LOGINHe married her to bury a crime. She married him to burn it all down. Trained to seduce and destroy, she enters the marriage as a weapon. But in their snowbound mountain estate, secrets ignite-and lust turns dangerous. As passion blurs the lines between love and betrayal, they'll both learn the deadliest lies are the ones they tell themselves.
View MoreCHAPTER FIVE: THE MISSION BEGINS.CELESTEThe walls of the estate were too quiet at night.I moved like a shadow down the west corridor, barefoot and invisible. Every quiet sigh of my feet on the marble beneath me was a warning- a reminder that I could not afford to get caught. Darius had guards, cameras- eyes that I hadn't fully mapped yet. But I had mapped him.Three days was what it took. Three days since the wedding. Three days of dinners where he said little but watched everything. Three days of silence in the room, waiting for him to lay beside me, between sheets that stretched as taut as a wire. And tonight, for the first time since I got here, I wasn’t just playing the bride. I was doing what I’d been trained to do.My fingers trailed over the keypad beside his study. Eight digits; a custom lock. I knew six of them from watching him so closely. The last two, I would have to make a good job of guessing. I exhaled through my nose and tried my first guess.Click.The green light
By the time I entered the ballroom later that evening, I had already mapped four exits, noted the camera placements, and memorized the security rotation in the west wing hall.And yet, none of that steadied the pounding in my ribs when every face in the room turned toward me.The emerald dress clung to my body like a second skin. High neckline, open back, a slit that traced up my thigh like a whisper. It was elegant but dangerous, designed to suggest everything while revealing very little.Exactly what I needed to be.Darius hadn’t come to collect me from the room. There’d been no knock, and no escort. He’d simply sent a note.Be on time. Don’t forget to wear the green dress. Let them see you.And I let them.Heads turned. Conversations paused. Even the pianist fumbled a chord as I stepped onto the marble floor beneath the gilded chandelier. There were at least a hundred guests; they comprised of diplomats, tycoons, foreign ministers, and those elusive figures with no official titles
CELESTE I woke to sunlight I didn’t ask for. It filtered through tall windows framed in dark velvet curtains, casting gold across the sheets I didn’t remember falling asleep in. The bed was too soft. Too silent. Like a coffin dressed in silk. The silence was so pure, it felt like I’d been buried in it.No footsteps. No whispers. No sign of the man who’d watched me undress the night before and then slept yards away like a ghost. The bed was too warm, the sheets too perfect. Darius Vale hadn’t touched me- but somehow, he still lingered in the air like smoke after a controlled fire.The fire had gone out sometime in the night, and the couch where he’d slept was perfectly remade- no sign he’d ever occupied it.Of course. I sat up slowly, wrapping the robe left at the foot of the bed around my body, letting the heavy silk robe slide over my arms. Even the fabric felt expensive. It always amazed me how the rich could make imprisonment so comfortable. It was monogrammed, of cours
CELESTEThe dinner table stretched between us like a battlefield.Golden candelabras flickered against white china, casting elongated shadows across the roasted meat and imported wine. Soft chamber music played from a live orchestra on a makeshift podium in the middle of the room. The music was automated, emotionless, like everything else in this house.I sat upright in the high-backed black velvet-lined chair, my gown pristine, the veil long gone. The ring on my finger still felt foreign, like a cuff I hadn’t quite earned yet.Across from me, Darius Vale sipped from his glass, watching me with the same calculated quiet he’d maintained all day. Unreadable and imposing. A man who owned every inch of the space around him without needing to raise his voice, or as much as a finger.I chewed slowly, deliberately, trying not to show that my appetite had vanished the moment we had been left alone at the head of the table.“You haven’t touched the venison,” he said at last, voice lo






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