Chapter Six

Emma stood frozen before the full-length mirror, her reflection staring back at her with apprehensive eyes. She twisted the glittering diamond adorning her slender finger, watching the facets catch the soft light and cast brilliant refractions across the room. This ring, a dazzling symbol of promise and forever, should have filled her with elation. Yet turmoil swirled like a tempest within her.

Was she truly ready to take this monumental step? To surrender her autonomy and bind herself eternally to a virtual stranger? Her palms grew clammy as doubt took root, blossoming like an insidious vine slowly strangling all the effusive hopes she'd once harbored for a love transcendent.

Everything just happened like a dream, James doesn’t regard her as her wife, they are just forced into this marriage for financial gain, will she ever be happy in this sham marriage she said to herself as

her thumb unconsciously traced her delicate necklace as fragments of a cherished memory drifted through her