Chapter 1: The Night Before the Wedding
1235 Words
The lights were dim. Just the way Ethan liked it.
My breath hitched as his fingers slid up my thighs, rough and eager, tugging at the edge of my silk slip with the same recklessness he always brought to our late-night encounters.
“Aria,” he whispered, his voice husky with want. “You drive me f*****g insane.”
His lips crashed into mine before I could respond, pinning me against the cold marble countertop of his penthouse kitchen. I didn’t resist. I never did.
Because this wasn’t love. It was punishment.
I let his hands roam, let his mouth mark my skin like a brand, all while my mind spun elsewhere—far away from his heat, his touch, his moan of my name. It wasn’t him I wanted.
Not anymore.
But for now, he’d do.
His shirt was gone in seconds. Mine followed. Our bodies tangled, the air thick with sweat and something darker: the bitterness of something once sweet.
Ethan was desperate, possessive—like he sensed I was slipping away, like he knew this would be the last time. He grabbed my waist, lifted me onto the cold stone, and entered me with a guttural sound of need. I gasped, not from pleasure, but from the sheer brutality of it. He was always like this when he felt me drifting.
And I was drifting, all right.
The only problem was—he had no idea I was about to marry his father tomorrow.
I closed my eyes and let him take what he thought still belonged to him. And I let myself pretend—for one last time—that he meant something.
Twelve hours later, I stood in front of a mirror in a bridal suite worth more than my childhood home, draped in a Vera Wang gown, while a wedding planner fluttered around me like an anxious butterfly.
“You look breathtaking, Mrs. Blackwell,” she said, adjusting the delicate lace at my shoulder.
Mrs. Blackwell. I almost laughed.
They didn’t know I was about to become Mrs. Lucien Blackwell. Billionaire. CEO. Ethan’s father.
And the man I planned to destroy.
Lucien Blackwell wasn’t a man—it would be too easy if he were. No, Lucien was an empire. Six foot three, immaculately dressed, voice like steel wrapped in velvet, with ice-blue eyes that could freeze a room and a presence that demanded silence.
The first time I met him, I was nineteen, sitting on the steps of the courtroom that had just sentenced my father to fifteen years in prison for corporate fraud. A crime he didn’t commit.
Lucien had walked past me, surrounded by his legal team, untouched by the chaos he left in his wake. He didn’t even glance at me.
But I saw him.
And I remembered.
And I never forgot.
Seven years later, I found a way in. Through his son. Through seduction. Through pain.
And now, I was hours away from becoming his wife.
“Cold feet?” Lucien’s voice cut through the haze of memory.
I turned. He stood in the doorway of the suite, dressed in a black tailored suit that made him look like a king preparing for execution—or war.
“Never,” I said, smoothing the fabric of my gown. “You?”
His mouth curved slightly. “I don’t get cold feet. I get what I want.”
I walked toward him, heels clicking against the marble.
“And what exactly do you want, Lucien?”
He reached out, brushed a strand of hair from my face with a gentleness that unsettled me.
“You. For now.”
The emphasis on *for now* wasn't lost on me.
Neither of us believed in forever.
We weren’t lovers. We weren’t friends. We were wolves circling each other with wine glasses in hand, waiting for one to slip.
But the wedding must go on.
The ceremony was a media spectacle. Livestreamed. Spectators lined up outside. Drones buzzing overhead. The world watching as the Blackwell patriarch took a bride twenty years his junior.
The tabloids would eat it alive.
Ethan didn’t attend. Good. I wasn’t sure I could handle his eyes boring into me as I said “I do” to the man who raised him.
Lucien didn’t kiss me when we were pronounced husband and wife. He didn’t have to.
His hand rested on the small of my back like a brand.
We didn’t go to a reception.
Instead, a car whisked us away to his private estate outside the city—Blackwell Manor. Five stories of glass, steel, and secrets.
“You’ll sleep in the east wing,” Lucien said as the driver disappeared down the circular driveway.
“I thought we were married,” I replied, letting my tone drip with faux innocence.
“We are,” he said. “But I didn’t marry you for the pleasure of your company. This is a transaction. Don’t mistake it for anything else.”
I smiled.
“Oh, Lucien,” I said sweetly, stepping close enough to feel the heat of his body. “I never do.”
I kissed him then.
Hard. Fast. Just once.
Then I walked past him into the mansion, leaving him standing alone.
He wasn’t the only one who could play cold.
The next two weeks passed like a shadow. I attended meetings. Sat beside him at corporate dinners. Played the dutiful wife in public, the silent ghost in private.
Until the night he called me into his study.
“You lied,” he said without preamble, tossing a folder onto the desk.
I picked it up. Inside were photos of me and Ethan—on the balcony, in the elevator, in his bed.
My stomach twisted, but I didn’t flinch.
“I didn’t lie,” I said. “You just didn’t ask the right questions.”
Lucien’s eyes darkened.
“You were sleeping with my son days before our wedding.”
I tilted my head.
“I was ending things.”
He stepped around the desk, stopping inches from me.
“You’re not as clever as you think, Aria.”
I met his gaze.
“No,” I said softly. “I’m far more dangerous.”
Silence stretched between us like a live wire.
Then, suddenly—he grabbed me.
I gasped as he pushed me back against the bookshelf, his mouth claiming mine in a kiss that had nothing to do with affection and everything to do with fury.
His hands roamed, hard and unrelenting, yanking down the zipper of my dress as if it offended him.
“You want to play games?” he growled against my throat. “Let’s play.”
I didn’t stop him.
I met him, tongue for tongue, teeth for teeth, my fingers tugging at his belt as if this was the final war and our bodies were weapons.
And maybe they were.
Maybe this was how we destroyed each other.
He lifted me, carried me to the desk, and cleared it with one sweep of his arm. Papers scattered. Glass shattered.
He didn’t wait.
And I didn’t ask him to.
Because in that moment, we weren’t enemies.
We weren’t husband and wife.
We were something ancient. Something brutal.
Something that knew no boundaries.
And in the morning, neither of us would say a word about it.
We didn’t have to.
The war had begun.
- Writer
