Chapter 14 Nadia
NADIA
My life reads like a string of bad choices.
All people do is whisper when they think I can’t hear. Their voices follow me down hallways, through classrooms, around corners. She loved a killer.
And maybe they’re right. Because loving Lucian Cross ruined everything.
Men don’t stick around when they find out who he was.
Doesn’t matter how quiet I am, how much I try to hide it - the truth seeps out like a bad smell.
Her? They say it like a warning. She was engaged to that serial killer, Ghost.
Then come the looks. Curiosity first - sharp, probing - like they want to see if he left marks. Then disgust. Sometimes morbid fascination, eyes dragging down my throat, wondering what it was like to love hands that strangled women.
I tell myself they’ll never measure up to him. But it doesn’t matter. Because they all leave eventually.
Friends too. They fade, one by one. Messages stop. Invitations dry up. Smiles turn brittle. No one wants the woman who slept beside a monster.
I don’t blame them. But I hate them anyway.
College isn’t better. Professors avoid my gaze like my eyes carry contagion. Classmates whisper when I walk in.
“How could she not have known?”
Like love should have had a specific smell or feeling when it’s with a monster.
If my parents hadn’t pulled strings, I’d have been expelled. Universities didn’t want the scandal of a serial killer’s fiancée crossing their graduation stage.
As though my diploma carried his fingerprints. As though I don’t already carry him in my bones.
I didn’t choose this. But no one believes that. To the world, I’m the woman too stupid to see the knife pressed to her throat.
So I survive. Scrape through exams. Keep my head down. Not because I care, but because I refuse to disappear quietly.
Still, when the world goes still, when silence presses too close - the doubt starts gnawing again.
What if they’re right? What if something broken in me realised what he was and wanted him anyway?
That thought eats through everything.
And then there are the flashes. The ambushes. The vultures who smell weakness and wait for me to step outside.
It happens again outside the hospital one day.
Sixteen hours without sleep. My scrubs smell like antiseptic and sweat. My fingers still tremble from the last patient’s pulse. I just want my bed. My home. Silence.
But the second the doors hiss open, chaos hits me like a brick.
The air erupts. Voices crashing, cameras exploding in bursts of white as microphones jab at my mouth.
“Miss Reed—”
“Miss Reed—”
They shout over each other, like hungry hyenas.
The flashes blind me. The heat of the lights burns my eyes. Someone grabs my sleeve. I flinch back, heart kicking like it wants out of my chest.
It’s always the same. Every time Lucian’s name hits a headline, they drag me back to the trial. Back to the gavel slamming down. Guilty. Life. Never to be released.
The words still ring in my bones.
“Do you still wear his ring?”
“Do you write to him?”
“They call you the Ghost Bride. How does it feel to be tied to a killer?”
That last one lands like a slap.
Ghost Bride.
The world tilts. My throat tightens.
For a split second, I’m back in the courtroom - reporters snapping pictures as my knees hit the floor.
“Did you know what he was doing?”
“Did you ever suspect?”
The question slices through me. Exhaustion burns away, leaving fury.
I turn, face the nearest camera head-on. “Enough.”
My voice shakes, but the word hits. The shouting stumbles to a halt.
Then another voice cuts through.
“Why no relationship since his arrest?”
“Still in love with him?”
My lungs seize. The words scrape raw. I want to scream yes — yes, I loved him. I still do.
But they wouldn’t understand. They want their narrative: the na?ve girl who didn’t see it coming, or the complicit whore who did.
But I was neither. I was just a woman who loved a man the world turned into a monster before the truth ever had a chance to breathe.
The questions rise again, jagged and fast, pelting me until all I hear is static.
I shove forward, elbows out, pushing through the wall of bodies. Someone grabs my arm - I tear free, the sting burning my skin.
Tears come hot, cutting through grime and exhaustion. My chest hurts. My breath saws out of me in short, sharp bursts. Each step feels like ripping links from a chain. But the truth sticks to my ribs. They’ll never stop calling me the Ghost Bride. And I’ll never stop being haunted by Lucian Cross.