Chapter 9
ELLE
I'm pretty sure I'm being shrink-wrapped to be shipped off post auction.
Mother is yanking the tight white gown up my hips like she's packaging a corpse and blood flow isn't a thing anymore. It takes everything in me not to elbow her in the throat. Whoever designed wedding dresses hates women. This thing weighs more than my entire trauma.
"Hold still," she snaps. Like I'm a disobedient poodle.
"Maybe if this dress didn't feel like a straightjacket, I would."
I know she won’t hit me. She’s afraid of my soon-to-be husband.
And that makes me smile. I feel like I have just a little power.
Two stylists are circling me like I'm a limited-edition collectible they're afraid to breathe on. Someone is literally steaming my ass. I'm not kidding. There is a steamer. Near my ass. Kill me now.
The younger stylist tilts her head, studying my face in the mirror. "Such unusual coloring," she says lightly. "That golden hair with those green eyes... you must get that from your father's side?"
The room goes cold. Mother's hand freezes on my sleeve for half a second. Just long enough for me to feel it.
"She gets it from no one," Gayle says, voice like a door slamming shut. "Focus on the veil."
The stylist flinches and goes back to work. I file the reaction away, just another of Mother's many allergic reactions to the topic of my father. Some things never change.
My scalp hurts from how tight they yanked my hair. The veil is somewhere behind me being puffed like a parachute.
"You should be grateful," Gayle mutters. "This is a good thing."
"Uh-huh," I give her a skeptical look, but of course she's too focused on making me look like an acceptable transaction.
"Tighten the corset," my mother says, circling me like a hawk. "The waist needs to be smaller."
"It's already crushing my organs," I mutter.
The seamstress gives me an apologetic look before following orders. I gasp as another inch of my ability to breathe disappears.
"Beauty requires sacrifice," my mother says, like she's reciting from a Victorian handbook on How to Torture Your Daughter.
"And all I do is sacrifice," I say under my breath.
Her eyes flash to mine. "What was that?"
"Nothing." I fix my gaze on the ceiling, counting the crystal teardrops in the chandelier.
She gives me the look. The one that says don't embarrass me.
"If you had behaved yourself," my mother says, motioning at the women to bring out my veil, "you wouldn't be in this position."
"What was so wrong with wanting one night to myself out of my cage?" My voice comes out tight because if I let it slip, I'll scream. "One night. One."
"I knew it would bring you trouble."
Something snaps in me like a wire pulled too long.
"Are you seriously blaming me? Not the fact that you kept me locked up like a prisoner?"
"Enough." She cuts in sharp, like she's scolding a child, not acknowledging a grown woman. In that moment, I realize she does not, for even a second, think she is wrong.
And that's when I say what I mean, for once in my goddamn life.
"You locked a little girl in a tower for twenty-six years and you're surprised she set it on fire the first chance she got?"
Her face turns to an inferno of rage, eyes blazing wide. "Just get through today without yapping that mouth of yours you think is so smart. Look pretty, stay quiet. That's all you're good at."
Her words land like little needles and tears well in my eyes. I don't know what I was expecting on my wedding day. But that wasn't it.
I swallow any more words, humiliated enough already.
She snatches the garter from the table. “Lift your leg.”
“I can do it.”
Her hand feels like a manacle on my wrist.
I do what she wants. She slides it up my thigh and I wince when her nails dig in. But I don’t show any reaction. I won’t give her the pleasure.
"Come," she says, motioning to the door. "Hold your head up. You are a Donovan."
And I follow, because Mother succeeded in doing what she does best: crushing my spirit with surgical precision and walking away like she barely noticed the mess. But every step toward those chapel doors, my blood starts to boil under my skin.
I'm not calm.
I'm fuming.
I know I'm meant to love my mother, and some broken part of me still does. She raised me. Did everything she thought was right.
But she also ruined me. She never trusted me to live, choose, or want anything for myself. Even now, even in this, the matter of who I'll spend my life with isn't mine to decide.
It could have been so much worse than Nikolai. My soon-to-be husband isn't a fairy tale come true, and he's a devil in disguise. But I have a voice around him. That's more than Egor would have allowed.
Something inside me hardens completely.
We stop just before the chapel doors.
Mother stands beside me, tall and proud and utterly unbothered, like she didn't just destroy me and expect me to thank her for it.
Something inside me refuses to stay quiet any longer.
"After today, you don't get to control me ever again," I say, my voice cold enough to borrow from her own playbook.
The backlash, the rage, the guilt... none of what I expect comes my way. Mother turns to me, her eyes as cold as stone.
She just exhales, like she's been waiting years to say what comes next.
"Good," she says, in the sweetest voice she's ever used on me. "You have been exhausting to manage."
I freeze. She adjusts one pointless fold in my sleeve like she's fixing a mannequin.
"You fight everything. You question everything. You make everything harder than it needs to be." Her tone never rises. "So yes. I'm relieved. I am done bending my life around your chaos."
It hits like getting slapped with ice water. I've spent years fantasizing about standing up to my mother, about breaking free. But in none of those fantasies did she simply... let go. Walk away like I didn't matter.
