Chapter 16: Walking the Aisle

Rayen

The ivory silk of my wedding gown didn’t feel like a dress. It felt like a shroud suffocatingly heavy and tailored to perfection, trapping the heat of my skin against the freezing marble floor of the Cathedral of Saint Ignatius.

Beneath the structured corsetry, pressed flat against my lower ribs, was the cool, unyielding edge of a razor-sharp steel blade.

Every breath I took forced the metal to dig subtly into my flesh through its sheath, a painful reminder of why I was walking down this aisle.

I wasn’t a bride.

I was an executioner.

Or a ghost, depending on how quickly I could strike when the moment came.

The grand organ boomed overhead, its deep, reverberating chords shaking the stained-glass windows depicting saints who had long since abandoned Santiago’s underworld. Outside, the city was tense, held at gunpoint by the ceasefire Don Lautaro Errázuriz had forced upon my family.

Inside, the air smelled of crushed white lilies, expensive incense, and gunpowder hidden beneath the cologne of two hundred armed men lining the pews.

On the right sat the remnants of the Altiplano faction my family’s men. Their faces were hollow with defeat, their eyes fixed on the floor. Their pride had been broken when Lautaro slaughtered my father’s inner circle and executed my brother, Aconcagua.

On the left sat the Errázuriz syndicate, dressed in tailored Italian suits that barely concealed the subtle bulges of shoulder holsters. They watched me like wolves watching a lone, wounded lamb step into their cage.

And at the altar stood the monster himself.

Lautaro.

He wore a custom black tuxedo, broad-shouldered and imposing against the golden altar. His dark hair was combed back, revealing the sharp, carved lines of a jaw that looked cut from Andean granite.

He didn’t look like a man who had just systematically dismantled an empire.

He looked like a king claiming his tribute.

As I took my first step forward, his dark, golden-brown eyes locked onto mine.

There was no warmth in them. No triumph.

Just a cold, calculating intensity that made my pulse spike against my throat.

Look at him, I told myself, feeling the steel pressing against my ribs.

Look at the man who killed your brother.

Look at the man who erased your name.

My fingers twitched against the lace of my bouquet. The stems were bound tightly inside it, but my left hand remained free enough to reach the hidden slit in the side seam of my dress.

One fluid motion.

A single thrust upward, under the sternum, straight into the heart.

It was a move my brother had taught me in our estate’s training yard when we were teenagers.

Aim high, Rayén. Don’t hesitate. If you hesitate, you die.

Aconcagua’s face flashed through my mind,cold, bloody, tossed into an unmarked grave on Lautaro’s orders.

A fresh wave of grief, hot and acrid, surged through my chest, burning away the tremble in my legs.

I forced my head high and locked my gaze onto Lautaro’s.

I wanted him to see the hatred in my eyes.

I wanted him to read every drop of venom I carried for him.

Lautaro didn’t flinch.

Instead, as I drew closer, the corner of his mouth twitched not quite a smile, but a subtle, almost imperceptible tilt.

It was an expression of quiet, dangerous amusement.

My heart gave a violent flip against my ribs.

Does he think this is a game?

The long walk felt like an eternity and a fraction of a second all at once. Every beat of the organ was a countdown.

Step by step, the distance between revenge and submission shrank.

I could feel the eyes of Beltrán, my mentor, tracking me from the front pew on the left. His hands were clasped tightly, his jaw clenched in silent mourning for what he believed was my sacrifice.

He thought I was being led to the slaughter.

He didn’t know about the knife.

No one did.

Finally, my shoes reached the bottom of the altar steps.

Lautaro stepped down to meet me.

Up close, his height was suffocating. He radiated a steady, terrifying heat that cut straight through the chill of the cathedral. The scent of cedar, leather, and something dark and distinctly him wrapped around me, invading my senses.

He extended his hand.

I stared at his palm.

The skin was scarred across his knuckles, a street fighter’s hand disguised beneath bespoke wool.

Taking that hand felt like signing my own death warrant, but refusing now, in front of both families, would mean immediate bloodshed in the pews.

I lifted my hand and placed my gloved fingers in his.

His grip closed around mine.

It wasn’t rough, but it was absolute. An iron band wrapped in velvet.

The heat of his skin bled through the thin fabric of my glove, sending a strange, erratic shiver up my arm that I immediately suppressed.

He leaned in slightly as he pulled me up the final step to stand beside him before the archbishop.

His lips hovered inches from my ear. I could feel the warm brush of his breath against my skin.

“Your hand is shaking, mi rosa,” he murmured, his deep voice a low, gravelly rasp that vibrated straight down my spine. “Is it fear… or anticipation?”

I tightened my jaw, refusing to look at him. My eyes remained fixed on the golden crucifix.

“It’s disgust, Don Lautaro.”

A low, dark rumble vibrated in his chest.

“Good,” he whispered, his fingers tightening just a fraction around mine not enough to hurt, but enough to remind me who held the power here. “Hold onto that. You’re going to need it.”

The archbishop began the Latin rites, his voice echoing off the vaulted ceilings, but the words slipped past me like water over stone.

I couldn’t focus on the prayers.

All I could focus on was the suffocating weight of Lautaro’s presence beside me, the burning pressure of the razor against my ribs, and the ticking clock inside my head.

Wait for the reception, I reminded myself, my chest rising and falling in shallow, controlled breaths.

Wait until we are alone at the estate.

When he thinks he has won.

When his guard is completely down.

“Do you, Lautaro Gonzalo Errázuriz…”

“I do,” Lautaro’s voice cut through the silence, deep, steady, and unyielding.

The archbishop turned to me.

The cathedral went dead silent.

You could hear the faint, distant hum of Santiago traffic outside, but inside, two hundred men held their breath.

“And do you, Rayén Matilde Altiplano…”

I slowly turned my head to look at Lautaro.

He was already watching me, his amber eyes piercing through me, searching my face with a terrifying, unflinching intensity.

He didn’t look like a man receiving a bride.

He looked like a man evaluating a threat.

“I do,” I lied, the words tasting like ash on my tongue.

“By the power vested in me, I pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss the bride.”

A heavy silence hung in the air for a fraction of a second.

Lautaro stepped closer and took my face in his large, warm hand.

His thumb brushed over my cheekbone, his touch surprisingly soft a stark, confusing contrast to the cruelty in his eyes.

He bent his head down.

I closed my eyes, bracing myself for a brutal, possessive mark of ownership.

Instead, his lips merely brushed the corner of my mouth, feather-light and almost infuriatingly gentle, before he moved his lips back to my ear.

“A word of advice for tonight, wife,” he breathed, his voice dropping into a lethal, pitch-black whisper that made the blood run cold in my veins.

“When you draw that blade from your corset… make sure you don’t miss.”