SARA

I hate my family. Period.

Arranging a marriage is just a polite term for a state-sanctioned transaction. In an Indian household, custom is the heavy velvet curtain they use to smother your choices.

I never wanted a meet-cute with a curated stranger, a man whose favorite color and career goals were pre-approved by a committee of aunts. I wanted something that burned. Something jagged. But destiny didn't give me one.

"What are you dreaming about?" Pari's voice sliced through the bass-heavy air of the club.

She was a blur of motion, her long hair whipping like a dark silk fan as she moved in sync with the strobe lights. She looked effortlessly free, a half-full glass of amber liquid tilting precariously in her hand.

I leaned into her, the scent of expensive perfume and sweat thick between us. "Marriage."

"Oh, girl. Again?" She slowed her pace, bracing a hand against the sticky mahogany of the bar counter to steady her world. "Still thinking about him?"

"Not in a million years," I said, my voice as flat as the club's soda water. "I wasn't thinking about my fiancé. I was thinking about the concept of the cage."

Pari signaled the bartender for a refill. When the glass arrived, she slid it toward me, the ice clinking a frantic rhythm. I shook my head, my jaw tight.

"No. I'm not drinking."

"It's fun, Sara," she insisted, her eyes glassy with a soft, hazy conviction. She waved a hand toward the dance floor—a heaving mass of bodies losing their minds to the beat. "Look. It's okay to let go sometimes. To just... forget the world and worries exists."

She downed the shot in a single, practiced gulp. I watched the muscles of her throat move and felt a pang of envy. I wanted to forget, too. But as a politician's daughter, my sobriety was my only armor.

If I fell, if I made a scene, the scandal wouldn't just be mine but it would be a whole headline. Because this world loves to blame everything on a women.

"Anyway," Pari slurred, her eyes widening into an exaggerated, puppy-like stare. "What were you saying?"

"What if I just got kidnapped?" I asked. The question felt heavy, almost hopeful.

Pari blinked, her brain struggling to process the shift. "I'll send an army," she promised with a lopsided, drunken grin. "I'll save you, sweetie. No worries."

I let out a low grunt of frustration. She was too far gone to hear the desperation underneath the hypothetical. To anyone else, being the daughter of a powerful politician meant safety. To me, it meant a target on my back that felt more like a promise of death than an escape.

I reached for my phone, checking for the third time in ten minutes for a message that wasn't coming. Suddenly, the air behind me shifted. The temperature seemed to drop, and before I could blink, the phone was plucked from my fingers.

"Hey!"

I spun around, the protest dying in my throat as I met a pair of eyes that had haunted my nightmares and my daydreams in equal measure.

Zavian Moretti. My childhood rival, my constant shadow, and the person who knew exactly which buttons to press to make me lose my mind.

"Don't you have basic senses, you bastard?" I yelled over the thumping music.

Zavian didn't answer with words. He stepped into my personal space, an invasive species of leather and expensive cologne. His arm hooked around my waist, firm and unyielding, hauling me flush against the hard planes of his chest. He leaned down, his lips ghosting against the shell of my ear.

"I can make your senses come alive, Dimple," he murmured, his voice a low vibration that traveled straight down my spine. "Do you really want to see?"

He tilted his head, the tip of his nose brushing mine in a gesture that was far too intimate for two people who supposedly hated each other.

"Wow, wow," Pari burped, leaning against the bar for support. A slow smile spread across her face. "Didn't know you were coming, Zavian."

"Even I didn't," he replied, his eyes never leaving mine. He pulled me tighter, his grip turning me into a captive audience. I shoved against his shoulders, but it was like trying to move a marble statue.

"Behave yourself, Zavian," I hissed, my heart hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs. "Take your hands off me unless you've developed a death wish."

He didn't flinch. Instead, a slow, predatory smirk pulled at the corner of his mouth.

"Zavian!" I snapped, but he ignored me, reaching past me to grab a glass from the counter after shoving my phone into his pockets. He moved with a terrifying fluidity, holding me as if I were a prize he had already won.

"I am not a toy. Fucking move."

"Mind your language, Sara," he warned, his tone darkening. He drained the glass in one go, the amber liquid disappearing behind his teeth. He slammed the glass back onto the wood with a finality that made me jump. "Or you might find yourself facing consequences you aren't prepared for."

"The only consequence here is going to be yours"

"For touching me," I retorted, wriggling against his iron like grip.

"I haven't even started touching you yet, dimple," he mocked, his fingers digging slightly into the soft curve of my waist, anchoring me to him. "Is this your way of asking me to begin?"

"And for your information and your very limited knowledge, I am getting married. This," I said, gesturing to the space between us that he had utterly violated, "isn't right."

Zavian didn't flinch. He reached into his pocket with the slow, deliberate grace of a predator, pulled out a cigarette, and lit it. The flame flickered in his eyes for a second, casting a devilish glow over his sharp features. He exhaled, blowing a plume of gray smoke directly into my face. It smelled like expensive tobacco.

"There is nothing right or wrong in my world, dimple. There is only what I want. No questions." His voice was a low, velvet rasp that made my skin crawl and tingle all at once.

"Stop being a joke, Zavian. There's something called a moral compass. You can't just... have someone's wife." I stressed the last words.

"Fiancée," he corrected, his eyes tracking the movement of my lips.

"Soon-to-be wife," I countered, my voice trembling with a mix of fury and something I refused to name.

"If I want it, I have it, Sara." He took another slow puff, the tip of the cigarette glowing a bright, angry orange. "Someone's fiancée... soon-to-be wife... it doesn't matter. If I want, I take it."

