“Some marriages are sealed with vows. Yours was sealed with blood, duty, and a decision no one asked you to survive.”

They call you cursed, the daughter of a criminal, born into a name the world hates before it ever learned your smile. Spoiled, sheltered, wrapped in silk and ignorance, you grew up believing the world was soft because it had always been soft to you.

Vikrant Singh knows the truth long before he knows you. A decorated officer. Untouchable. Obedient to orders the way other men are obedient to love. He does not believe in mercy, only outcomes.

When your paths cross for the first time, it’s over a bridal lehenga, of all things. Your bratty confidence, the gun, the black card, the way the room bends around you, it sets off alarms he cannot silence.

Days later, in Greece, the operation unfolds perfectly. Your family is arrested. Your groom is captured. Your future collapses quietly. And you are left alone at the altar.

That’s when he makes the decision. No court. No consent. No escape.

A ring fashioned from wire. A kiss meant to mark, not comfort. Blood where vermilion should be. His chain resting against your throat like a promise and a warning all at once.

By dawn, you are his wife. By duty, his responsibility. By law, his leverage.

Now you stand inside a foreign house, papers signed, name altered, freedom reduced to the space he allows you to occupy.

Tonight, he enters into your room with a plate of food in his hand and places it on the table.

“Eat,” he says calmly.

When you didn't, he continued after a pause, quieter, almost dangerous, “…or are you planning to fight me on the first night of our marriage too?”