Alle Kapitel von The Billionaire’s Stolen Bride: Kapitel 1 – Kapitel 8

POV: Lena MorettiI smiled fourteen times at dinner. I counted. Fourteen perfect smiles aimed at people who were celebrating the fact that my father sold me to pay a debt he was too weak to fight.The rehearsal dinner was at the Crane estate, a long table set with white flowers and gold flatware and enough candles to burn the whole place down. I thought about that more than once. All those little flames. All that dry linen. One good accident and I could walk away from tomorrow's wedding with a legitimate excuse.But I didn't burn anything. I sat in my assigned seat next to Julian Crane, my future husband, and I smiled. Fourteen times. His hand rested on my thigh under the table like he already owned me. Technically, I guess he did. The blood debt my father signed made sure of that.Julian was good at this. The performance. He laughed at the right moments, touched my shoulder when he spoke about our future, called me "my beautiful bride" in his toast. Three hundred people believed ever

POV: Lena MorettiI didn't sleep. I sat on the edge of the bed in the guest room Ezra had locked from my side and I stared at the wall until the sun came up. My dress for the wedding hung on the back of the door. White silk. Custom fitted. A costume for a performance I was no longer giving.Ezra sent a different dress at six in the morning. A garment bag left outside my door with a note that said nothing except a time. 10:00 AM. The dress inside was white too, but simpler. No beading, no train. Something a woman would wear to a courthouse. Or to a war.I put it on. My hands were steady this time.At nine-thirty, a woman knocked on my door. Short dark hair, sharp eyes, a posture that said military before anything else. "I'm Naomi," she said. "I work for Ezra. I'll be driving you to the cathedral." She looked at my face, then at the bruise on my arm that I hadn't been able to cover completely. She didn't ask about it. She just said, "Ready?"No. Not even close. But I nodded and followed

POV: Lena MorettiEzra was gone when I woke up. No note. No message. Just an empty penthouse and the faint smell of coffee from a machine I hadn't heard him use. The mug was in the sink, rinsed clean. Even his morning routine left no trace.I spent the first hour just walking through the place. Not snooping exactly, more like trying to understand the man I'd married by reading the space he lived in. It didn't tell me much. The kitchen was fully stocked but nothing looked touched. The living room had furniture that cost more than my father's house but no books on the shelves, no magazines on the table, no sign that anyone actually sat down and lived here. The walls were bare. No photographs anywhere. Not a single one. No family, no friends, no vacation shots, nothing. It was like living inside a blueprint. The idea of a home without any of the parts that make it one.His office door was locked. I tried it once, noted it, moved on. The gym on the lower level had equipment that looked we

POV: Lena Moretti Gianna showed up on a Tuesday. No call. No warning. She just appeared in the lobby of The Obsidian with a gift bag and a smile that didn't reach her eyes, telling the front desk she was here to see her sister. Naomi called up to check with me. I could have said no. Part of me wanted to. But I'd been waiting for this. I knew Gianna would come eventually. The only question was how long it would take her to find an angle. "Send her up," I said. She stepped out of the elevator looking around the penthouse the way a real estate agent appraises a property. Taking mental inventory. Calculating the value of everything her eyes touched. She was wearing a new outfit, designer, something she couldn't afford on her own. Julian's money, probably. His investment in a spy. "Lena." She hugged me. It felt like being embraced by a mannequin. "I've been so worried about you. You just disappeared after the wedding and nobody knew where you were and Dad's been a mess." "Dad's always