5. Lena
LENA
I woke up on Thursday morning still Lena Hughes.
By afternoon, I would be someone else entirely.
The spring sunlight lit up the windows of my childhood bedroom. The last time I would sleep here as a single woman. The last time I would sleep here with my own name.
My phone showed 9:47 AM. Four hours and thirteen minutes until the courthouse.
I lay there for a long moment, staring at the ceiling I knew every crack of, and let myself feel the rage.
It burned clean and hot in my chest, the only warmth I had allowed myself since that morning when Raphael Antonov had dismissed me like I was nothing.
Like I hadn’t given him my virginity the night before.
Like I hadn’t let myself believe, for one stupid, vulnerable moment, that he might actually care.
Everyone who claims to care about me is using me.
I threw back the covers and got out of bed. The marble floor was cold under my bare feet, a shock that helped clear the fog of sleep and grief and fury. I had a wedding to survive.
In the bathroom, I swallowed my birth control pill without thinking.
The same prescription I had been on since the contract began, back when Clara had warned me to protect not only my heart, but my womb.
Now it was just another habit my body hadn’t unlearned.
Protection against a man I never intended to let touch me again.
The closet held nothing appropriate for a funeral, which was too bad, because that’s what this was.
I had refused to buy a wedding dress. Refused to even consider white.
Instead, I pulled out a charcoal gray suit I had had tailored last year for a hotel industry conference.
Sharp lines, structured shoulders, fabric that was protection against my skin.
Battle dress. That’s what this was.
I was buttoning the jacket when the soft knock came at my door.
“Come in.”
Marjorie appeared, a coffee tray balanced in her weathered hands. She had been with my family since before I was born, more grandmother to me than employee, and the grief in her eyes when she looked at me now made my throat tighten.
“I brought your usual.” She set the tray on the vanity table, her movements careful and precise. “Two sugars, splash of cream.”
“Thank you.”
She didn’t leave. Just stood there, watching me in the mirror as I finished with the buttons and reached for my earrings. Simple gold studs. Nothing that could be called bridal.
“You don’t have to do this,” she said quietly.
I met her eyes in the reflection. “Yes. I do.”
The will clause. The contract still binding me. The hotel that would be lost to charity if I didn’t marry within the year. My father had made sure of that, controlling me even from the grave, and Raphael had made sure I had no other options.
Marry him or lose everything.
“There might be another way,” Marjorie tried. “A lawyer, perhaps. Someone who could challenge the will’s validity.”
“I’ve talked to three lawyers.” I slid the earrings in, one by one, watching my hands stay steady in the mirror.
“The will is airtight. And even if I could fight it, the contract with Raphael still has nine months remaining. He can claim my time. He can make my life miserable in ways I can’t even imagine. ”
My father’s debt. Raphael’s revenge. Both of them using me as a pawn in games I had never agreed to play.
“I’m not going to fight a battle I can’t win.” I turned to face her, and I made sure my voice was steady. “I’m going to survive. And then I’m going to find a way to destroy him.”
Marjorie’s expression shifted, grief and pride and fear all tangled together. She crossed the room and took my hands in hers, her grip surprisingly strong for a woman her age.
“You’re braver than your father ever was,” she said. “Braver than he deserved.”
I couldn’t speak. Could only squeeze her hands once before pulling away, reaching for the coffee she had brought. I took a long sip, letting the heat burn down my throat and steady my nerves. The familiar taste of my morning ritual, as if this were any other day. As if my world wasn’t about to end.
“I should go,” I said. “Parsons is probably waiting.”
“He is. Downstairs.”
Of course he was. Raphael’s driver, Raphael’s man, here to escort me to my own execution. I set down the coffee cup and looked in the mirror one last time.
Gray suit, gold earrings, hair pulled back in a severe knot. No makeup except the barest hint of color on my lips.
I looked like I was going to a funeral.
Good.
The drive to the Paradise Peaks courthouse took twenty minutes. Twenty minutes of staring out the tinted windows at mountains I used to love, at spring wildflowers blooming along the roadside, at a world that had no business being this beautiful on a day like today.
Parsons didn’t try to make conversation. I appreciated that. He had been witness to enough of my humiliation over the past months that small talk would have been obscene.
