us," Sophia said, h

g in front of her car in the venue's driveway. He w

in their social circle, someone she thought she could trust. N

e ended the moment that altar remained empty. I am not a pawn, and I am certainly not a footnote in the Kingston legacy. If you do

s. He wasn't used to this jagged defiance from her. He looked at her, se

n't bluffing, Marcus stepped back and

ned her at all. She didn't know that at that very moment, her fiancé was bound and hidden away, a prisoner of Marcus's ruthless plot to seize Kingston Enterprises. To So

against the horizon. She pulled over at a deserted rest stop just pa

e chapel, the suffocating s

aining the useless wedding bands, and threw it into the pas

localized cramp blo

f metallic nausea washed over her. It was the same physical wrongne

ed with terrifying

he chaotic logistics of seating charts and floral arrang

ched. She was

ssible. I

up was smeared, her hair coming loose from its elaborate pins

. With Alexander

of a broken family-a pawn for boardrooms, a trophy for the media, or a target for the enemies who had clearly broken Alexander.

ar, her hand resting over her stomach like a shield. "We

nd merged back onto the highwa

n platform was a graveyard of fog and diesel exhaust. She had traded her couture gown f

of stale coffee and industrial cleaner-a stark, ground

the absolute essentials: her identification, her separate bank details, and the encrypted h

lted, then b

the glass. Sophia pressed her forehead against the cool pane, watching the distant Kingsto

e text message Marcus had sent from Alexander

il was dead. In her place was an architect who unde

nforgivingly blank page, she began listing her assets: her small personal inheritance, her m

pen was a strike against t

She began to sketch-not a wedding dress, but a stru

whispered to the darkn

fires meant to consume her. She would master the geometry of the world that had cas

el, the world outside vanishing into a

lieved in fairy tale

other side, Sophia closed the notebook. For the first time si