A Proxy as My Husband

Kira's POV

The car smelled like leather and money I had never touched.

I recognized it the moment I stepped out: a limited edition Rolls-Royce Phantom, midnight black, the kind that cost more than the Valentis' entire estate. They'd hired it just to deliver me like a package. A gift-wrapped sacrifice to the Russian wolves.

My heels hit the cobblestone, and I nearly collapsed.

Breathe. Just breathe.

The church loomed before me. Santa Maria della Vittoria; all Baroque curves and towering domes, its marble facade gleaming like bone in the afternoon sun. Tourists would have wept at its beauty. Whereas, I felt like I was walking into my own tomb.

My chest seized and I pressed a hand to my ribs, forcing air into lungs that refused to cooperate. The black spots danced at the edges of my vision, but I blinked them away. I would not faint in front of these people.

The guests had already gathered. Hundreds of them. Italian aristocracy, Russian oligarchs, crime families draped in diamonds and blood money. They turned as I approached, as their whispers slicing through the air like broken glass.

"Is that her?"

"The Valenti's adopted girl? The fat one?"

"She's swelling out of that dress. Did they not measure her?"

I kept my chin high and my spine straight. The corset crushed my ribs, but I refused to let them see me break.

The church doors swung open. Organ music swelled; somber, funereal and so wrong for a wedding. I walked down the aisle alone. No father to give me away. No mother to kiss my cheek. Just the echo of my own footsteps and the weight of three hundred pairs of eyes burning holes into my skin.

I reached the altar and it was…empty.

The priest stood there, his face pinched with embarrassment as the altar boy fidgeted beside him. But the groom's side of the church was empty. No man in a black suit, no wheelchair, no anyone.

My blood turned to ice.

The whispers grew louder and sharper. I heard a woman laugh...high and cruel, from the front row.

"Stood up," someone hissed. "Even the cripple doesn't want her."

"He probably can't get out of bed. Or maybe he just took one look at her and rolled away."

My face burned as my hands trembled at my sides.

Then the side door opened.

Three men in black suits strode in, not the groom, representatives. Their faces were stone and their eyes were dead. They walked to the priest, exchanged quiet words, and handed him something.

A walking stick. Silver-tipped and engraved with the Volkov crest.

The priest cleared his throat yet his voice shook. "The groom…Xander Volkov…is unable to attend. His representatives have instructed me to proceed with the ceremony using this walking stick as his proxy."

His walking stick.

I stared at the silver cane. They couldn't even send a person to stand in for him. Just a prop. A symbol of his uselessness. My humiliation was complete.

The guests erupted. Laughter and snickers filled the air and someone actually clapped.

"This is absurd," I whispered. "They could have at least brought someone to stand in…"

The priest silenced me with a glare. "We proceed."

I stood there, alone, while he spoke vows over a walking stick. I repeated words I didn't mean. I promised to love and honor a man who couldn't even be bothered to show up. When it was over, the priest pronounced us married, and the walking stick was whisked away like a relic.

And then the mockery began in full force.

"Look at her," a woman drawled from the front row—Countess something-or-other, diamonds dripping from her throat. "Standing there like a bride. Poor thing. She probably thought she'd get a real wedding."

"To a cripple?" her companion laughed. "The Volkovs are just as embarrassed as she is. That's why no one came."

"Married to a walking stick," a man added, his voice dripping with venom. "That's fitting. She's about as useful as one."

My nails dug into my palms as I stared straight ahead, unblinking.

Then Isabella appeared.

She swept down the aisle in a cloud of white lace—white, at someone else's wedding, her face arranged in perfect sympathy. Her hand found my arm with her voice dripped with saccharine concern.

"Oh, Kira. You poor, poor thing. I'm so sorry he didn't come. But you know how these Russian men are—so unreliable. And with his condition…" She shook her head tragically. "You must be so embarrassed."

Her eyes said something else entirely.

I told you. You're nothing. Even he knows it.

"I'm fine," I said through gritted teeth.