"It's mine" he said, staring at me as if the words were meant for me. But no, he didn't mean me.

I inhaled sharply, the smoke stinging my lungs. I was looking into the eyes of the boy who had once killed a stray cat with his bare hands because it dared to scratch his sister. He wasn't just a rival. He was a psychopath who viewed the world as a collection of things to be broken or owned.

"You hate me, Zavian," I whispered, stating the one fact that he won't argue with.

"That's the only reason I haven't ruined you yet, Sara," he said, his tone as casual as if he were commenting on the weather. "The hate makes it interesting. If I liked you, we wouldn't be taking about the touches and spaces." He pauses looking into my eyes.

"I would have fucked every hole of yours." He whispered in my ears which sent a shiver down my spine.

"Zavian!" A man's voice barked from the shadows of the VIP section, calling him back to his dark kingdom.

Zavian leaned in one last time, his grip on my waist tightening until it bruised. "Next time you tell me I can't have you, I'll fuck the senses right out of your body and take what's mine, my dimple."

He stepped back, the sudden absence of his heat leaving me cold. He tossed my phone back to me. A dismissive gesture and disappeared into the crowd without a backward glance.

I stood there, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird. I hated him. I hated the way he moved, the way he spoke, and the way he looked at me like I was a puzzle he was tired of solving but couldn't stop playing with.

But I didn't come here for a ghost from my past. I came for my future.

My phone buzzed. A blue dot pulsed on the map—the location of my fiancé. I used his contact to track his location because I wanted to surprise him. I wanted to be the heroine of my own intense romance, the woman who didn't just wait for the man to act.

The tracker led me away from the thumping bass of the main floor and toward a corridor of private suites. I noticed a text from Pari—she'd hitched a ride with someone else. Typical.

I stopped in front of Room 204. My hand hovered over the wood, ready to knock, when a waiter approached with a silver tray and a chilled bottle of wine. I stepped back, slipping into the shadows of a recessed doorway to let him pass. I'd wait for him to leave, then I'd walk in and see the look of pure joy on my fiancé's face.

The waiter knocked. The door swung open.

It wasn't my fiancé who answered. It was a woman.

She was a mess of tangled hair and smeared lipstick. Her silk dress was twisted, and even from the shadows, I could see the angry, fresh hickeys blooming like bruises across her throat.

"Baby! The wine's here!" she chirped, her voice thick and sugary.

"Get it, baby," a voice groaned from inside.

My blood turned to ice. I knew that voice. I'd heard it in a dozen polite phone calls and over formal dinners with our parents.

I blinked, my vision blurring. No. This is a mistake. I'm imagining it. With trembling fingers, I dialed his number. I watched through the crack in the door as the woman picked up a phone from the nightstand. She glanced at the screen, her swollen lips curling into a sneer.

"Who is it?" My fiancé walked into view, shirtless, his skin flushed. He wrapped his arms around her waist, pulling her back against him.

"Some 'Business 9' contact," she said, showing him the screen.

He didn't even hesitate. He swiped red, declining the call, and tossed the phone onto the bed like it was trash. He took the wine from the waiter, kicked the door shut with his heel, and a second later, a sharp, high-pitched moan echoed through the wood.

Business.

To the world, I was a politician's daughter. To my family, I was a pawn. And to the man I was supposed to marry, I was just a line item in a ledger.

Life can't be more perfect.

The memory of that first meeting feels like a slow acting poison in my veins.

"Are you a virgin?"

He had asked it so casually, as if inquiring about my favorite color or my preferred coffee roast as the first question. I remembered the way the air had left my lungs, the sudden, sharp prickle of humiliation. I didn't like it - not the question, and certainly not the way he is determining women's based on their virginity.

I countered with a strong why which clearly reflected my rage for his question. He had offered me a smile.

"I'm okay with anything, really," he'd lied, his voice a smooth, practiced silk. "But I prefer a virgin. I want to be the first in everything. I want to be the one who teaches you." He'd even leaned in, his tone dropping to a whisper. "I can be patient. I can be gentle. I think women like you are just... more loyal."

Lies. Beautiful, polished, shimmering lies designed to cover the rot underneath.

He didn't want loyalty; he wanted an untouched canvas he could spoil at his leisure while he spent his nights in dark rooms with women who left marks on his neck.

He wanted a "pure" wife to display to the world like a trophy, a silent testament to his status, while he lived a life of shadowed debauchery.

The irony was a jagged blade in my gut. He wanted me to be the anchor for his reputation while he drifted in a sea of filth.

I stared at the door where I'd heard those moans, my knuckles white as I gripped my phone. Every gentle word he'd ever spoken felt like a slap now. He wasn't waiting for me out of respect; he was waiting because he already had his fill elsewhere. I was just the Business 9 contact.

Trust is a fragile thing, and he had crushed it under his designer heels in a humid hotel room while I stood in the hallway like a fool with a surprise in my pocket.

The tears that prickled my eyes weren't for him. But for my family, I am sure they knew about him yet they were ready to marry off their daughter.

To them, a politician's daughter is a currency; as long as the exchange rate stayed high, they didn't care if the buyer was a manwhore or a monster.

I wiped my eyes with a shaky hand, the blurred lights of the club reflecting in the dampness of my palms.

I stumbled back into the main hall, the bass vibrating in my teeth. I didn't care about my reputation anymore. I didn't care about the "Business 9" contact in my phone. I grabbed a glass of amber liquid from a passing tray and downed it. Then another. And another.

I wanted to drown the image of those marks on her neck. I wanted to burn the sound of her moans out of my ears.

"Hi, baby."

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