CHAPTER THREE
I stared at my reflection and saw the woman my father built.
Brown eyes, the color of aged bourbon in crystal, steady and expressive enough to betray what I never said aloud.
A face too symmetrical to feel like mine, every angle softened into compliance.
Straight chestnut hair, parted clean down the middle with military precision, falling to my waist like a heavy silk curtain.
He preferred it that way.
I was nothing but a living canvas for his vision.
At five-foot-six, I was tall enough to look commanding in a room of whispers, but not so tall I couldn’t be mistaken for ornamental when men like my father gathered.
My figure carried the kind of balance that men in our world liked to claim as theirs—waist shapely enough for possessive hands, shoulders straight enough to bear expectations. Graceful, restrained, and never threatening.
Even now, I could hear my father’s harsh voice in the back of my mind. “Poise before protest, Selene. Always.”
7:30 glowed on my vanity clock.
With dinner at eight, I was already late by his standards—not actually late, just not early enough to demonstrate proper reverence.
My fingers traced the black satin dress hugging my waist before falling in a calculated drape.
Around my neck hung the delicate gold chain, my mother’s last possession he hadn’t managed to erase.
When I stepped into the hallway, each heel strike echoed like a countdown. The Darzi estate absorbed all other sounds, as if wealth itself consumed noise—leaving nothing but electric hums and the soft electronic breathing of security systems embedded in the walls.
My father had bought the house from an old minister who’d vanished shortly after signing the deed. Sometimes I swore I could feel his ghost trailing me through these halls, his spectral hands reaching in outrage.
The staircase portraits tracked my movements with painted eyes, generations of men who’d crushed others beneath their heels and called the resulting height achievement.
My phone was tucked into my clutch, likely still warm from Amara’s call.
She always checked in twice weekly from her private and secure line, though today she’d revealed that she knew about the dinner before I had.
Her voice had blasted through the speaker with such force I’d winced and pulled the phone from my ear.
“Selene, if you let him auction you off like this, I swear to God!”
It was easy for her to scream revolution from far way. Had it slipped her notice that she’d escaped and I hadn’t? I didn’t get to rage and protest, not if I didn’t want to suffer for it and then be forced to endure anyways.
At the hallway’s end stood my father’s office, double doors already parted like a predator’s jaws.
There he sat behind his mahogany fortress, surrounded by leather-bound ledgers that contained the lives he’d crushed and that perpetual crystal decanter, amber liquid catching the light like trapped fire.
“You kept me waiting.”
“I was getting ready.” The words felt small in my mouth.
He looked up then, and the air froze in my lungs.
His gaze flayed me where I stood. “You’ve had your entire life to get ready.
Tonight isn’t about you. It’s about what this family needs.
You will sit across from Alaric Kostas and make him believe you are not just indispensable, but worth every bit of what I’m asking for you. ”
“And if he doesn’t?”
“There is no doesn’t.” Each syllable was a hammer strike.
“That’s what women in our world are for.
Persuasion.” He rose and stalked toward me, each footfall a countdown to violence.
“You know what will happen if you return without the promise of an engagement? Do you want so badly to go see your mother?”
I opened my mouth, but his hand shot forward, closing around my throat before I could form a word.
His fingers pressed into the delicate skin beneath my jaw, thumb digging into the hollow above my collarbone.
The pressure wasn’t enough to cut off my air completely, just enough to remind me how easily he could.
“All you need to say is yes, sir. You’ll come back to me the soon-to-be Mrs. Kostas, won’t you?”
“Yes, sir,” I managed with a whisper, the word vibrating against his palm.
His lips curled upward, pride in his own mercy evident in the fine lines at the corners of his eyes. “Good. Remember the consequences of disappointing me.”
As his grip fell away, my fingers twitched at my side, wanting to soothe the tender flesh where he’d held, but I refused to give him that satisfaction. The phantom sensation of his hand lingered like a collar.
At least he wouldn’t leave a mark, the twisted asshole. Not on the outside. You’d think I would be used to this by now, but there was always some small part of me—a foolish child’s heart buried beneath years of compliance that wished to understand why he seemed to loathe me.
