Chapter 2 - Vera #2
The vehicle stopped beneath a covered entrance, and before I could reach for the door, Nico exited.
A second later, my door opened. I looked up, but he wasn’t offering his hand.
He was simply waiting. I stepped out, and the white silk dress I was wearing felt ridiculous.
It was supposed to go underneath the layers of my gown.
I still looked like a bride with my hair and makeup done, but just not anyone’s bride anymore. The thought almost made me laugh. Almost. Nico turned toward the house.
“Let’s go inside.” The command was quiet.
I followed, the front doors already open for us.
Warm light spilled across polished marble floors.
The house was beautiful, made of dark wood and stone accents with floor-to-ceiling windows.
Everything was expensive and carefully designed.
Yet the moment the doors closed behind me, none of that mattered.
A chapter of my life had just ended, and another had begun. And I wasn’t sure which one frightened me more.
“Nico—” I turned around to face him, not knowing what I even wanted to say.
“No.”
The response came immediately, sharp enough to stop me mid-sentence.
I stared at him as he removed his suit jacket and loosened his cuffs.
Nico moved through the house with effortless confidence, like he navigated everything in his life.
As though abducting brides from churches was simply another task on today’s schedule.
“Nico, please.”
He stopped slowly and turned around. For the first time since the church, his full attention landed on me, and it felt as if I was standing beneath a spotlight. It was dangerous and uncomfortable. Impossible to ignore.
“What?” The question should have sounded harmless, but it didn’t. I swallowed.
“I need to explain.” I had no clue what I was going to explain, but I wanted to talk to him. I wanted him to say something. I wanted him to react, and he was giving me nothing.
His expression did not change. Not even slightly. “No.”
The single word hit harder than shouting ever could.
“You don’t understand—”
“I understand perfectly.”
“You don’t.”
“I do.” The certainty in his voice sent a chill through me. “You cheated on me, and then you left. You got engaged to someone else, not two weeks after, and today you were getting married to him. And now you’re here.”
I took a shaky breath. “It wasn’t like that.”
A humorless smile appeared on his face, making him look dangerous. It was the first smile I had seen from him all evening, but somehow it was worse than his anger.
“Don’t.”
“What?”
“Do not insult my intelligence by trying to lie your way out of it, Vera.”
“Nico—”
“I know how you built a whole life after me. I saw a glimpse of it today. I don’t want to know anything else. I watched you replace me, and I don’t think I can watch or understand anything else.”
The room went silent because I had no response to that. Because from his perspective, this was exactly what had happened.
“You think this is about reconciliation?” he asked.
His laugh was cold and short. Dangerous.
“Please don’t be mistaken into a fantasy here.
I didn’t take you because I missed you or wanted answers.
I took you because I wanted to see your perfect little future collapse so you know what pain feels like. ”
The honesty stunned me. Not because it was cruel but because it was sincere.
I could see he meant every word. Every single one.
Something inside me shattered because this wasn’t the Nico I remembered.
The Nico I remembered had laughed too easily, and smiled with his entire face.
He had kissed my forehead when he thought I was asleep, but this man looked at me as if I were an enemy. And I had made him that way.
A strange sadness settled over me.
Not for myself but for him. For the person he had become. My lips curved before I could stop them. A small smile. Soft and unintentional.
Nico frowned. “What’s funny?”
The memories resurfaced once again. The rainy afternoon at the animal shelter, when I had walked into the shelter carrying a box of donated blankets and a dog had escaped.
Chaos followed, and people shouted, with volunteers running everywhere.
I spotted a tall, dark-haired man standing nearby and assumed he worked there. I shoved a leash into his hand.
“Can you help?”
He stared at me, confused.
“What?”
“The dog.”
“The what?”
“Get the dog!”
The golden retriever had sprinted directly between us, and without another word, he chased it.
Five minutes later, he returned carrying seventy pounds of an extremely happy dog, but his suit had been ruined.
His shoes were muddy, and his expression suggested he was reconsidering every life decision that had led him to this moment.
I laughed while he glared at me.
The dog had licked his face, and somehow that had been the beginning.
The first time I ever saw Nico smile. The memory faded, and reality returned, reminding me how he was no longer the same man.
The man standing in front of me now looked nothing like that version. The smile disappeared from my face.
Nico noticed. “What?”
I shook my head slowly. “Nothing.”
His eyes narrowed, and for a second, it looked as if he wanted to push further. Then he stopped himself, and the moment passed. Just another casualty, like everything else between us.
Finally, he spoke. “Your room is upstairs.”
I blinked. “My room?”
“You’re staying here.”
The statement wasn’t presented as a possibility but as a fact.
“Nico—”
“I have already told you I don’t care about what you might have to say. I don’t care what explanation you’ve rehearsed.”
“I haven’t—”
“I don’t care.”
His voice dropped lower. Dangerously calm.
“You are not going back, and you are not justifying your actions with any explanations. What you did made me hate you, and now the hate will stay. We have run out of time.”
I flinched. He had already built an entire reality from the lies I told him.
A reality where I betrayed him and abandoned him and replaced him.
And every decision he had made since then rested on that foundation.
The worst part was that I had built it for him with my own hands.
One lie at a time. The weight of that settled heavily in my chest.
Nico stepped back, creating distance between us. “Get some sleep. The house is locked with guards stationed everywhere, so don’t even think about escaping.”
Escaping hadn’t even occurred to me. His voice had become emotionless again. Then he turned away, and just like that, the conversation was over. I stood alone in the foyer long after he disappeared, listening to his footsteps fade and understanding one terrible truth.
The wedding was gone. My old life was gone. The future my father had chosen for me was gone.
But the future waiting here wasn’t any better.
Because the man upstairs believed I had destroyed him. And until I found a way to tell him the truth, I would remain trapped between two lives. Belonging to neither.
I had met a stranger at an animal shelter and accidentally fallen in love. Tonight, standing inside his house with locked doors behind me, I realized I had accidentally broken him, too. The difference was that my version of the story ended with sacrifice. His ended with revenge.
And I had the terrible feeling that revenge was only beginning.