The Bride Who Never Said "I Do"
I didn't plan on leaving him at the altar.
Not in that blood-slicked wedding dress.
Not with my father's name carved into a corpse behind the chapel.
And definitely not with a gun tucked under my lace garter, warm from the kill.
But vengeance doesn't wait for cake and confessions.
It comes dressed in white, with mascara tears and a vow sharp enough to slit throats.
I was supposed to marry Cassian Morelli.
King of the coastal mafia.
Feared, worshiped, untouchable.
My enemy.
But also the man I've wanted since I was fifteen.
Dangerous.
Obsessive.
And now—betrayed.
The crowd had just risen when I turned, slow and sweet, like a lover about to confess her sins. His eyes met mine—stormy, dark, already suspicious. He sensed it.
He always did.
My hand slid from my bouquet, fingers curling around cold steel.
And I ran.
Not from fear.
Not from regret.
From everything they did to me.
Everything they made me.
And everything I was about to become.
---
Five Hours Later…
The desert wind stings like penance as I drive through dust and dusk in a car that isn't mine, still wearing the wedding veil of a woman I buried in the woods.
Literally.
Her name was Natalia Rossi. She died screaming. I kept her dress.
It fits me better anyway.
The further I get from the chapel, the harder my chest beats, like my heart's trying to claw its way out and finish the kill I left incomplete.
I didn't mean to feel anything.
But Cassian's eyes keep flashing in my memory—*not anger*.
Worse.
Hurt.
He didn't know it was a setup.
Didn't know my father bartered me like flesh to tie the families together.
Didn't know they locked me away for four years to make me obedient. Pretty. Poison.
Too bad for them, I came back with teeth.
---
I stop at a burned-out motel, flickering neon like a broken promise. Inside, it smells like bleach and betrayal. Good. I'm used to both.
In the cracked mirror, I study the woman staring back.
Scar on my collarbone. Hair pinned high with a blade hidden inside.
No innocence in those eyes.
Just the ghost of the girl I used to be.
Cassian used to call me *little ghost*.
Now I haunt him for real.
---
I don't sleep.
At 3:12 AM, the door handle jiggles.
Once.
Twice.
Then it clicks.
I'm already behind the door with the blade drawn.
But it isn't a thief.
It's him.
Cassian.
Bleeding.
Breathing hard.
Eyes like ice and fury.
"Hello, wife," he murmurs, voice rough as gravel.
My stomach flips.
"You tracked me."
He doesn't answer.
He just steps inside, slams the door shut, and pins me to it with a single hand to my throat—not to choke. Just to remind me.
He still owns me.
Even now.
Even after everything.
"Why?" he demands.
I lift my chin, defiant. "Which part? The murder or the dress?"
His jaw ticks. "Both."
"I didn't come to the altar to love you," I whisper. "I came to destroy everything your family stands for."
Something flickers in his eyes.
Regret? No.
Challenge.
"Then why," he growls, "do you look at me like you still want me?"
I could lie.
But he's already lifting the hem of the wedding dress I stole.
Already proving that love and hate aren't opposites.
They're just foreplay.