Lahat ng Kabanata ng THE BILLIONAIRE OF MANHATTAN'S FORCED BRIDE : Kabanata 1 - Kabanata 6

The elevator does not stop until floor eighty.I stand in the corner of the glass box in my wedding dress with my arms wrapped tight around myself, trying not to touch him. Alexander stands beside me with his hands in his pockets, watching the numbers climb. He has not said a word since the car.The doors open.I forget how to breathe.The penthouse is not a home. It is a kingdom. Floor to ceiling windows show all of Manhattan lit up at night. Black marble floors. White walls. Art that costs more than my entire life stacked up so far. Everything is cold and perfect and untouchable, just like him.He steps out. I stay inside the elevator.He turns.“Are you going to stand there all night, Mrs. Knight?”I hate how he says it, like he already owns the name.I step out. My borrowed heels click against the marble, too loud in the silence.A woman appears from a hallway. Older, in a neat uniform. She looks at me, then quickly looks down.“This is Mrs. Alvarez.” Alexander does not look at he

# Chapter Four: The Red DressI wake to Mrs. Alvarez knocking on my locked door at seven in the morning."Mrs. Knight. Your dress for tonight has arrived."I open the door. She is holding a long garment bag and a black box stamped Cartier.She lays the bag across my bed and unzips it.Red.Not soft red. Not sweet red. The kind of red that makes men look twice and women look away first. Off the shoulder, a slit cut high up the side. The kind of dress that has never once hung in a closet in Brooklyn. The kind that belongs to women who live on Fifth Avenue and never think about rent."Alexander ordered it." Mrs. Alvarez keeps her voice low. "He said you'll wear this tonight. He said you'll wear nothing else.""What does that mean?"She opens the black box. Diamond earrings, and a necklace that catches the light like ice catching fire."He said no other jewelry."I stare at the dress and the diamonds until my hands start to shake.By six thirty I am ready. Hair curled and pinned. Lips pai

I do not sleep.I sit on the floor behind my locked bedroom door in the red dress until sunrise paints Manhattan gold through the glass. My lips still burn from his kiss. My mind keeps circling back to his words about collecting me like art.At six in the morning I hear his bedroom door open. Footsteps. Then the soft chime of the private elevator. He is going down to the gym on floor seventy nine. Mrs. Alvarez told me once that he goes every morning at six and doesn’t come back for an hour.An hour is enough.I wait until the elevator closes, then run barefoot to his study. The black door is still unlocked from last night. He forgot to lock it after our fight over the painting.The painting of me still hangs behind the black velvet curtain, my younger self smiling with paint on her hands. I cannot look at it right now. I look at the desk instead.There is a drawer, half open, the lock hanging loose. Inside it, the file I glimpsed yesterday with my father’s name on it. I pull it out wi