Page 52

My hands tremble as I reach for the gin martini on the vanity. The familiar burn does little to calm my nerves. I can’t decide if I’m nervous because getting married again is the last thing I want or that some small part of me does want this with Zeke. I take another sip of my martini. Anything to stop myself from over thinking.

Through the window of this absurdly luxurious bedroom—my bedroom now, apparently—I hear the bustling of wedding preparations below.

Lydia arranged everything in record time. A small, intimate ceremony in Zeke’s massive living room. “We’ll make it beautiful,” she’d promised, her eternal optimism somehow more grating than comforting.

My fingers trace the delicate lace trim of the wedding dress hanging nearby. It’s stunning—exactly what I would have chosen if this was a real wedding and not some twisted arrangement born from danger and necessity.

I close my eyes, trying to steady my breathing. This weddingisreal. The circumstances which brought it to fruition may be twisted, but I am marrying Zeke. More willingly than I want to admit. Soon, I will be legally bound to him, and my emotions are in turmoil trying to figure out how I really feel about this.

This morning, Leo’s excitement about the wedding had almost made it seem normal. Almost made me believe this could work. But now, alone with my thoughts in this opulent prison of a bedroom, reality crashes back.

I’m about to marry a man who operates in the shadows, who commands respect through fear. He’s also the man who makes breakfast with my nephew and promises to keep us safe.

My reflection offers no answers, just the lost look of a woman caught between duty and desire, between fear and an emotion I refuse to name.

If I’d refused to marry, Zeke wouldn’t stop me. He’d tell me the same story about how this is the only way to protect me—to keep me alive. But is that the only reason for us to marry?

Regardless, I’m still standing here, letting this day take place. What does that say about my wants and desires?

I’m not emotionally stable enough to answer that question.

Instead, I pour another gin martini with trembling hands, spilling a few drops on the vanity. My third drink, or maybe my fourth—I’ve lost count. The clear liquid catches the light, creating tiny prisms that dance across the polished wood.

The familiar burn slides down my throat, and for a blessed moment, the tightness in my chest eases. But it’s temporary, like trying to patch a bullet hole with a Band-Aid. The alcohol dulls the edges of my panic, but underneath, everything still feels raw and exposed.

You swore you’d never do this again.

After Ryan, I’d made promises to myself. No more marriages. No more letting a man have that kind of power over me. No more watching someone’s face transform from love to disgust when they learned I couldn’t give them children.

I laugh bitterly. The sound echoes in the vast bedroom, hollow and sharp. The woman staring back at me looks expensive in her silk robe, her dark curls perfectly styled. But her eyes—my eyes—hold the same haunted look they did the day I left Ryan.

The gin isn’t working fast enough. I pour another, my movements mechanical. The bottle is getting dangerously low, but what does it matter? In an hour, I’ll be Mrs. Ezekiel King.

“Some fucking choice,” I mutter, raising the glass to my lips. The martini tastes like defeat and broken promises. Like all those nights I spent convincing myself I was better off alone, no ring and no one else’s expectation.

But here I am, about to do it all over again. Different man, but I can’t help but wonder if it’s the same trap.

The alcohol burns, but not enough to drown out that voice in my head—the one that keeps reminding me how spectacularly I failed at being a wife the first time around. How damaged I am. How unworthy.

The gin isn’t enough to silence Olivia’s voice in my head either, her stories echoing like a warning bell. I remember the haunted look in her eyes when she described her ex-husband Vinny’s brutality—the casual violence, the constant fear. “In their world,” she’d said, “women are property, nothing more.”

Is that what I’m about to become? Property?

My hands shake as I set down the glass. Olivia survived, but at what cost? The scars she carries aren’t just physical. Even now, years later, certain sounds make her flinch. A door slamming. A raised voice. The clink of ice in a glass.

“He seemed so normal at first,” she’d told us during one of our gatherings. “Charming. Protective. Until the first time I disagreed with him.” Her fingers had traced the faint scar above her eyebrow, a permanent reminder of that night.

The mirror reflects my pale face as nausea rolls through me. Zeke isn’t Vinny—I know that. But he operates in the same world, walks the same shadowy paths. How long before those shadows creep into our home? How long before Leo gets caught in their darkness?

“He’s different,” Olivia had insisted when I confided my fears about marrying Zeke. “I’ve seen how he looks at you, Eve. It’s not like …” she’d trailed off, but I heard the unspoken comparison. Not like Vinny. Not like the men who view women as possessions to be controlled and broken.

But standing here in this gilded cage, wearing an expensive robe, I wonder if there’s really any difference at all. I can’t deny I have feelings for him—strong feelings—but will that be enough to overcome the circumstances of this union?

The gin burns in my empty stomach as Olivia’s words echo. “Once you’re in their world, you can never truly leave.”

The dress hangs before me like an accusation. Ivory silk and delicate lace. My fingers trace the intricate beading along the sweetheart neckline, each crystal catching the light like a tear.

“Fuck,” I whisper, my voice breaking on the word as I take the dress off the hanger.