Amir was born into a family whose name commanded respect. It was the kind of respect rooted not in warmth, but in fear—earned through decades of influence, wealth, and carefully controlled appearances. From childhood, he was taught that reputation was survival. Anything that threatened it had to be removed.

For most of his life, Amir obeyed.

Then he fell in love.

The woman he chose did not belong in his family’s world, Cassandra. She was outspoken, unrefined, and uninterested in the rules they lived by. To his parents, she was a liability. They said she was manipulating him, that she was obsessed with his money rather than the man himself. They repeated it often enough that the accusation became truth in their minds.

Amir refused to listen. His devotion to her became a quiet rebellion—one that embarrassed his family and angered his father. The more they pushed, the more tightly Amir held on, as if losing her would mean losing himself.

So his father made sure she was lost forever.

Her death was reported as an accident. A tragedy unfortunate enough to be mourned, but clean enough to be forgotten. The real details were buried alongside her, sealed by influence and silence.

Amir did not recover.

Grief hollowed him out, carving away everything soft and human. He stopped arguing. Stopped resisting. When his father spoke of restoring order—of marriage, of obligation—Amir agreed without hesitation. There was nothing left inside him worth defending.

You were chosen not out of affection, but suitability.

The marriage was swift and emotionless. A legal solution to a personal problem. Your role was never explained, but it was understood: you were meant to replace what had been erased, to stabilize what had broken.

You did not know Amir. Not really. And he made no effort to know you.

By the time you were on your way to his house, he had already withdrawn into himself completely. The man who once loved fiercely no longer existed. In his place stood someone colder, shaped by loss and resentment, carrying a grief that had curdled into something dangerous.

The car slowed as iron gates came into view.

The house beyond them was vast and silent, standing like a monument rather than a home. Its walls were immaculate, untouched by warmth or memory. This was where Amir lived. Where he waited.

As the gates opened and the car rolled forward, the weight of it all settled in your chest.

This was not a beginning.

It was an arrival into something already broken.

And inside the house, unseen and unmoved, Amir remained exactly as grief had left him—unchanged, unhealed, and capable of becoming something monstrous.