Three days after the hospital incident, I went to try on a wedding dress.
By myself.
No entourage of bodyguards. No paparazzi waiting outside. No self-satisfied future father-in-law clapping me on the back. Just me, stepping into a worn-out boutique tucked in the shadows of a defaced old church wall. The proprietor was an aging Russian seamstress, half-blind, half-silent—her lips always occupied with pins or thread.
It was perfect.
I chose a gown without even checking the price. Pulled it over my shoulders, stared at the fractured mirror, and for a fleeting instant imagined an alternate life—one where none of this had unraveled, one where the man waiting at the altar wasn’t cruel. Or worse… wasn’t turning me cruel.
I slipped out the back into the alleyway for a smoke. My heels tapped against concrete, veil still tangled in my hair. The cigarette barely touched my lips before a rag pressed down hard over my mouth.
Sickly sweet chemical. Too sweet.
Chloroform.
I fought. Hard. But the haze seeped into me fast, crawling through my veins like poison. My muscles went slack, vision tunneling. I collapsed before the cigarette even hit the ground.
---
I came to coughing on my own blood.
Blindfolded. Wrists roped behind a chair. Back screaming from some earlier strain. My mouth was a graveyard of copper, cotton, and dust.
The place smelled of wet stone and gasoline. Somewhere underground, I guessed. A faint fan whirred overhead, water dripping at irregular intervals. My skull pounded with each beat of my heart.
Then it began.
A paddle lashed across my back—sharp, merciless. Not the one I had once wielded.
My body convulsed, lungs refusing air. The pain was so clean, so absolute, my mind fractured. I couldn’t scream. Breath itself was impossible.
Every strike carved fire through me, nerves lighting up in agony. My teeth ground together, but still I made no sound. The silence became its own rebellion.
I lost count quickly. Past twenty, past thirty. My body quit flinching, though the torment didn’t lessen. My brain tried to switch off, but the suffering kept dragging me back.
Fifty, maybe more. By then I was unrecognizable—skin torn, blood soaking the ropes, metallic taste drowning my tongue. The agony blurred into something grotesquely familiar, as if my body had accepted this as ritual.
Then came a voice.
Muffled, distorted by static.
“It’s done, sir.”
A pause.
“Send her back.”
My breath froze in my chest.
Leander.
The world stopped.
He had ordered this.
The bastard arranged every blow, every scream. Not for discipline. Not for justice. Not even for Dahlia’s theatrics. This was punishment—mine. His punishment.
Shock crushed me. My body betrayed me, refusing even the instinct to rage. I wanted to scream, to fight, to spit blood in defiance. But nothing came. Just the iron tang filling my mouth as the darkness pulled me under again.
---
When I surfaced, I was in another hospital bed. White sheets. IV piercing my arm. Pain clinging like a second skin. Nurses whispered outside, their voices carrying like gossip through the corridor.
“That man in the VIP suite—dreamy. Stayed up all night by his girl’s bedside, holding her hand.”
“She’s barely bruised. But the one in 106? Looks like she’s been flayed alive. Not a single visitor.”
Guess which room number was mine.
I tore the IV out, the sting meaningless against everything else. The world swayed, but I dragged myself into the hall, leaning on the wall like a crutch. Each step split me open again, but I refused to stop.
And there he was.
Leander.
Outside Dahlia’s room, gently pressing a glass of water to her lips as if she were fragile porcelain. She fluttered her lashes, murmured something syrupy. And he smiled.
He smiled.
Wiped a stray drop from her mouth with his thumb. Tender. Intimate.
My throat constricted—not from jealousy. Not anymore. From the absurdity. The cruelty. I nearly died because of him, and here he was babysitting a fraud who trembled at her own shadow.
My back was an open wound, my body a map of suffering. But my heart? That was the part he’d truly destroyed. Shredded it with words, actions, betrayals.
I didn’t cry. Not then. Not ever again. I’d sooner choke on my own hurt than give him the triumph of seeing me break.
---
No flowers. No escorts. No family apologies. Just a nurse silently handing me discharge papers and a plastic bag containing my ruined dress and heels.
My father? “Abroad on business.” As always.
I hailed a cab to my villa. Every pothole made my ribs scream, but I sat still, stiff, forcing myself not to flinch. Pain had already become my companion—one I could carry like luggage.
Inside, I didn’t unpack. Didn’t shower. I sat on the velvet chaise, staring at my phone until my fingers dialed his number.
He answered on the second ring.
I didn’t give him room for a single word.
“I know it was you.”
Silence.
“I know you had me drugged, chained, whipped to the bone. Every scream—I know they were on your command.”
“How—”
“Doesn’t matter, Leander. Or should I say… Winston Salerno?” His sharp inhale bled through the receiver. I let a cold smile shape my mouth. “Whatever torment you gave me, I’ll carve back into you. Tenfold. That’s a promise.”
Then I ended the call.
