The Billionaire’s Reluctant Bride

CHAPTER2

Alina’s pov

If I had to describe the engagement party in one word, it would be surreal.

Not in the magical, dreamlike way little girls imagine when they picture their weddings.

No.

This was the kind of surreal that made you feel like you were floating above your own body, watching someone else live your life.

The ballroom glistened with gold chandeliers and marble floors polished until they shone like mirrors. Strings of violins floated through the air, competing with the sharp scent of champagne and the bitter tang of expensive cigars.

Everywhere I looked, people smiled, the sharp, hungry kind of smiles that said they weren’t here to celebrate, but to watch. To gossip. To feast on the scandal of the Hayes girl being handed off to the Blackwell heir like an unwanted pet.

I kept my hands clasped tightly in front of me, nails digging into my palms, as if pain could anchor me in the middle of all that glitter. My dress, ivory silk chosen by Eleanor and of course it felt like a costume. Too tight, too revealing, too not me. The diamond necklace around my neck weighed heavier than a prisoner’s chain..

Everyone’s eyes followed me, whispers chasing me across the room like invisible claws. Poor thing. Sold like property. At least she’s pretty. Maybe he won’t despise her too much.

I wanted to disappear. To dissolve into the floor and let the marble swallow me whole.

“Smile, darling,” Eleanor murmured beside me, her perfectly manicured hand brushing down my arm as though she were soothing me. But the steel in her voice was unmistakable. “You look like a corpse.”

I forced my lips upward, though it felt more like baring my teeth.

Amber, standing on Eleanor’s other side, giggled under her breath. “A corpse might look livelier.”

Their laughter was soft, almost hidden under the music, but I heard it. I always heard it.

And then, the room shifted. The air grew heavier, sharper. A ripple of silence spread like a wave.

He had arrived.

Damian Blackwell.

The man whose name alone could silence boardrooms. The man who now owned not only our debts, but me.

He cut through the crowd like a blade—tall, broad-shouldered, dressed in a perfectly tailored black suit that fit him like sin. His presence commanded attention, demanded it, in a way that made everyone around him seem smaller.

His face was carved from marble, sharp and unreadable. Not handsome in the soft, approachable way that made you want to smile back, but in the way that made you want to run.

His eyes found me almost instantly. Dark, unreadable, a storm contained within two orbs. And when they landed on me, I swore my lungs forgot how to work.

He didn’t smile. Not once.

The crowd parted for him until he stood in front of me. Cameras flashed. A thousand eyes watched.

Damian leaned down, close enough that I could feel the ghost of his breath against my ear.

“This isn’t love, Alina,” he murmured, voice low and steady, meant only for me. “This is business. And I don’t lose.”

My stomach dropped to the floor.

The cameras captured us in that moment, me stiff and wide-eyed, him calm and composed. To them, it looked like intimacy. To me, it was a sentence.

I forced myself to stay upright, to keep my lips curved into something resembling a smile, though my insides screamed. I had been paraded, displayed, sold. And now the buyer was here to claim me.

The applause that followed was polite, almost mocking. Crystal glasses clinked. People cheered. And I stood there, trembling inside my borrowed skin, realizing that the life I had known, the fragile, sheltered little world I once clung to was officially over.

I belonged to Damian Blackwell now.

Not as his bride. Not as his partner.

As his property.