Luna Reina 的作品

Celeste.Her name flashed on Nathaniel’s phone, and now, it had a face.A face I hated for being so impossibly beautiful.Not the kind of beauty that clamored for attention. No, she was the quiet, expensive kind. Soft waves of dark hair framed her delicate features, pale skin glowing under the mansion’s opulent lights. Her red lips curled into a smile that seemed to belong to this world more than I ever would in my faded dress.When she looked at me, it felt as if I had wandered into a space she had long claimed as her own.“The woman he promised not to replace,” she said, her voice a smooth whisper that echoed in the now silent hallway.Behind me, Nathaniel remained motionless, a statue of cold indifference.That hurt more than it should have.He offered no explanation, no denial, just a stoic presence, as if my humiliation was merely another family matter he would resolve later.Adrian moved first, stepping beside me. The warmth of his shoulder brushed against mine, a quiet promise

The message hung between us like a loaded gun.(You promised she would never carry your child.)I stared at the screen until the words blurred, each one piercing deeper.My hand went cold, a chill spreading through me.Nathaniel moved first, snatching the phone from the desk and flipping it facedown, as if hiding the screen could erase what I had seen.“Leave,” he said, his voice a low growl.I laughed, a sound that felt foreign, thin and broken. “You can’t be serious.”His eyes met mine, calm as ever. I hated that calm more than the message itself.“Claire.”“No.” I pointed at the phone. “Who is Celeste?”A muscle tightened in his jaw, and that was the only answer I needed.“She’s not your concern.”“Your mistress is asking if you touched me, and I’m supposed to be unconcerned?”“She is not my mistress.”“Then what is she?”Silence filled the space, heavy, cruel.Nathaniel looked past me toward the window, as if searching for the right words outside.“She was supposed to be my wife,”

“One year to produce a Blackwell heir.” Victor Blackwell’s voice sliced through the air, casual, as if he were discussing the weather rather than the terms of my existence.A child. My body. My marriage, all reduced to a deadline.I felt the walls of the expansive hallway closing in on me, bright lights glaring down. It was as if the space itself was choking on the weight of men who had orchestrated my fate before I even had a say.I glanced at Adrian. He stood beside me, an unexpected stillness in his gaze, as if he too was grappling with the gravity of those words.Nathaniel, however, was a statue of tension, fury radiating from him as he stared down his father.“This is not the time,” he said, voice low and clipped.Victor smiled, an unsettling thing that didn’t reach his eyes. “It became the time when your wife followed your brother out of breakfast on her first morning in this house.”Heat flooded my cheeks. “Don’t treat me like I’m not here,” I shot back, my voice trembling.Vic

“Take it off.”I froze in the middle of the bedroom. Nathaniel stood by the mirror, casually removing his cufflinks, as if he hadn’t just ordered me to shed my identity.My fingers tightened around the skirt of my wedding dress. “Excuse me?”“The dress,” he repeated without glancing my way. “Take it off.”Heat rushed to my face. Of course, this was how my marriage would begin; no tenderness, no nervous laughter, just an order.I lifted my chin defiantly. “You first.”His fingers paused, and slowly, his gaze met mine through the mirror. For the first time that night, something flickered across his face, something threatening.“You have a mouth on you for someone who trembled at the altar.”“And you have quite the audacity for a man who trapped a woman into marrying him.”Silence enveloped us, the kind that made the room feel smaller.Nathaniel turned to face me fully. Under the dim light, he looked nothing like a groom. He looked like a verdict.“You should learn when to stop talking,

“Claire,” Andrei breathed against my lips.His hand tightened on my waist as our kiss deepened, pulling me close enough to feel the hard evidence of how badly he wanted me.I should have stepped back.Instead, I melted into him like I had never been touched before.The first Blackwell man who touched me was not my husband.It was his brother.Three months before my wedding, Adrian Blackwell was just a stranger in a hotel bar, just a flicker of warmth in a world drowning in cold, hard reality.I didn’t know his last name then. All I knew was that he looked at me as if I were whole, not broken; as if I were a woman with choices, not a daughter being sold to save her father’s company.I had gone to that hotel bar to breathe.My father had spent the afternoon begging me to understand: our family business was collapsing. Investors had pulled out. Loans were overdue.The world was waiting for us to fail.Then the Blackwells arrived with an offer, a merger. A marriage. Me.I still remembered