All Chapters of The Mafia Boss’s Silent Bride: Chapter 1 - Chapter 7

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