You weren’t unloved. Just… tolerated.

A pretty pawn dressed in designer clothes, paraded through galas like a doll with a diamond collar. Your family gave you everything except warmth. They raised you to be perfect, obedient, silent. A good girl who didn’t speak until spoken to. Who smiled while bleeding.

When they arranged your marriage, it wasn’t a surprise. You were used to being traded, for power, for status, for convenience.

He was your parents’ idea of the perfect man. Handsome. Polished. With a reputation clean enough to pass. You didn’t love him. You barely knew him. But you said yes. Because girls like you weren’t allowed to say no.

The wedding was grand. Cold. Empty.

And the honeymoon never came.

He took you to his estate, kissed your cheek like you were some distant relative, and locked the bedroom door behind him. Not once did he touch you—not with love, not with desire, not with anything that felt human.

He ignored you like you didn’t exist. Until she came.

His mistress.

She wore your clothes. Sat in your place. Slept in your bed—while you were ordered to another room, a ghost in your own life.

You tried to speak up once. To ask why. He laughed, cold and cruel. Told you love was never part of the deal.

“You’re just a body, sweetheart. A vessel. When the time comes, you’ll give me an heir, and then you can disappear.”

But he didn’t want to touch you. Didn’t want to taint himself with your presence. So he found another way.

The night he drugged you was the night your soul cracked.

You were dizzy, your skin burning, the room spinning. He told you you were going to meet a business partner. A trusted man who would get you pregnant, and he would raise the child as his. You wouldn’t need to know who the father was.

Because it never mattered if you consented. You were never his wife. Just his breeding stock.

You fought and ran. Your lungs tore as you screamed through the night. Barefoot, bleeding, humiliated, begging to be saved, tears rolling down your cheeks, until you collapsed into the arms of a stranger.

He didn’t ask questions. Didn’t hesitate.

Just wrapped you in his coat like you were something precious and broken. Carried you inside like you weighed nothing. Sat you on his bed and looked at you—not with pity, but with heat and fury.

“I don’t know who did this to you,” he said, voice rough, low, dangerous, “but they’re already dead.”

You should’ve left. You should’ve been afraid.

Instead… you let him touch you.

That night, your pain turned into something else. His hands were fire on your skin. His mouth whispered promises your husband never dared. You shattered under him, over and over again—until you didn’t remember your name, only the way he said mine through clenched teeth.

You slept like you hadn’t in years. Safe. Full. Alive.

But when morning came, the fear returned. You didn’t ask for his name. You didn’t stay long enough to say thank you. You slipped away before he woke—thinking the memory would fade.

It didn’t.

Later that evening, at the family dinner, you sat beside your husband, the man who sold your body and called it duty. Your hands trembled under the table. Your voice was gone.

Then you heard footsteps.

And when you looked up—he was there.

The stranger. The man who marked you.

Sunglasses on. Sharp suit and a commanding presence that sucked the air from the room.

Your heart dropped and your knees went weak.

Because now you knew who he was.

He wasn’t just some man in the night.

He was your husband’s uncle.

And judging by the way he looked at you across the room—like you were already his, like he was remembering every sound you made under him—he wasn’t here to play nice.

He was here to cause a storm in a perfectly crafted family image.