The dress arrived on Friday morning in a black garment bag so sleek and expensive-looking that Elara half-expected it to bite her. It wasn't delivered by a simple courier, but by a severe woman in a tailored suit who introduced herself as Claudette from the Blackwood family's "domestic staff."
She didn't smile. She didn't make eye contact. She simply hung the bag on the peeling hook behind Elara's apartment door—a hook that had previously held only worn cardigans and damp umbrellas—and said, "Mr. Blackwood expects you at the penthouse tomorrow at nine a.m. sharp. The ceremony is at ten. Do not be late." Then she was gone, leaving behind the faint, lingering scent of lemon polish and a heavy layer of unspoken judgment.
Elara's apartment—a studio in Queens with a persistent mildew smell and windows that rattled every time the subway passed—had never felt smaller or shabbier. The garment bag looked like an alien artifact, a piece of Adrian's world invading her sanctuary of poverty.
She unzipped it slowly, the sound of the zipper loud in the silence. White silk spilled out, cool and heavy against her fingers. It wasn't a pure, hopeful white; it was ivory—the color of old teeth, of bone, of surrender. The dress was deceptively simple: a sleeveless column with a high neck that looked like a choker, backless, with a slit that climbed to mid-thigh. It was the kind of dress that whispered wealth, the kind that said, I don't need to try because my money speaks for me.
Beneath it, in a velvet box, sat a pair of shoes. Stiletto heels sharp enough to be weapons. Beside them, a smaller box contained a single strand of South Sea pearls, each one glowing with a luminescence that seemed to come from within. The final touch made her breath catch: a garter. White lace, delicate, with a tiny sapphire sewn into the center.
The intimacy of it felt like a violation. Adrian—the man who hated her, who saw her as a debt to be collected—had chosen the very fabric that would touch her skin. Had someone measured her while she wasn't looking? The thought made her skin crawl with a cold, greasy film of dread.
Her phone buzzed. An unknown number.
"The dress fits?" Adrian's voice filled her ear without greeting, his tone as sharp as the silk in her hands.
"I haven't tried it on," she said, her voice tighter than she wanted.
"Try it. Now. Because if it doesn't fit, Claudette has a seamstress on standby. I won't have you looking like you dressed in the dark for our wedding photos. I want to see my investment."
The line went dead. Elara stared at the phone, then at the dress. For a wild moment, she considered burning it. But then she thought of the hospital bills. She stripped off her threadbare t-shirt and stepped into the silk. It slid over her skin like ice water. The fit was unnervingly perfect—the waist nipped, the bust curved exactly where it should.
In the cracked full-length mirror, a stranger stared back. The dress transformed her, making her look older, colder, and elegant in a way she'd never been. She looked like a martyr prepared for a gilded sacrifice.
She took a photo and sent it without a caption. Three dots appeared. Then his response: "You'll do."
No compliment. Just a confirmation of her status as an asset. Elara spent the afternoon at the hospital, sitting with her mother. "The new job starts tomorrow, Mama," she lied, her eyes burning as she watched the slow drip of the IV. "I'll be living at the employer's home, but I'll visit every day."
As she left, she bumped into Isabella at the nurses' station. The assistant's eyes swept over Elara's jeans with clinical disdain. "A word of advice? Don't cry at the ceremony. He hates public displays of emotion. He likes resilience—something that bends but doesn't break. At least not right away."
Elara stood in the hospital hallway, the sterile scent of antiseptic choking her. She wasn't just entering a marriage; she was entering a cage designed to test the exact point where her soul would snap.
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