Chapter One:The price of Blood

“Your father is dead, Miss Cruz. The only thing keeping you alive… is my signature.”

---

The ink was still wet on the contract when Ariella Cruz realized she had just signed her life away.

The leather folder felt heavier than it should. Her hand trembled as she closed it, but she masked it with a calmness she’d spent years perfecting.

Across from her sat Lucien Draven, the man whose name echoed through the darkest corridors of power. Billionaire. Arms dealer. Suspected murderer.

And now… husband.

Ariella lifted her eyes to meet his. Cold. Calculating. No warmth, no flicker of doubt — only a deadly kind of stillness. Like a man who’d slit a throat and still make it to dinner in a clean suit.

"You look like you want to kill me," Lucien said, voice smooth as silk, yet edged with ice. “You’ll need to do better at hiding it, wife.”

Wife.

The word slithered down her spine like a curse.

“I didn’t come here for love,” Ariella replied, her voice steady. “And you didn’t offer it.”

He smiled — a sharp thing, like the curve of a blade. “Good. I despise liars. And lovers.”

The door opened with a hiss. His assistant stepped in, crisp in black, handing over a silver pen with a bow. “Mr. Draven. Everything’s filed.”

Lucien rose to his feet, towering above her in that tailored charcoal suit that probably cost more than her late father’s casket. He extended a hand — not out of courtesy, but ownership.

She stood without taking it.

He didn’t flinch. “Follow me.”

---

The hallway outside his private office in Draven Manor was lined with oil paintings — faceless women in red, eyes scratched out. The walls whispered secrets. And she was now one of them.

“Is this the part where you lock me in a tower?” she asked.

“No,” Lucien said without looking back. “But you’ll be watched. Every room except the bathroom is under surveillance. Try anything, and I’ll know.”

Her heels clicked behind his slower, silent steps. She should be scared. Maybe she was. But the fire in her chest was stronger.

She hadn’t come here to die. She came to survive.

And maybe… uncover the truth.

---

Her new bedroom — suite, technically — was on the east wing. Massive, cold, clinical. A king-size bed sat untouched like a trap. No pictures. No warmth. Just glass and stone and silence.

Lucien turned to her, unbuttoning the cuffs of his sleeves. “We sleep separately. For now.”

“For now?” she echoed.

He stepped closer. Too close.

She didn’t flinch.

“I know you’re wondering what really happened to your father,” he said, voice low. “So let me tell you this — he wasn’t the man you thought he was.”

Ariella’s jaw clenched. “You killed him.”

He tilted his head, curious. “That’s what you want to believe.”

Her nails dug into her palm. “Why the marriage, then? Why not just kill me too?”

Lucien smiled — not with amusement, but with venom. “Because you’re more valuable alive. And I don’t kill what I own… unless it betrays me.”

Before she could respond, he turned and walked out.

---

That night, she stared at the ceiling in a bed too big, in a house too quiet.

Her father’s last words haunted her.

> “If anything happens to me, don’t fight him. Sign the papers. Protect your brother.”

Her little brother, Mateo — twelve years old and hidden somewhere safe. She hadn’t even seen him since the funeral. Lucien promised he’d be “cared for.” That was the cost. That was the deal.

Ariella Cruz was no longer free. No longer grieving. No longer innocent.

She was a wife now.

And tomorrow, she would begin searching for the truth.

---

But what she didn’t know was this: Lucien Draven wasn’t asleep either.

He stood in his private study, staring at a black-and-white photo tucked in a file. A younger Ariella. Her father beside her. Smiling.

Lucien closed the folder.

Then burned it.

---

But as the flames curled around the edges of the photo, his eyes didn’t blink.

“You shouldn’t have come back,” he murmured to no one.

Behind him, a shadow moved.

A man in a military coat, face scarred, voice grave. “She’s asking questions already.”

Lucien didn’t turn. “Let her.”

“She’ll find out the truth.”

“She deserves to.”

The man hesitated. “And when she does?”

Lucien’s jaw tightened. “Then she’ll hate me for something I didn’t do... or for everything I did.”

He poured himself a drink — whiskey, neat — and swallowed it without blinking. The fire crackled. Outside, thunder rumbled like the past knocking on his door.

Back in her suite, Ariella wandered into the walk-in closet. Rows of designer gowns, most of them her size, hung in eerie silence.

He'd prepared this.

She ran a finger along the fabric of a navy silk dress. Still tagged. Still cold.

Just like him.

Her phone buzzed in her coat pocket — a hidden prepaid one she’d snuck in her bra strap. One message from a blocked number:

> “Is he watching you?”

– C.

Her chest tightened. Cody — her father’s former accountant and only loyal contact. He had vanished after the funeral, but now he was reaching out?

> “Yes,” she typed back. “Everywhere. I’ll update when I can.”

She turned the phone off, wrapped it in a tampon wrapper, and tucked it deep inside a toiletry case.

If Lucien found it, she was finished.

Suddenly, she heard a click — like the soft turn of a doorknob.

She froze.

The bathroom door stood ajar.

She’d closed it earlier.

“Hello?” she whispered.

Silence.

Her eyes scanned the shadows.

No one. Nothing.

Just her own fear… and maybe her own mind playing tricks.

But she would learn very quickly in the Draven estate:

Silence didn’t mean safety.