Page 43 of His Forced Bride

The dress fits my frame perfectly, but the ugly, dark, ruddy scars across it mar its appearance.

I touch them lightly, knowing this is as close as I will come to having Batya with me for my wedding day.

It doesn't seem fair.

I haven't been able to take a single moment to mourn him yet.

There is no wake planned that I know of.

Mother certainly won't plan one for him.

And here I am, being forced to walk down the aisle to marry a man I do not love, with no one to rescue me.

Rosa knocked earlier with a new gown, cream silk with delicate beadwork, but I refused.

This dress tells the truth.

Everyone will see exactly what this marriage is—a woman being dragged to the altar.

Well, let them look.

Let them understand that I'm not walking down this aisle willingly.

My hands shake as I apply lipstick.

The color is too bright against my pale skin, but without my makeup and vanity, I'm only making do.

I don't want to wear it anyway.

When I press my lips together, I taste copper—I've bitten them raw.

A knock rattles the door.

"It's time, Miss Mirova." Oleg's voice carries through the wood, respectful but firm.

I know what waits beyond that door.

Guards who will escort me downstairs, a car that will take me to the church, a ceremony that will legally bind me to Yuri Gravitch.

I open the door and the hulking man stands in the hallway with his hands folded in front of himself, his shaved scalp gleaming under the overhead lights.

Behind him, two more of Yuri's men wait with their shoulders squared and their eyes fixed straight ahead.

They're all in suits that look nicer than their daily work attire, and for some reason, that bothers me.

That all three of these men are playing a part in a fucking charade simply because Yuri Gravitch ordered them to.

Don't they know I'm being forced to do this?

That I don't want to marry that man?

"Mrs. Gravitch," Oleg corrects himself, and the name sickens me.

I taste the bile on the back of my tongue.

I'm not Mrs. Gravitch yet. Not for another hour.

I follow them down the hall and out the front door and sit between two guards in the back of a black sedan, watching the city flow past the tinted windows.