33. Azra
Azra
The morning of my wedding feels nothing like a wedding morning should. There’s no excitement or butterflies. There’s nothing but a hollow ache in my chest and a pounding behind my eyes that refuses to ease no matter how many deep breaths I take.
In the vanity, I stare at my reflection as the makeup artist works around me, her brushes tapping softly against my skin like she’s painting a doll instead of a person.
My heart is in tatters. Still shredded from last night and raw from both my exchange with Matteo and how it ended. I’m furious with him, but I’m also angry at myself. I should never have let it go as far as it did.
Today I’m supposed to be celebrating the fact that I’m nearing the vengeance I’ve been plotting for years. The well-planned hoax after today has kept me alive and focused. It kept me breathing when everything else felt impossible.
I should be ecstatic that the day is finally here, but all I feel is miserable.
Today feels like a punishment. A slow, suffocating discipline wrapped in silk and lace.
I feel like someone has scraped my heart raw, and my chest aches.
Not all my symptoms are because of the fight with Matteo—though that alone is enough to tear me apart—but because he left the club with another woman. I saw the way she clung to him and how lust wasn’t the only thing firing in her eyes.
Even though I shouldn’t care and have absolutely no right to tell him how to live his life, the blonde’s hope for something more permanent than a one-night stand has been scalding me ever since I recognized it on my face when I entered the bathroom attached to the nightclub’s office to tidy myself up before returning to my hen party.
The makeup artist lifts a tube of red lipstick, stealing me from my thoughts. She twists it until the thick sheen of color glints under the hotel room’s lights. It’s bold and dramatic, the red that stains everything it touches.
The red I imagine smeared across Matteo’s mouth this morning, left behind by the woman he left with.
As my stomach twists, I close my eyes and try to steady myself.
The door to my room shoots open before I can gather my thoughts, and a suit-clad man wheels in a breakfast cart full of steaming coffee, pastries, and fruit. He isn’t alone. Antonio enters with him.
After handing the butler a generous tip, he pushes the cart up to me like he’s a normal, loving groom.
My spine stiffens. I’ve been avoiding him since the bridal party checked into the hotel where our wedding is being held. It’s unclear if the bodyguards were brave enough to tell him the truth about what happened at the club, or if I should have even lost a second of sleep over it.
I doubt he cares enough about me to mind that I spent time alone with Matteo.
“Antonio.” Despite my raging pulse, I compel my voice to stay even. “You shouldn’t be here. It’s bad luck for the groom to see the bride before the wedding.”
He snorts. “I don’t believe in stupid superstitions like that.”
He lifts one of the silver domes, revealing a plate of eggs and toast, before he shrugs as if he’s discussing the weather. “My first wife was perfect… and look how that turned out.”
The disgruntled chuckle following his sentence hits me like a slap.
Hattie was perfect… until she met him.
Now she’s dead.
His lack of empathy is so painful that it steals my breath. I hide it well, though. I’ve spent years practicing how to swallow my reactions until they dissolve into nothing.
Take last night as a prime example. Despite my entire being believing the opposite, I told Matteo I wasn’t his. I didn’t lie to hurt him. I lied to survive.
Antonio gestures toward the small table by the window. “Come eat with me. You’ll need your energy for the big day.”
I want to tell him I’d rather starve than eat with him, but one brush of the fragile fabric against my wrist keeps my mouth shut.
I can’t send him to hell yet. Because my name isn’t linked to his, I cannot destroy him the way he destroyed me when he took my best friend from me within a week of marrying her.
So I nod.
“Of course.”
We sit across from each other, the morning sun spilling over the table like a spotlight. Antonio eats calmly and methodically, as if today were just another day. I pick at my food, my stomach too tight to accept anything.
Antonio watches me with that same detached interest, observing a specimen rather than a person.
Halfway through the meal, something inside me snaps.
Maybe it’s the exhaustion. Perhaps even anger.
It could even be the memory of Matteo leaving the nightclub with a gorgeous woman draped across him, but before my heart can tell my head this is a bad idea, I distract Antonio by asking if he has a view as nice as mine in his room.
