Chapter One – The Wedding Deal

POV: Elena Montrose 

Five years ago, I walked away in flames. Today, I walk back in silence with a vow that will burn him instead. The reflection staring back at me in the full-length mirror didn’t belong to me not really. She was porcelain perfection in silk white, the dress sculpted to a body I no longer recognized. The woman in the mirror had steady hands, hollow eyes, and a mouth painted with a neutral smile just enough to hide the war behind her lips.

She looked like a bride. But this wasn’t a wedding. It was a ‘burial’. And Damien Crest just didn’t know it yet. I smoothed the veil down over my shoulders and adjusted the diamond necklace Damien had sent just this morning—another insult dressed as a gift. One carat for each year I had vanished. Each year he thought I was gone for good. Let him think that. Let him think I was nothing more than a socialite with no past, no edge, and no motive. He didn’t recognize me and why would he?

The Elena Montrose he’d once known had died the night he destroyed my family.

Now, I was the architect of his downfall. I’d spent years becoming exactly the woman he would need - perfect, poised, powerful. A woman he could marry in public, trust in private, and never suspect until it was too late.

Until everything he loved burned.

A soft knock interrupted my thoughts.

“Miss Montrose,” a bridal assistant whispered through the door, carefully avoiding eye contact. “They’re ready for you.”

Miss Montrose. I never changed my name. I didn’t need to. The world believed Elena Montrose had fled overseas in shame, ruined by scandal and lies. No one suspected I had returned. No one dared say my name aloud anymore—not in Damien's world.

Today, I would make them remember it. I took a deep breath, steeled my spine, and stepped out of the bridal suite into the marble hallway. The corridor was bathed in cold, sterile light.

There were no flowers,

No guests,

No music,

Just two lawyers and a contract,

A ’transaction’, not a celebration.

Damien didn’t want a wife. He wanted leverage. A business merger, dressed in couture.

And I? I wanted revenge. The private ceremony was being held in the Crest family’s penthouse, a fortress of glass and metal towering over the city like a monument to Damien’s ego. I knew this place intimately. I remembered the first time I’d walked through those same halls as a girl who loved him. Now, I walked as a woman who would end him.

The doors opened. I stepped into the ceremony room. Damien stood by the window, back turned to me, hands in his pockets. He wore black, no boutonnière, no softness. Just the polished armor of a man who had traded love for empire. He turned slowly, and our eyes locked. I almost forgot how to breathe.

Even now, even after everything, Damien Crest was beautiful in that cruel, dangerous way that made women want to worship or ruin him. Sharp cheekbones, steel-gray eyes, and that same arrogant tilt of his mouth that once made me feel like the center of his world. But there was no warmth in his gaze. No flicker of recognition.

Good.

He stepped forward, a calculated smile curling his lips. “Elena. You’re punctual. I like that.”

“Punctuality is the least I can offer my husband-to-be,” I said smoothly.

He offered his arm, and I took it with a grace that masked my fury. His touch burned, but I didn’t flinch.

The official began reading the terms of the contract. I barely heard them. My pulse thundered with every word, every clause that bound us together in name, in assets, in shared public image.

It was perfect.

The moment we exchanged rings, a part of me wanted to scream. I had dreamt of marrying him once in a garden filled with lilacs, not a room filled with ice.

But that dream died long ago. Along with my mother, Along with our name.

“Do you, Damien Crest, take Elena Montrose to be your lawfully wedded wife for this strategic partnership until both parties dissolve the union?”

“I do,” he said without hesitation.

Of course, he did. This wasn’t love. It was ‘leverage’.

“And do you, Elena Montrose, take Damien Crest, to be your lawfully wedded husband, as outlined in the agreement presented before witnesses?”

I stared at him. At the man who had once kissed me under the moonlight and then stood-by while my father’s company collapsed in scandal, while my mother drank herself to death from shame.

“I do,” I said, with a smile as cold as winter.

The room was silent. Papers were signed. Witnesses nodded.

The official closed the book.

“You may now kiss the bride.”

I turned my cheek.

Damien didn’t argue. He kissed my cheek with the detachment of a diplomat.

I had expected smugness, arrogance, indifference.

What I didn’t expect was the briefest flicker in his eyes as he looked at me.

Confusion?

Recognition?

No. Impossible.

Unless…

Unless he suspected something.

I played it off. Gave him a polite smile and pulled away.

“I assume we’re done here?” I said, already heading toward the exit.

“We’re just getting started,” Damien replied quietly.

I froze for a second. Not because of what he said.

But because of how he said it.

Like a man who knew the game was rigged but couldn’t yet see how.

Soon, I promised silently. You’ll know exactly who I am. And you’ll beg for mercy I won’t give.

As I walked down the corridor alone, I pressed a hand to my stomach, steadying the rage that roiled just beneath the surface.

He destroyed my life.

Now, I’ll destroy his.

Elena steps into her new life as Damien’s wife—living under the same roof as the man she plans to ruin, playing the perfect spouse in a world of power, secrets, and lies. But when a hidden folder lands on her desk, containing secrets about the night her family was ruined… the truth might be even darker than she imagined.