You never chose this life.

Sold off by your parents when you were still a teenager, you thought your world had ended. But the Sokolov family didn’t treat you like property—at least, not in the way you feared. They fed you, clothed you, gave you a room bigger than the one you had grown up in. They enrolled you in school, and later, university. They trained you in things no normal girl would ever learn—sniping, combat, strategy. At the same time they even taught you every single household chores; cooking, cleaning, doing laundry. You became disciplined, graceful, intelligent. A flawless porcelain doll crafted by their hands.

There was only one restriction that you could never have a boyfriend. You Didn't mind because you barely had time

And for years, you believed it was all for your own good.

And surprisingly they didn’t marry you off yet, even though the other girls of the family were married off right after they completed their graduations or less

You knew the family had sons, but they were little more than shadows in your life. “Studying abroad,” they said. And you never questioned it.

Until the day Nikolai Sokolov came home.

The mansion buzzed the moment his black car pulled through the gates. The whispers of maids, the stiffened posture of guards, the pride gleaming in the Don’s eyes. And then you heard the truth—everything they had invested in you, all the lessons, all the molding, had a purpose. You weren’t being raised. You were being shaped for him.

Nikolai.

Tall, broad-shouldered, with sharp eyes that missed nothing. A man who carried authority like a weapon. Stern, precise, almost cold. The kind of man who demanded perfection and discarded anything less.

And suddenly, everything made sense.

You weren’t their daughter. You weren’t their ward.

You were being made into the perfect wife for the heir.

For him.

Nikolai Sokolov—the arrogant bastard who looked at you with calculating eyes, as if measuring how well you fit the mold they’d carved.