"You're not," Isabella pressed, loudly enough for the guests to hear. "Look at you…you're practically shaking. Your heart condition must be flaring up. Maybe you should sit down. Or faint. That's what you usually do, isn't it?"

The guests laughed.

"She's always fainting," Isabella announced to the crowd. "Such a delicate flower. It must be so hard being her."

I wanted to slap her. I wanted to scream. But I kept my face frozen and my voice steady. "Thank you for your concern, sister. I'll manage."

"Of course you will," Isabella purred. "You've always been so resilient. Like a cockroach."

My father appeared at her side. His face was tight with barely contained fury—not at Isabella, not at the guests, but at me. For making a scene. For embarrassing the family name.

"Stop it," he hissed at me. "Stop shaking. Stop looking so pathetic. You're a Valenti now. Act like it."

I almost laughed. Now? Now I was a Valenti? When it was convenient? When they needed me to save their finances?

But I said nothing. I just nodded. Because that's what they wanted. Obedience. Silence and erasure.

The ceremony ended without even a prayer.

I was whisked away before I could speak to anyone—shoved back into the Rolls-Royce, driven to the Volkov estate like cargo. No goodbye or even congratulations. Just the hum of the engine and the silence of a marriage that had already begun as a joke.

Well…The bridal suite was enormous.

Crimson velvet, gold filigree and a bed the size of a small country engulfed in silence so thick I could taste it.

I sank onto the edge of the bed, my heart hammering and my vision swimming. The corset was too tight. My ribs ached and I wanted to rip it off, but my hands were shaking too hard to find the zipper.

Breathe. Just breathe.

I closed my eyes. And let myself remember.

Why I had agreed to this. Why I had signed that document. Why I had let them sell me to a stranger.

The dark web chat room…the encrypted message…the name that had haunted me for years.

Your biological parents were last tracked to a Russian mission. Volkov territory. And they never came back.

I'd spent four years digging. Four years building my skills...hacking grids, cracking codes, infiltrating systems. I'd become a ghost in the machine, hunting for scraps of information about the parents I'd never known. The parents who had wanted me. Who had loved me before they disappeared.

The only lead I had pointed to Russia. To the Volkovs.

And then the Valentis handed me a marriage contract to the second son.

A cripple. A lunatic. A useless burden no one would watch.

Perfect.

Marrying him would give me access and so much freedom. The ability to move through his world without suspicion. I could search his family's records. I could find out what happened to my parents. And no one would ever suspect the fat, fainting, pathetic adopted daughter of doing anything more than crying in her bridal suite.

I opened my eyes. The tears I'd been holding back finally spilled down my cheeks.

I was alone. I was married to a ghost. And I was hunting ghosts of my own.

The door creaked open and a servant entered—thin, sharp-faced with her mouth curled in barely concealed amusement. She carried a silver tray. On it, something black and lacy. Something intimate.

"From the staff," the servant said, her voice dripping with mockery. "For your wedding night. We thought you might need…help."

She set the tray on the nightstand. A set of revealing lingerie. Sheer, scandalous and highly insulting.

I stared at it and my face burned instantly.

"The master can't—" The servant laughed. "Well, you know. Poor little X. Can't do much of anything. But you can try, can't you?"

I said nothing as my fingers curled into fists.

The servant smirked. "Oh, and this…" She pulled something else from behind her back. A magazine. Glossy, cheap and tawdry. "We thought you'd need a guide."

She dropped it on the bed.

"HOW TO SATISFY YOUR CRIPPLED HUSBAND"

The title screamed at me in garish red letters. Beneath it, a cartoon of a woman draped over a wheelchair, her face frozen in exaggerated pleasure.

The servant laughed again. "Enjoy your wedding night, Mrs. Volkov."

She left giggling as the door clicked shut.

I stared at the magazine till tears blurred my vision...not from sadness, not from embarrassment, but from rage.

Poor little Grisha.

Even the servants mocked him. Even they thought our marriage was a joke.