CHAPTER 1

THE OPULENT WEDDING MASK

The sleek bluish black chariot of a limousine cut through the city's pulse at night. For an heiress to a massive wealth, Chaewon inside felt hardly celebratory. Her dress wasted the suffocating weight of the impending wedding gripped over her.

"This is all ridiculous," she complaints, the limousine cruised smoothly along but she felt her stomach lurching with anger and discomfort.

"Patience, Chaewon," Mr. Kim advised, his gaze traveling along with the city view beyond them, a man whose ambition exceeded compassion, smiled only thinly. "This union will secure our future. Jian’s influence is very valuable."

"Invaluable or dangerous?" she snapped back curtly. "Have you ever stopped to think about what would happen to me?"

“Your concerns are registered, but it is your responsibility," he declared. "You will be a dutiful wife, a capable businesswoman. That is what you are meant to be."

"To be a stake in your game of domination?" she asked curtly, her voice heavy with venom. City lights whizzed beyond the glass and in front of her muddled interior.

Mr. Kim sighed wearily. "This is not a game, Chaewon. This is a strategic alliance…This is survival, survival of our family is at stake."

"Survival?" she scoffed. "Or simply greed?"

The only sound breaking their silence was the rumble of the engine. The city resembled a symmetric of lights through the windows.

The limousine stopped in front of the grand cathedral entrance. It was a stunning view—gothic design, towering spires reaching into the twilight sky, a scene from a fairytale more suitable than a strategic union. Mr. Kim provided his arm, his face incomprehensible.

"Remember who you are," Mr. Kim told her firmly, taking her hand to assist her out of the car. "Stay composed, be elegant, and charm Jian’s family. They are intelligent observers."

Chaewon nodded sharply, her jaw clenching. Already sensing the burden of expectation closing in around her. On entering the cathedral, she glimpsed him for the first time—Jian. He stood to one side of his family, watching the presentation with a dispassionate attention. His eyes, when they flicked hers, were cold and evaluating and yet there was something more, something that set her spine to tremble.

"He is evaluating you," Mr. Kim whispered. "Prove yourself to be worth it."

Worthy of what? His pity? she asked herself, her heart a compressed knot of fear and resentment.

The ceremony proceeded like a morose ritual, the priest's declarations ringing out in the cavernous room. The priest's words are hardly audible to Chaewon; her entire attention was on Jian, the man who officially now owned a part of her existence. His face was unreadable, giving away little. Was he even listening to them? She questioned whether the vows meant anything to him other than a tactical move.

Halfway through the ceremony, During the exchange of vows.

She spoke the vows—"I do," she found herself saying, her words feeble and without substance, a mere formality in relation to what churned inside.

"I do," Jian repeated, a deep bass to his voice but without any warmth.

The party was extravagant, Champagne glasses clicked. Courtesies were exchanged, but beneath it all was an underlying tension. Jian’s family was a disparate group of powerful people; they swooped in on Chaewon with hawk-like severity. She was taken through the crowd by her father, a skilled politician, each relative introduced to her with expert ease. The handshakes were negotiations in silence, each smile a well-chosen disguise.

She made polite but biting observations to each of them, her escape strategy already in her head. But part of her was clearly curious about this man she'd married—the man whose stoic face conceals an underlying power.

Jian kept himself at a distance, a predator eyeing its quarry. His dark piercing eyes saw all. A dangerous silence surrounded him. On a rare break on a secluded balcony, Jian stepped towards her.

"You look strained," Jian said, a low murmur cutting through the noise of the crowded room. Standing next to her was a figure seemingly crafted out of shadow and authority.

"And you're amused," she countered, refusing to let him get to her.

"Perhaps," he admitted, smiling, playing on his lips. "All of this is a little drama, isn’t it? A show for our families."

"A performance where I have no interest in taking part," she asserted.

"And yet you're here. Bond to me."

He stopped and resumed a piercing stare. "Or aren't you?"

Then, deep into the night when champagne was flowing generously, the party atmosphere turned sour. Standing in a private balcony where they were alone for a fleeting instant, Jian faced her, a face unreadable. "Your father miscalculated about your spirit, Chaewon. He tried to manipulate you. He was wrong."

"And what about you?" she taunted, "You think you can control me?"

He smiled, a slow lean of his lips. "Control is a myth, Chaewon. But influence is something at which I am very skilled."

"And who do you hope to influence?" she asked, a shiver of something almost like fear combined with defiance in her tone.

He leaned in closer to her. "Your compliance, possibly. Your admiration, perhaps. Your downfall, most definitely a possibility to weigh in on."

She felt a thrill run down her spine, a cross between fear and a strange new form of excitement.

As the evening progressed past midnight, the celebratory atmosphere gave way, and the ballroom hung in suspense. The music of celebration had fallen away. A sense of tension hung over the party-goers, a feeling of something about to go wrong. Whisperings started to go around—of a rival clan, a souring deal in the making. Jian studied it, he gazed at Chaewon, his face inscrutable, but in the wells of his eyes she caught a flicker of something unusual—a spark of interest, or even perhaps… anticipation.

“The game has only just started,” he whispered, his tone deep and evil.

“And it seems we are both players, my dear wife… with our stakes much greater than we dreamed.” The seriousness of his tone hit her hard, weighted with a heaviness like the gathering storm at the windows.