Semua Bab The Mafia Boss’s Silent Bride: Bab 1 - Bab 10

Amber’s POVMy stepfather’s arm was rigid under my hand, and I hated how steady he made himself look, like he was walking his own daughter down the aisle instead of a girl he’d been threatening to send away since I was fourteen. He didn’t look at me once. He was too busy nodding at people on either side of the aisle, small careful nods, the kind you give when you’re still working even at your own daughter’s wedding.The room wasn’t big. I think that surprised me more than anything else that day. I had pictured something enormous, something with hundreds of eyes on me, because that was what weddings were supposed to be. Instead there were maybe forty people total, arranged in careful rows, and every single one of them felt like they belonged to a different world than the one I’d grown up in. Nikolai’s people didn’t dress like my stepfather’s business associates. They didn’t laugh the way normal people laughed at weddings, easy and loud. They sat very straight, and they watched everythi

Amber’s POVNikolai was already gone by the time I woke up.I found that out the way I found out most things in that house, by walking through it alone and noticing what was missing rather than being told anything directly. His side of the bed, which I hadn’t actually shared with him, had been left untouched the night before, since he’d shown me to a room of my own without much explanation beyond the fact that it was mine now. The house was silent in a way that felt less like peace and more like waiting, like it was holding its breath for someone to fill it with noise it wasn’t sure it wanted.I sat at the kitchen table for a long time that morning doing nothing at all, just turning the ring on my finger and looking at the contract still sitting where I’d left it the night before, and I thought, not for the first time, that I had spent most of my life waiting for someone to tell me what version of myself I was supposed to be that day.That was the part I never let myself examine too c

Amber’s POVNikolai left for work a little after seven, and I stood at the window and watched his car pull out of the drive until it disappeared around the corner, and something in me settled into place the moment he was actually gone.I had read that clause in the contract more times than I wanted to admit. Two billion dollars, forfeited to him, if I was ever the one to end this marriage. He’d made a point of showing it to me himself, like he wanted me to understand exactly what walking away would cost before I ever let myself imagine it. I think he expected the number to make the idea of leaving feel impossible. Instead it had done something else entirely. It had given me a number. A target. Something concrete to work toward instead of just waiting, the way I’d spent my entire life waiting, for someone else to decide when I was allowed to want something for myself.I wasn’t going to spend the rest of my life folded into whatever shape this house needed me to be, cooking dinners nobo

Amber’s POVI had exactly one job in that room, and it wasn’t to be afraid. It was to interpret. So I made myself breathe, slow and even, the way I’d trained myself to breathe through worse things than this, and I folded my hands loosely in my lap and waited for whatever came next like it was any other Tuesday. My mind wanted to run in a dozen directions at once, toward the door, toward every exit I’d counted on the way in, toward the fact that no one on earth actually knew where I was sitting right now. I didn’t let it. I’d spent my whole life learning how to keep my face still while everything underneath it screamed, and I made that old skill do exactly what it was built for.The door opened again a moment later, and a second man walked in, younger than Petrov, maybe in his forties, moving with the easy confidence of someone who’d never once had to wonder whether a room belonged to him. He nodded at Petrov, glanced at me for exactly as long as it took to categorize me as furniture,

Nikolai’s POV I stood in the hallway outside that room for longer than I should have, listening to the silence on the other side of the door, and I told myself the same thing I’d been telling myself since the moment I walked out. It was necessary. It was the correct call. Nothing about what I’d just done was wrong. I didn’t believe myself even a little. I’d seen her face when I told her to stay in her business. I’d watched something close off behind her eyes, quick and practiced, the same wall she’d learned to build her entire life against people who were supposed to protect her and hadn’t. I had just become one more name on that list, and the worst part, the part I couldn’t quite outrun standing in that hallway, was that I’d done it on purpose, and I couldn’t tell her why. If I told her the truth, that Petrov’s people had connected her to me specifically, that they’d known enough to book her by name for a meeting they’d clearly wanted her present for, she would understand immedia