All Chapters of Contracted to My Fiance’s Mafia Don: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

Elara Sleep didn't come. I lay in the center of a bed that was wider than my old living room, on sheets that were cool and expensive and completely unfamiliar, and I stared at the ceiling. The room was beautiful in a way that felt slightly unreal — soft blue walls, cream curtains that reached the floor, a vanity with a velvet stool, a bathroom I had briefly looked into and then closed the door on because the clawfoot tub and marble floors were too much to process at midnight. It was beautiful. It was also not mine. Not really. Not yet, and maybe not ever. I had signed a contract. A legal document with a gold seal and a Montblanc pen. I had agreed to be a wife — not because I loved someone, not because I had chosen someone, but because it was the only door in the room that wasn't locked from the outside. *What have I done?* My phone buzzed on the nightstand. Vivian:You alive? Me:Barely. Vivian:Is the house nice? Me:It's like a museum. But with better sheets. Vivian:And the g

Elara The day before my wedding to Alexander Thorne, I did something I hadn't done in months. I called my mother. The phone rang three times. I stood at the window of my suite with my thumbnail pressed between my teeth and thought seriously about hanging up. What was I going to say? No version of this conversation sounded completely unhinged. *Hi Mom, I'm not marrying David. I'm marrying his father instead. He runs a crime syndicate. I met him at a BDSM club. There's a contract involved. Don't worry about it.* She picked up on the fifth ring. "Elara? Baby, is that you?" Her voice hit me before I was ready for it. Warm and tired in equal measure, the exact voice she had used every morning of my childhood when she called me down for breakfast. My eyes burned before I could do anything about it. "Hi, Mom." "Baby. What's wrong? You sound off." "I'm not upset. I just needed to tell you something. Something that couldn't wait." I moved to the window and looked out at the estate

Elara The morning of my wedding to Alexander Thorne, I woke before the sun came up. For a few seconds I lay completely still and didn't know where I was. The sheets were too soft. The ceiling was too high. The light coming through the curtains was the particular grey-blue of very early morning, not the orange-tinged dark of my Henderson apartment. Then it all came back. Today I become his wife. I got up before I could think about it too hard. Thinking too hard was the enemy. I showered, washed my hair, stood in front of the bathroom mirror in a towel with my wet hair dripping onto the marble and looked at my own face. Wide eyes. The blue-green my mother always called unusual and David had once called unsettling. My jaw was tense. My shoulders were up around my ears. *You are actually doing this.* Three knocks on the bedroom door. "Elara." Vivian's voice, just slightly muffled. "Open the door. I have coffee and I'm not above picking this lock." I pulled my robe on and opened

Elara The house emptied slowly, the way houses do after something significant has happened in them. Marcus handled my parents first. My mother had stopped crying by the time he guided her toward the waiting car, replaced by the particular quiet of a woman who had more questions than she knew how to ask and had decided to hold them for later. My father shook Marcus's hand with both of his and said nothing, which was how he handled things that were too large for words. I watched the car pull through the gate and felt the specific ache of wanting them to stay and knowing they couldn't. Vivian was last. She pulled me into a hug in the foyer that lasted a full ten seconds, both arms, no space between us. "Call me," she said into my hair. "Not tomorrow. Tonight, if you need to. And if he does anything that feels wrong — anything, Elara, I don't care what time it is — you call me." "I know." She pulled back and held my face in both hands and looked at me the way she had been look

Elara Waking up in Alexander's bed the morning after my wedding should have felt strange. It didn't. That was the strange part. The master suite was full of morning light, the kind that comes in low and warm when the curtains aren't fully drawn. The candles had burned themselves out overnight, leaving small pools of hardened wax on the surfaces where they'd stood. Rose petals on the floor, crushed now, their edges browning. The fire in the grate had gone to ash. The sheets beside me were cold. I sat up and pressed my hand flat against Alexander's side of the bed. He had been gone long enough for all the warmth to leave. Hours, maybe. I looked at the window. The sun was fully up, past early morning. I had slept longer and more completely than I had in months. Last night had been real. I ran through it once, not to second-guess it but to confirm it — yes, it happened, yes, I chose it, yes, I would choose it again. I found a robe on the back of the bathroom door. Dark blue silk, m