Chapter 2

The banging on the front doors grew louder, fists pounding wood hard enough to rattle the crystal fixtures overhead.

“One minute!” her father shouted, voice cracking as he pressed both palms against the doors. “We’re almost ready!”

Marina grabbed Marceline’s shoulders, fingers digging in. “Put it on. Please. I’ll go out the back. No one will know. You just have to stand there and say the words. That’s all. I’ll come back for you after Harvard, I swear.”

Marceline’s hands shook as she stared at the heavy white gown.

Every part of her screamed to drop it and run. The dance academy trial letter was still tucked inside her suitcase upstairs.

She could almost feel the wooden floor under her bare feet, the music starting, the first clean turn. Instead she swallowed the lump in her throat and nodded once.

“Okay,” she whispered.

Marina’s face crumpled with relief.

She helped yank the gown over Marceline’s head. The bodice was too tight, the skirt too heavy.

Her mother worked the tiny buttons with frantic fingers while her father kept shouting through the doors that they needed thirty more seconds. Marina pulled on a black hoodie, dark pants, and oversized sunglasses, then slipped out through the service hallway without looking back.

The quiet click of the back door felt like a final verdict.

Marceline stood alone in the middle of the foyer, heart slamming against her ribs. She told herself it was only for the family. It was only temporary. Only until the debt was settled and Marina returned.

The words felt hollow even as she repeated them.

The front doors finally swung open. Two men in black suits stared at her. One of them jerked his chin toward the waiting black cars. Marceline forced her feet to move.

Outside, the late afternoon light hit the white fabric and made it glow. She climbed into the lead car without a word, hands clenched in her lap so tightly her nails cut crescents into her palms.

Through the tinted window she watched the Moretti estate shrink behind her and felt every dream she had carried from the countryside slide out of reach.

The church was already half-full when she arrived. No one from her family sat in the front pews.

The veil her mother had pinned over her face blurred the edges of everything, but it could not stop the cold spiral in her chest.

She walked the aisle alone, each step echoing. At the altar the priest waited with a nervous smile. Marceline kept her eyes on the floor.

Adrian Cross walked in ten minutes late, hands in his pockets, expression bored.

The entire room seemed to tighten around him. He was taller than she remembered, broader in the shoulders. Jet-black hair fell across his forehead. Emerald eyes scanned the pews like he was already calculating exits.

Girls in the countryside used to hide behind carts and trees just to watch him pass; he never gave any of them a second glance.

Now those same eyes landed on her veiled face for half a second before sliding away.

The priest cleared his throat and began the opening words.

Adrian’s jaw flexed. Without warning he drew a small pistol from inside his jacket and fired once into the man’s shoulder.

The priest staggered, blood blooming across white robes.

Two of Adrian’s men dragged him off to the side and shoved a second priest forward within seconds.

The new man started the ceremony with a shaking voice and did not look up again...But he was faster in speech.

Marceline’s knees threatened to buckle. She locked them and stared straight ahead.

When it came time for the vows, Adrian leaned in close enough that only she could hear.

“Your family was stupid enough to borrow five billion and then fail to pay,” he murmured, voice low and flat. “I hate everything about this arrangement. Do not make the mistake of falling in love with me. You are a contract, nothing more.”

She did not answer. She simply kept her chin level and repeated the words the priest fed her.

When they exchanged rings his fingers brushed hers and stayed a second too long. Heat flared under her skin. She pulled away first.

Adrian lifted the veil. For a moment pure disgust crossed his face as he took in her features....the same face as Marina’s, yet somehow wrong to him. He had no idea she wasn't the city girl he was arranged to marry.

He still leaned down and kissed her, hard and brief, tasting of nothing but obligation. Against her mouth he whispered, “Yak. This is what is supposed to give the Cross family an heir? Pathetic. A country bumpkin!”

Her parents finally appeared at the side of the altar, breathless and smiling too widely. Her mother stepped forward and spoke loud enough for the nearest guests to hear.

“Marceline only came to the city to help inspect some of the old countryside holdings for us. She’s lived in town most of her life, of course. Fully prepared for this role.”

Adrian rolled his eyes. He closed his hand around Marceline’s wrist hard enough to bruise and pulled her toward the exit.

“Luckily, I am in a good mood. A deal is a deal. She'll do.“

Over her shoulder she saw her parents’ faces...greedy, relieved, already calculating. Her mother held up a folded paper and tore it cleanly in half. Marceline’s stomach dropped.

It was the dance academy trial permit she had packed so carefully in her suitcase. She had no idea when her mother had taken it.

Outside, the black cars waited. Adrian shoved her toward the nearest one.

“Be at the Cross estate in ten minutes,” he said, voice cold. “Or there will be a blood bath. Your choice.”

Marceline’s feet stayed planted. The reality of what she had just done crashed over her all at once.

Adrian’s eyes narrowed. He raised the same pistol he had used on the priest and fired. The bullet tore through the outer flesh of her upper arm. White-hot pain exploded.

She cried out and clutched the wound, blood already seeping between her fingers.

He holstered the gun without expression.

“Move.”

Tears blurred her vision as she stumbled into the car. The door slammed. As the vehicle pulled away she pressed her forehead to the cool glass and finally understood.

Adrian Cross was not simply the boy who had bullied her in the countryside.

He was something far worse. He was her worst nightmare, and she had just married him.