I need to make sure I’m not allowing the grief of my loss to steer me down a dangerous path I never thought I’d walk. Furthermore, if Matteo can pass the salt-in-drink test with ease, perhaps Turkish women need to conjure a new test to reveal a man’s character.
As Antonio scoffs at my idea of a view, I reach for the salt. He doesn’t notice. He’s too busy telling me how I won’t be interested in the view once he finally makes me his.
I sprinkle a small amount of salt into his coffee, stir it gently, then slide the cup back where it was.
“Here,” I say softly. “Drink your coffee. It’s getting cold.”
He takes a sip and immediately spits it out. Hot coffee splashes across the table and my hands. I jerk back, but not fast enough. The liquid burns when it seeps into my nightgown. I don’t flinch, though. Not in front of him.
“What on earth is wrong with you?” He slams the cup down so hard that it rattles the plates. “Are you trying to poison me?”
I blink at him, my expression perfectly blank. “No. Why would I do that?”
“Because you blame me for that bitch’s suicide.” He thrusts his hand at the door as if my best friend were waiting beyond it. “It’s not my fault she walked off a building.”
The world closes in on me as his words echo through my head on repeat. I was never told how Hattie died. I only knew that she had taken her own life.
For a moment, I genuinely think I might hit him. Consequences be damned. I want to hurt him as much as his words hurt me. But I swallow the rage burning in my throat and portray the woman he needs me to be.
Submissive. Controlled. The very definition of a traditional wife.
“Of course it’s not your fault,” I say, the words bitter in my throat. “Suicide is no one’s fault.”
He narrows his eyes, scrutinizing me like he’s attempting to figure out whether I’m lying.
I continue before he can speak. “It’s a tradition in my home country. Like not wearing shoes inside.” I glance pointedly at his shoes—polished, expensive, and very much on.
He follows my gaze, then snarls.
“And staining the sheets,” I add, my voice soft but steady. “It’s tradition.”
His jaw tics before he tries to hide it by scraping his hand along his cut jaw. “And I just failed, didn’t I?”
I fake a laugh. “No. I didn’t realize the lid on the saltshaker was loose.
I dropped almost half the canister into your coffee.
” Standing, I sashay to his side of the table and plop myself onto his thigh.
“I’m sorry. I’m a bit of a klutz when nervous.
” I pretend not to notice how he thickens under my ass when I murmur, “And you can’t fail the staining-the-sheets tradition. That’s on me, not you.”
He knows exactly what I’m referring to, but instead of fanning his peacock feathers like most men do when they wrongly believe they’re claiming a woman’s purity, his eyes flicker with suspicion.
“He didn’t touch you?”
“Who?” I ask, well-versed on acting daft.
His back molars grind together before he blurts out a name that stops my heart. “Matteo.” His eyes bounce between mine, searching for deceit. “That’s why he dragged you into the manager’s office at the nightclub last night, right?”
I lie without hesitation. “No. He just wanted to talk.”
“About?”
“Um…” I moisten my parched mouth before adding a sprinkling of truth to my reply.
It is always easy to be deceptive when you include a handful of truths.
“He heard you had moved the wedding forward a week and wanted to know if it was because we had broken the non-penetration clause of our marriage contract.”
“What did you tell him?”
“I didn’t tell him anything.”
He scoffs.
“I didn’t. I told him I didn’t answer to him, and then he left.”
“He left?”
I nod, preferring to lie without words.
“And that’s all that happened? You just talked.”
Again, I nod.
Antonio twists his lips. His reaction isn’t what I expected. He doesn’t look relieved or satisfied. He shows no signs of being reassured. He works his jaw side to side, as if Matteo not touching me is an inconvenience, and he’s irritated his paranoia didn’t pay off.
The realization sends a chill down my spine, but before I can prod for information, he stands abruptly. “Finish your breakfast. We have a schedule to keep.”
Even the makeup artist’s eyes widen in surprise when he leaves without another word shared. He doesn’t even kiss my temple in fake excitement that we’re about to become husband and wife.
I sit in silence, staring at the coffee stain spreading across my nightgown, feeling the burn on everything and nothing all at once. I can’t decide if I’m angrier at Antonio for failing the coffee test or at Matteo for leaving last night with someone else.
If the pain in my chest is anything to go by, I would say it is the latter.