Three days. Seventy-two hours until I become Mrs. Greyhaven. Until I belong to a man whose reputation makes grown men cross themselves.
The wedding dress hangs in my closet like a ghost, fourty-five thousand dollars of French silk and Italian lace that will wrap me up like a gift for a monster I've never even met.
I've tried everything to find Ian. Really. I even considered hiring a private investigator before realizing how insane that would sound: ‘Please find the man I kissed once while my life imploded. He also might not exist.’
Because that's the fear that keeps me up at night, staring at my ceiling until dawn. That I imagined him.
The black rose sits on my nightstand, the only proof he was real.
It hasn't wilted, hasn't aged, like it's been preserved in formaldehyde or dark magic. Sometimes I wake clutching it, thorns buried in my palm, blood on my sheets like stigmata from a saint who's forgotten how to pray.
My phone exploded at 6:47 AM.
Text after text. Call after call. The screen lighting up like a slot machine hitting a jackpot. Margot's name flashes, then Patricia's, then numbers I don't recognize. My heart hammers against my ribs as I swipe to unlock.
The news is everywhere: Socialite Kaia De Luca Rushed to the Emergency Room. Pregnancy Complications. Condition Unknown.
My first instinct is spite, sharp and immediate as a knife between ribs.
Karma is a bitch, and she knows your address.
But then guilt floods in behind the satisfaction, and I hate myself for both reactions. Hannah bursts into my room without knocking, still in her nightgown, face pale as death.
"Miss Esther, your father wants you at the hospital. Now." Her hands tremble as she grips the doorframe. "It's... God help us, it's bad."
The drive to Mount Sinai blurs past in a haze of adrenaline and dread. I don't remember getting dressed or running to the car. Don't remember anything until we're pulling up to a private entrance swarming with security.
Father's men. Aaron's crew. Faces I've never seen before checking credentials like we're entering a black ops facility instead of a hospital.
Something about the setup makes my skin prickle.
Too many guards, too much tension. I take the elevator to the private wing where the truly wealthy go to suffer in luxury. I find Kaia in a suite that looks more like a Four Seasons room than a hospital.
But no amount of money can make what I'm seeing less devastating.
She's curled on her side in the bed, sedated but still crying. Tears leak steadily from her closed eyes, tracking down her cheeks in endless streams. Her hands are clutched over her stomach like she's trying to hold onto something.
Aaron paces by the window like a caged predator. His right hand bloody and swelling, knuckles split open. The plaster wall beside him bears a crater surrounded by blood splatter, evidence of rage that found nowhere else to go.
"She was fine yesterday," he snarls when he sees me, his voice raw and broken. No greeting, no acknowledgment of our shared history. "Perfectly fucking healthy. We had dinner, walked through Central Park. She even said she felt the baby move—"
His voice cracks on the last word like glass under pressure.
"Then this morning she started bleeding. So much blood, Esther. The sheets were…" He stops, jaw clenching, knuckles white on the window frame. "They couldn't save it. The baby's gone."
Despite everything—the betrayal that shattered me, the theft of my future, the humiliation that still burns—my heart twists. Whatever Kaia did, whatever sins she committed, she didn't deserve this particular punishment.
I sit beside her on the bed and take her hand. Her fingers are ice cold, limp and lifeless like something already dead.
"I'm sorry…" I whisper, and I mean it with a sincerity that surprises me. "Kaia, I'm so sorry."
Her eyes flutter open, glazed from whatever cocktail of drugs they've given her. Morphine, probably. Benzodiazepines. Something to dull pain that goes deeper than physical.
"Esther?" Her voice sounds like it's been dragged over broken glass. "My baby..."
"I know. I know…"
"It hurt." Tears spill fresh and fast. "It hurt so much… Like my insides were being ripped out through my skin. Like something was tearing me apart from the inside."
The description makes my stomach turn.
A doctor arrives with charts, explaining in clinical terms that mean nothing and everything at once. Sudden placental abruption. Extremely rare in healthy first pregnancies. Catastrophic hemorrhaging. Nothing they could have done.
His words are perfectly professional, rehearsed to the point of performance.
"These things happen," he says, not quite meeting anyone's eyes. "Tragic, but sometimes nature is simply... unexplainable."
But something in his tone feels wrong. The way he busies himself with paperwork that doesn't need attention. The way he glances toward the door like he's measuring the distance to escape.
Aaron looks ready to tear the man apart, but Father appears in the doorway. "Aaron. Walk with me."
They disappear into the hallway, leaving me alone with my sedated sister and questions that taste like dread.
* * *
The Castellano mansion has erupted into controlled chaos.
Patricia is on the phone in the library, doing damage control with the efficiency of a crisis PR specialist. "Yes, absolutely devastating... No, the marriage is solid, they're heartbroken but united... Of course Esther's wedding will proceed as planned, why would you even ask that..."
Father is locked in his study, his voice a low rumble through the heavy door, making calls to people who find answers in places the law doesn't reach.
I escape to my room, desperate for silence, for space to process the fact that my sister just lost a baby and I can't tell if I'm relieved or horrified by my own reaction.
But there on my pillow, positioned with deliberate care, sits a manila envelope.
No name. No markings. No indication of how it got past our security system.
My hands shake as I open it.
Inside: medical records from Mount Sinai, Kaia's bloodwork from this morning. Most of it is incomprehensible medical jargon, but one line is highlighted in yellow, impossible to miss.
Misoprostol detected in blood sample. Concentration: 800mcg.
I know that drug. The abortion pill. The pregnancy ender. And 800 micrograms is no accident—it's a calculated dose, precise enough to end a pregnancy while keeping the mother alive.
Someone poisoned her. Someone deliberately killed her unborn baby.
Beneath the records, a note in that same elegant script:
‘I won't let injustice feel free. Those who destroy innocence through betrayal deserve to feel destruction themselves. Now the debt is paid.
Consider this a wedding gift. I protect what's mine, and I punish those who hurt what belongs to me.
—C’
The room spins and my knees hit the carpet before I realize I'm falling, medical records scattering around me like evidence at a crime scene.
C. Cassian. My future husband orchestrated this—poisoned my sister, murdered an unborn child, and called it justice. Called it a gift.
The cruelty is breathtaking. Surgical. Precise as a scalpel between ribs.
This is the monster I'm marrying. A man who delivers justice with medical precision and calls it romance. Who kills unborn children to avenge a broken engagement that isn't even his own.
Who has the power and resources to slip poison into my sister's food and documents onto my pillow without anyone seeing.
I think of Kaia in that hospital bed, clutching her empty womb, crying in her sedated sleep. Think of the baby who never got a chance to be born—innocent, regardless of how it was conceived.
The note burns in my hand like it's on fire.
I protect what's mine.
I'm not his yet, but he's already acting like I am. Already punishing people in my name. Already killing for me.