The last thing I expected was for her to sound like I was a job she could finally quit.
I open my mouth to tell her she can't talk like that, that she's my mother, goddamn it, and that's not how mothers love their girls. But nothing comes out.
Because for a split second, she actually looks lighter. Like freeing herself from me is happiness.
She doesn't even look at me when she adds, "Focus on not humiliating yourself. Or me." As if that's the last inconvenient burden I owe her. Twenty-six years, I think, and this is how she chooses to let me go.
A lifetime of swallowing my hurt, of trying to be the obedient, perfect daughter, burns up in a single second. I don't cry. But God, I want to.
The chapel doors open, and the sound hits first: soft strings, a faint murmur of guests shifting to stand. I step forward, and the long ivory aisle feels like a tunnel.
I swallow. Hard. Force air into my lungs. My voice scrapes out raw as I give my mother one last look.
"Right. Then it's goodbye," I say to the woman who held me back for far too long. My heart is hammering so loud my ribs ache, but I hold her stare until I see that first flicker of offense. Because I'm not begging. I'm not even breaking loud.
I'm just done.
And suddenly I'm walking toward a future I never wanted, because it's still better than the cage she built for me.
Everyone is staring. I feel heat on my cheeks and try not to think about how if I trip and faceplant, I will never recover socially as long as I live. My heart is kicking at my ribs like it wants out. My palms are sweating inside these silk gloves like I'm smuggling anxiety instead of fingers.
I see him.
Nikolai Ivanov.
He stands at the altar like he didn't walk out of hell but owns a controlling share.
Broad shoulders, dark suit cut sharp enough to kill.
Silver hair swept back like armor. His tattooed hands are clasped behind his back, ink dark against white cuffs, like he's afraid he might reach for me if he lets them free.
And his eyes.
Dear God.
Blue and burning and fixed on me like I'm the only thing in this church worth looking at. He is looking at me like he could devour me alive in front of all these people and not feel even a flicker of shame.
My pulse jumps like it's auditioning for acrobats, and I'm no longer walking toward him. I'm gliding, floating, or maybe just plain blacking out. I'm in my own astral projection where Nikolai is all I see.
He watches me come to him with thoughts that would be banned on national television. Eyes glazed, peeling me naked from head to toe, wondering what's beneath this dress.
My lungs forget what oxygen is. He was handsome before. He is lethal now.
I try to walk slower. Or faster. My body chooses chaos and does both. One foot at a time, Elle. Be graceful. Remember?
My mother's hand rests briefly at my spine, then falls away when we reach the front. She places my hand into his like she's passing an envelope across a table. Transaction complete.
His palm closes around mine.
A real hand.
Warm.
Solid.
Rough where the ink sits, and steady in a way that makes my chest ache.
The contact sends a shock through my system I don't show on my face but feel everywhere. His grip is firm, and he gives my hand a gentle squeeze, as though to say: it's okay.
It's the first sign of comfort I've had all day. I try not to bawl my eyes out right then and there, for all the wrong reasons on what's supposed to be the most beautiful day of my life.
It could have been worse, I remind myself. Nikolai is my lucky shot at life on my own terms.
I face forward, toward the priest, but my awareness never leaves the weight of his hand over mine. The ceremony begins. Words are spoken, things like unity, honor, and fidelity, but they drift through the air like they were said only so the room could say it happened.
I can hardly feel my own breathing.
My pulse beats in my fingertips where they're caught in his.
The priest's voice finally cuts through.
"Do you, Raphaella Donovan..."
"Yes."
I answer before I even realize I've done it. I don't know if it's bravery or sheer survival instinct, like if I hesitate, I'll run. But the answer comes without doubt. Like it's the right one.
And then it's his turn.
"I do."
He says it without pause, without question, with such steady, lethal certainty that it shivers through me. Not like acceptance. Like ownership. And for one terrifying, electrifying heartbeat, I don't feel caught at all.
I feel chosen.
Gulp.
And then, the part I swore I'd be ready for but clearly am not: "You may kiss the bride."
Time stutters.
Nikolai steps forward.
His hand slides along my jaw, tattooed fingers warm against my skin.
My heart begins to gallop as I stare into those blue eyes. Clear and cold and absolutely certain of what they want. He leans down, cups my chin like it's already his.
Pure possession. Fiery and wild. He tilts my face up and brings his lips to graze against mine.
Anything but perfunctory.
He angles his head and glides his tongue over my lips. It is not appropriate for church, but Nikolai doesn't care who's watching. His hands slide down to my hips and jerk me against him.
I shift my weight, ignoring the pinch in my thigh.
It is deep. Intentional. Possessive in a way that lights every nerve I have like he flipped some forbidden switch.
I gasp against his mouth.
He doesn't stop.
He kisses me like he's not performing for the crowd, but warning me.
My knees go weak. My fingers clutch his lapel. I kiss him back. I mean really kiss him back.
Somewhere behind us, people politely applaud.
I don't hear a single one.
Because all I can think is: Holy shit. What have I just done, and why does it feel like the first right thing I've ever chosen?