The courthouse was a modest building, simple brick and stonework, nothing like the grand venues where Hughes family weddings had taken place for generations.
My mother had married my father at the Cathedral of St. John, with five hundred guests and a reception that made the society pages.
My grandmother’s wedding had been featured in a magazine.
I was getting married in a government office with two witnesses and a man I despised.
I saw his car first. Black, sleek, armored. Then I saw him.
Raphael stood on the courthouse steps, hands clasped behind his back, watching my approach with an expression I couldn’t read. He wore a dark tailored suit, his hair perfectly styled, his posture impeccable.
But he was holding himself strangely, too stiff, too careful.
Parsons opened my door and I stepped out into the spring sunshine. The stiffness in Raphael’s shoulders was unmistakable. The careful way he shifted his weight from one foot to the other. The slight hesitation before he moved to meet me, his jaw tight as he fought to hide whatever pain he was in.
My first instinct was curiosity. My second was fury at myself for caring.
He destroyed your family. He took your virginity and threw you away. Whatever’s wrong with him, he deserves it.
I buried the observation and let my expression go cold.
“Lena.” His voice was controlled. Controlled was all he ever was, mask after mask hiding whatever monster lived underneath.
“Let’s get this over with.”
Pain crossed his features before he smoothed it away. Or irritation at my lack of performance. I didn’t care which.
We walked up the courthouse steps together, not touching, a foot of spring air between us. Inside, the building smelled like old paper and floor wax and bureaucracy. A security guard waved us through without comment. Apparently, when you were Raphael Antonov, metal detectors didn’t apply.
The judge’s chambers were on the second floor. A small office, all wood paneling and law books and a window that looked out over the parking lot. No flowers. No music. No guests beyond the two witnesses already waiting.
Alice stood by the window, her weathered face unreadable. She had been kind to me during those months I had lived in Raphael’s manor, and the grief in her eyes when she looked at me now was genuine. But she was his. They were all his.
Parsons took his place beside her. Two witnesses to a wedding that wasn’t a wedding at all. Just paperwork. Just a legal binding that would transfer ownership of Lena Hughes to the man who had already taken everything else.
The judge was a woman in her sixties, gray-haired and efficient. She glanced at the marriage license on her desk, then at us.
“Do you have rings?”
Raphael reached into his pocket and produced a velvet box. My stomach dropped as he opened it to reveal a band of platinum studded with diamonds. Expensive. Tasteful. A shackle disguised as jewelry.
I hadn’t brought a ring for him. Hadn’t even considered it.
“I have my own,” he said, and he was wearing a simple platinum band I had never seen before. Already on his finger. Already claiming a marriage that hadn’t happened yet.
“Very well.” The judge gestured to the space before her desk. “If you’ll both stand here.”
The floor was unsteady under my feet as I walked to where she pointed.
Raphael moved beside me, close enough to smell him.
Sandalwood and leather and beneath that, a warmer familiarity, something that made my body tighten with an awareness I desperately wanted to kill.
My skin remembered his hands even as my mind screamed in fury.
Traitor body. Traitor heart.
“We are gathered here to unite this man and this woman in matrimony,” the judge began, her voice flat and professional. No warmth. No ceremony. Just the words required by law.
I kept my eyes fixed on a point over her shoulder. A water stain on the ceiling. A brown discoloration shaped vaguely like a bird, wings spread in frozen flight. Something mundane to focus on while my world ended.
“Do you, Raphael Antonov, take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife?”
“I do.”
Two words. Steady and certain. Like he meant them.
“Do you, Lena Hughes, take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband?”
The silence stretched. One heartbeat. Two.
I could say no. I could walk out of here right now, refuse to play his game, refuse to let another man control my fate.
And I would lose the hotel. Lose the staff who depended on me, the legacy I had fought to protect, the identity I had built when my father saw only a disappointment.
I thought of Marjorie’s face this morning. Braver than he deserved.
“I do.”
My voice didn’t shake. I held onto that like a victory.
“The rings, please.”
Raphael turned to face me, and since the courthouse steps, our eyes met. His were dark. Intent. Searching for surrender in my expression that I refused to give him.