جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 110

I sat at the long mirrored vanity, surrounded by swatches of satin, lace, and glittering trims that the stylists kept laying out in front of me as though I were their canvas instead of their client. My reflection stared back at me, ghostly pale beneath the golden light, lips pressed too tightly together for comfort.“You’ll love this neckline,” one of them chirped as she held up a sketch. “It’s timeless, elegant, exactly what a Wolfe bride should wear.”Wolfe bride. Not Ivy. Not a woman with her own tastes, desires, and dreams. Just an accessory to the name.I murmured something polite and let them chatter over each other, pulling pins from their mouths and clicking their pens against their sketch pads. My wedding dress arrive today, hand sewn in Italy, they’d told me with smug pride, as though the fact alone should have filled me with joy.Instead, all I felt was the tightening of my chest, the way my ribcage seemed to contract with every breath, like the very walls of the estate had

The bell above the door gave a brittle jingle as I stepped inside Mercer’s store.The place smelled of dust, old wood, and the faint bite of leather, a far cry from the polished, gold gilded world of the Wolfes. The shelves were lined with books that hadn’t been touched in years, antique clocks that ticked with uneven rhythms, and glass cases of trinkets meant to pass for charm. A merchant’s mask for a man who knew far more than he let on.Daniel Mercer. I needed answers, and I needed to get close enough to take Ivy out of this hell without blowing myself wide open.Mercer stood behind the counter, a man in his late sixties, lean with sharp edges to his face, eyes that had the unsettling calm of someone who’d lived too long in shadows. He looked up from the ledger he was pretending to read, studying me as though he’d already been expecting me.“Afternoon,” he said mildly, voice smooth, like velvet stretched over glass.“Afternoon,” I returned, letting my shoulders slump into the role

I didn’t sleep that night. How could I, with the weight of the gown hanging like a corpse in the closet, with the ring still burning on my finger like it was shackled there? Every tick of the clock was a cruel reminder that tomorrow, by this time, I was supposed to belong to Victor Wolfe in name, in law, in chains.But instead, tonight, I was leaving.When the knock came, soft but deliberate, I already knew who it was.Mrs. B.She slipped into the room like a shadow, her face pale but steady, her hands gripping a bundle of clothes. Not silk, not lace, not bridal white. Denim shorts, a loose shirt, a pair of sneakers. Freedom folded in cotton.“Quickly ivy,” she whispered, shutting the door behind her. “Change. No one must hear.”My hands trembled as I peeled off the satin robe and slipped into the clothes she had brought. They felt strange, almost foreign after months of being dressed like a doll, but my body sighed into them as though recognizing what it meant: comfort, breath, choice

The ride was quiet, but it wasn’t the comforting kind of silence. It was heavy, tense, like the world itself was holding its breath around us. Every street we passed, every shadow that flitted past the headlights, felt like it carried a threat. I clutched the edge of my seat as if it were a lifeline, my fingers digging into the soft leather of the car, and tried to steady my racing heart.And then there was him, Killian. He didn’t speak, not once, but the air between us was alive with words we weren’t saying. Every glance toward the rearview mirror, every flicker of his eyes toward me, carried the weight of weeks, no, months, of things we’d left unsaid.I wanted to break the silence. I wanted to ask the questions that had been clawing at me since that night, since the engagement party, since the moment my world had turned upside down. But I couldn’t. Not yet. Not while my pulse still screamed danger and he still drove like the world was about to end.Finally, the car turned off a main

The safehouse was cloaked in silence, the kind that followed after storms. For hours, the only sound had been the dull hum of the city outside, distant and irrelevant compared to the weight of two people breathing in the same room again.Months of being locked away. Months of fighting Victor’s control.Months of replaying that night, the one mistake that had never left her blood. The one mistake that brought her to him. And now here he was, real, breathing, dangerous, hers.Her lips parted, but no words came out.Killian’s jaw flexed, his dark eyes dragging over her like he was starving. “Do you have any idea,” he muttered, voice rough, “what it did to me? Knowing you were in that house. Knowing I couldn’t touch you. Couldn’t get to you.”Her breath hitched. “And now?” she whispered.The corner of his mouth twitched, not quite a smile, more like a warning. “Now I’m letting you out of my sight again."Ivy’s pulse stuttered. “Killian..."She didn’t finish because he was already moving. H