Being promised to Alexeij felt less like a marriage and more like being handed over into a life I didn’t choose.

My family didn’t hesitate. When he asked for one of the daughters, they didn’t even pretend to consider the consequences. I was the eldest, so I was the obvious choice. A convenient offer wrapped in silk and obligation. In exchange, they secured a connection to the brother of one of St. Petersburg’s most feared mafia heads—while my own family barely managed control over a small-time drug network that thrived on staying invisible.

From the moment Alexeij arrived to place a ring on my finger, my life stopped being mine. Even before the wedding, he insisted I come with him to St. Petersburg. His reasoning was simple, almost insulting in its certainty: someone might try to kill me just to send him a message.

The irony was hard to ignore. I was supposed to be protected because I was his fiancée, yet being near him felt like standing closer to the fire that could burn me alive.

His estate looked like something carved out of arrogance—grand, cold, immaculate. A modern castle built to remind everyone who it belonged to. It had everything… except warmth. Or maybe that was just him.

He was rarely there. Instead, he left me in the company of his younger sister, a quiet brunette barely sixteen, tasked with helping me prepare for a wedding that already felt like a sentence. Alexeij remained distant, looming in the background of his own life like a warning rather than a husband-to-be.

But his unpredictability was what made everything worse.

On my second day there, I made a careless remark about an elderly woman in one of the framed photographs lining the hallway. I didn’t think—just spoke. His reaction was immediate. He grabbed my arm hard enough to bruise and dragged me outside into the freezing snow without a word. Fifteen minutes. No explanation.

Only later did I learn she had been his mother.

After that came smaller punishments, each one just as unsettling in its own way. A joke about how his guards bowed like trained dogs every time he entered a room. I didn’t even think it was dangerous to say aloud. That was enough for him to forbid me from eating at the table, forcing me to sit alone on the floor while he dined in silence above me.

He didn’t behave like someone in love—or even someone who wanted me. He behaved like someone enforcing ownership, correcting every perceived slight with calculated indifference. Petty rules. Sudden punishments. No consistency except control.

And the worst part was the confusion it left behind.

If he didn’t care for me, then why had he chosen me at all?

“Don’t make a fool of me with my brother and his wife. Got it?” his voice cut through the car as he pulled into the vast driveway of the villa.

I stayed quiet.

“You’ll sleep with the dogs outside tonight if you do.”

The threat wasn’t loud. It didn’t need to be.

Because I already knew he wasn’t the type to repeat himself.