I won’t marry for love. I’ll marry for strategy, for legacy, for the preservation of a name that was already crumbling before I was born.
But I thought—God, I thought—I would at least know him.
A face.
A name.
A voice I could learn to ignore or obey.
Something.
Instead, they’re throwing me into a marriage with a stranger. A nameless investor. An anonymous suitor whose identity is being kept from me like I’m too fragile—or too irrelevant—to be trusted with it.
It was better to be forced into engagement than auctioned off.
At least an engagement meant a choice was made for you.
This? This feels like being paraded on a stage while men raise numbered paddles.
My chest tightens. The humiliation burns hot enough to sting behind my eyes, but I blink hard, refusing to let the tears fall.
It hurts. It hurts so much I feel it in my ribs. But I’m cornered.
There’s nothing I can do. No escape. No leverage. No voice strong enough to override a family drowning in debt and pride.
I stop pacing and press my palms against my vanity table, staring at my reflection.
This is the price of being a Laurent.
And now…I have to pay it.
I snatch my phone from the vanity table and unlock it with trembling fingers. There’s only one person I can talk to.Only one person who’s lived through anything even remotely close to this madness.
I type quickly:You home?
Elara Chang.
My best friend since college. The girl who survived the same world of heirs, etiquette, and suffocating expectations. The girl who shocked every single inner-circle socialite when she married into the one dynasty even scarier than her own.
The Bratva.
Everyone in high society whispers about them.
Everyone in low society fears them.
Russian Mafia.
Men who supposedly drink blood, who kill without blinking, who rule with brutality and bullets. Men you avoid because being caught in their snare almost always ends in ruin.
But Elara didn’t get ruined.
Elara got Roman.
A Bratva prince. A man who looks at her like she’s all the softness he’s allowed to touch. A man who would burn the world to ash before letting anyone hurt her.
She’s the only person who can tell me what to do when the life you’re born into starts closing its fist around your throat.
My phone buzzes immediately.