The car is waiting,” he said, already turning back to his desk, dismissing me with a flick of his eyes. “Don’t embarrass us, Selene.”
I left without a word, my heels counting down the seconds of freedom with each step across marble floors.
The estate doors closed behind me with a whisper of expensive hinges, releasing me into a night as black as spilled ink.
Dion waited beside the luxury town car, cap clutched against his chest, his weathered face creased with a kindness that seemed contraband in my father’s world.
“Miss Darzi,” he nodded, swinging the door open.
“Dion,” I acknowledged, sliding onto leather seats that kissed my bare skin with cold formality.
The car glided forward without instruction. Erevale unfurled before us, the coastal city’s lights suspended like jewels against velvet darkness. In the rearview mirror, Dion’s gaze found mine.
“That dress suits you, Miss Selene.”
My lips curved slightly upward. “Thank you.”
I had no idea where we were going. I knew not to ask, and my father would never have explained, but the last place I was expecting to be taken was Azure.
Even from down the street, the restaurant gleamed with stories of blue-tinted glass that caught the downtown lights and transformed it into something ethereal.
As we drew closer, I could see the famous waterfall wall cascading behind the glass facade, lit from within by gold-filtered lights.
The waitlist for this place stretched six months into the future, making me wonder just how long ago this meeting was planned, or if the Kostas name simply opened doors for tonight.
“Head high, little dove,” Dion murmured as he stopped the car and climbed out to open my door. “Whatever happens in there, remember you're not just a name.”
I didn’t trust my voice enough to answer, so I nodded at him gratefully. Dion was a sweet man. Far too kind and good to be working for my father.
Eyes followed me as I made my way toward the spinning entrances, Erevale’s elite looking and assessing.
I briefly considered ditching my cell and running away.
But running wouldn’t save me, not with my father’s reach.
It would only make the inevitable worse.
So I straightened my shoulders and walked through the nearest revolving door, letting Azure swallow me whole.
Inside, the air shifted to something exspensive. Music threaded low under the clink of glass and laughter meant to be overheard.
“Welcome to Azure,” the ma?tre d’ greeted, her smile warm and rehearsed. “Do you have a reservation?”
“Darzi,” I replied, smoothing my dress as if it mattered. “I’m meeting Mr. Kostas.”
Her smile shifted, recognition or pity, I couldn’t tell. “Of course. The other party has already arrived. Please,” she said, gesturing for me to follow. “This way.”
Threading through the maze of tables and hushed conversations, I followed the hostess as she navigated a room where money hung in the air like expensive perfume.
The elevator awaited us—sleek black glass edged in gold that multiplied my reflection into infinity.
Each version of me stared back: shoulders squared, chin lifted, a performance of belonging.
A soft chime announced our arrival to the top floor. The doors parted, releasing a cool whisper of air carrying notes of distant music. Dimmed lights cast everything in amber and shadow, creating an intimacy that felt borrowed from someone else’s reality.
“This way, Miss Darzi,” the hostess murmured.
I measured each step, conscious of the eyes tracking my movement across the room.
My heartbeat quickened traitorously beneath my composed exterior.
Beyond the diners, floor-to-ceiling windows consumed Erevale’s skyline, the city lights scattered like fallen stars.
Far below, the bay mirrored the heavens, vessels cutting silent paths through liquid silver.
In the farthest corner, a man rose to his feet as we approached—Alaric Kostas.
At first glance, he wasn’t what I expected. He wasn’t the man from the photographs. Those had shown someone glacial and distant; all hard edges framed in expensive suits. The man before me radiated heat and made me feel almost short.
The immaculate stubble darkening his jaw matched his hair—shorn tight along the temples but rebellious on top, as though even his grooming refused complete obedience.
His charcoal suit hung with the precision of old money, but the open collar betrayed a shadow of ink crawling up from beneath pristine fabric alongside his neck.
He sported a tattoo on his hand as well, and I wondered if there were more hidden away.
His eyes captured my attention and held it. There a stunning shade of pale blue, standing out against his golden skin. When he smiled at me, it was a contrast in itself.
“Miss Darzi. It’s good to finally meet you.” His voice rolled deep, carrying cultured notes of somewhere else, somewhere far from here.
“Selene,” I corrected lightly.