The Billionaire’s Reluctant Bride

CHAPTER4

Alina’s POV

The night refused to leave me alone.

Even after the last guest had gone, even after the chandeliers dimmed and the music faded into silence, I carried the weight of that ballroom home with me. The laughter, the whispers, the cameras flashing like lightning against glass all of it clung to my skin, heavy and suffocating.

By the time I made it to my room, I felt like I’d been scraped raw. The satin dress still clung to my body, wrinkled and heavy, smelling faintly of perfume and sweat. My hairpins dug into my scalp. The glittering bracelet Eleanor insisted I wear pinched my wrist. Everything about me felt borrowed, staged, suffocating.

I wanted to rip it all off.

But instead, I sat on the edge of my bed, hands limp in my lap, staring at nothing. The silence here was different from the balcony’s. It wasn’t peaceful. It was empty.

My chest hurt.

I thought about Damian. About the way his eyes had cut into me on that balcony, about the way his words lingered in the air long after he’d walked back inside. “This isn’t love. This is survival”, those words keep replaying in my head like a broken record.

I hated him for saying it. I hated him for being right.

Because what was I, if not a pawn in their survival game?

I tipped my head back and blinked at the ceiling, fighting the sting in my eyes. My mother’s portrait hung there, just above the dresser. Not large, not grand, just a simple frame of a smiling woman with kind eyes. She looked like she believed the world was worth loving. She looked like hope.

“Would you hate me for this?” I whispered into the silence. “For agreeing? For not fighting harder?”

Of course, there was no answer.

She’d been gone since I was twelve, taken by an illness that even the Hayes fortune couldn’t fix. Some part of me had always believed that if she’d lived, none of this would have happened. She would have protected me. She would have stood between me and Eleanor’s schemes, between me and Father’s debts, between me and Damian’s cold bargain.

But she wasn’t here.

And I was alone.

I curled onto the bed, dress and all, hugging my knees to my chest. The fabric itched, the sequins dug into my skin, but I didn’t care. I needed to hold something together, even if it was only myself.

I closed my eyes, but sleep didn’t come. Memories did.

I remembered being ten years old, standing in the garden with my mother. She’d handed me a daisy chain she’d made while we sat together in the sun. “The world will try to take from you, Alina,” she’d said. “But don’t let it take your heart. That’s the one thing they can’t buy or steal.”

Back then, I hadn’t understood what she meant. Now, I wished I didn’t.

Because Damian Blackwell wasn’t just taking my freedom. He was threatening my heart.

I shifted, burying my face into the pillow. My chest ached with the weight of it all—Eleanor’s smug smile, Amber’s laughter, Father’s desperate eyes, Damian’s shadow across every corner of the night.

I wanted to scream. I wanted to cry. But all that came was silence.

At some point, I must have drifted into a restless sleep, because when I opened my eyes again, dawn was bleeding pale light into my room.

The dress was wrinkled beyond repair. My mascara had left black smudges across the pillow. My body felt sore, stiff, like I’d been carrying bricks all night.

And maybe I had.

Dragging myself upright, I caught sight of myself in the mirror. My hair was a tangled mess, my eyes puffy and red, the necklace around my throat sitting like a shackle instead of jewelry.

For a moment, I didn’t recognize myself.

And then I did.

This was Alina Hayes: the girl who had nothing left of her own. Not her name, not her choices, not even her future.

A knock at the door jolted me from the thought. Sharp, impatient. Eleanor.

“Alina,” her voice cut through the wood, smooth and commanding. “Breakfast in twenty minutes. Wear something respectable.”

I stared at the door, heart sinking, before finally answering in a voice that didn’t sound like mine. “Yes.”

When her footsteps faded, I pressed a hand against my chest, as if I could keep my heart from caving in on itself.

Respectable. That was all I would ever be to them. A respectable bride. A respectable pawn. A respectable sacrifice.

But not happy.

Never happy.