CHAPTER FIVE

Megan's POV

I had two days to prepare for a wedding, which meant I had no time to process that I was getting married.

The two days passed in a strange, quick and slow manner both. Arian's assistant, a brisk, unreadable woman called Priya, handled everything. The venue, a small private hall attached to one of the Carusso family's properties. The dress, handed to us at the shop the morning it arrived, still in its garment bag, my mother running her hands over the fabric like she was barely believing it was real. The guest list, which Priya informed me would be "immediate family and essential witnesses only," which I learned meant precisely six people.

I spent most of those two days lying awake at night, staring at my ceiling, going through everything that had happened since the morning those men walked into our shop — my mother collapsing, the ambulance, the credit card, the confrontation, the contract, and now this. It didn't feel real. None of it felt real, not even now, with the dress hanging in my closet as a countdown I couldn't stop.

On the morning of the wedding, my mother helped me into it, her hands trembling slightly as she did up the last of the buttons. She still didn't know the full truth, only that Arian and I had "grown close" after the accident at the shop, that this was quick because I wanted it to be, that the man who had saved her life was now going to be my husband. I hated lying to her. I told myself it was temporary, that everything about this arrangement was temporary.

"You're shaking," she said softly, meeting my eyes in the mirror.

"I'm fine, Mum. Just nervous."

She smiled, but there was something searching in it, as if she could tell there was more to the nerves than I was letting on. I looked away before she could ask.

"I should get dressed too," my mother said, already reaching for her coat, still moving slower than usual from the surgery but determined not to show it. "I don't want to miss my daughter's wedding."

My chest tightened. "Mum, you just had surgery four days ago. The doctor said you needed rest, not a full day on your feet."

"Megan, I'm not made of glass. I can sit in a chair for an hour."

"It's not even a proper wedding, Mum," I said, forcing my voice to be light, hating how easily the half truths were starting to come to me now. "It's small. Very small — just his parents, a couple of witnesses, paperwork more than anything. You'd be bored, and exhausted, and I'd spend the time worrying about you instead of getting through it."

She studied me for a long moment, and for a second I was terrified she could see through me to the parts I wasn't saying.

"You're sure?" she asked finally.

"I'm sure. I'll come straight home after and tell you everything."

She didn't look fully convinced, but she was weak enough that the idea of sitting down finally overruled her protest. "Fine. But I expect pictures."

"I'll get you pictures," I said, and prayed I could find some way to make that promise true without giving away more than I could afford to.

By the time we arrived at the hall, my hands hadn't stopped trembling. It was smaller than I expected, elegant in a way that made our shop feel a thousand miles away. I recognised Killian immediately, standing near the front, and beside him Priya, taking notes on a tablet even now, as if the wedding itself were another item on a checklist.

And then there were his parents.

I'd been braced for cold. I got something worse — polite, searching, the kind of scrutiny that made me feel every thread of my dress wasn't quite expensive enough.

"So you're the one," his mother said, taking my hand in both of hers, her smile pleasant and entirely unreadable. "Arian didn't tell us much. Barely anything, actually."

"It happened quickly," I said, at least truthful.

"Clearly." His father's voice was flatter, assessing. "We'll need to have a proper conversation. Soon."

I smiled and said nothing, because there was nothing safe to say, and because across the room, Arian had just walked in, and every rehearsed line I'd prepared for this exact moment evaporated on the spot.

He looked nothing like the man who had coldly negotiated terms with me across a desk two days earlier. Dressed for the occasion, composed in the particular way that made a room adjust itself around him, he marched towards me like it was any other transaction he intended to close efficiently, and yet, when our eyes met, something in his expression flickered, just briefly, into something I couldn't name.

"You look—" he started, then seemed to reconsider the sentence halfway through. "Ready?"

"As I'll ever be," I said.

The ceremony itself passed in something close to a blur. A registrar spoke words I barely absorbed. I said "I do" to a man I'd known for six days, in front of his parents, who watched with expressions I couldn't fully read, and Killian, who looked like he was trying very hard not to smile at whatever private joke was running through his head.

When Arian slid the ring onto my finger, his hands were steady. Mine weren't.

"You may now kiss—"

The registrar didn't even get to finish the sentence before the room seemed to hold its breath. I could feel each set of eyes in the hall turning toward us at once — his mother's, sharp, expectant; his father's, unreadable; Killian's, openly amused. I could feel my own pulse in my throat, could feel Arian go very still beside me, neither of us moving, the silence stretching just a beat too long to be comfortable.

Someone — I think it was Priya — actually looked up from her tablet.

"We'll skip that part," Arian said finally, cutting the registrar off smoothly, not looking my way at all.

For a second, no one in the room moved. His mother's eyebrows lifted just slightly. Killian let out something that might have been a cough or a badly disguised laugh. The registrar blinked, clearly unsure whether to be offended or relieved, before clearing his throat and moving on to the paperwork instead.

I felt my face burning, painfully aware that six people had just watched my brand-new husband decline to kiss me in front of all of them, and somehow that felt like the most honest moment of the entire ceremony.

It was over in under twenty minutes after that — no music, no dancing, no drawn-out reception — exactly the efficient, businesslike affair he'd promised. His mother kissed my cheek stiffly on the way out and told me she looked forward to "getting to know me properly." His father shook my hand and said nothing at all.

It wasn't until we were in the car after that, the two of us alone for the first time since I'd signed that contract, that the silence between us finally cracked.

"That went well," Arian said, loosening his tie, staring straight ahead.

"Did it?" I asked. "Your mother looked at me like she was pricing my dress. And you just publicly declined to kiss your own bride in front of your entire family."

"I thought you'd prefer that, given the terms you laid out yourself."

I opened my mouth to argue before closing it again, because he wasn't wrong, and the fact he remembered word for word unsettled me more than the moment itself had.

"There's one thing I didn't mention before the wedding," he said after a pause.

Something in his tone made my stomach drop. "What?"

"My family expects us to live together. Under the same roof." He paused. "You'll be moving into my house tonight."

I stared at him. "Tonight?"

"Tonight," he confirmed, eyes still fixed on the road ahead, giving nothing away. "I hope you didn't unpack too much back home."