Wedding prep hall

*Three Days Later — The Penthouse, Kaine Tower*

The dress didn’t look like a wedding dress.

It looked like armor.

White. Heavy. Lace that crawled up her throat like fingers. A train long enough to trip a murderer. The veil was thick enough to hide a body.

“Mr. Kaine selected it personally,” the head stylist, a woman named Vivienne with cheekbones that could cut glass, said. She didn’t smile. People in Damien’s orbit didn’t smile. They assessed. “He said ‘classic, intimidating, and unapproachable.’ I think we nailed it.”

Alina stood on the raised platform in the middle of Damien’s living room. Living room. Right. More like a lobby for a bank that only served God. Floor-to-ceiling windows. Furniture nobody sat on. A view of the city that made her feel like she was falling even standing still.

Three stylists circled her with pins in their mouths. Two assistants tapped on tablets. One guy just stood there holding a ring box like it might explode.

“Mrs. Kaine-to-be, could you lift your chin? We need to measure the veil.”

_Mrs. Kaine-to-be._

Alina wanted to throw up. She’d been _Alina Reyes_ for 21 years. She’d been _mija_ for 21 years. Now she was a hyphen. A footnote to a man who’d bought her twice.

She lifted her chin.

The pin pricked her neck. She didn’t flinch.

“Your father’s surgery was successful,” Damien’s voice came from behind her.

He hadn’t announced himself. He never did. He just _appeared_, like a problem you forgot you had.

Alina went rigid. The stylists scattered like he was a storm front. In five seconds the room was empty except for them and the dress that weighed more than her guilt.

She didn’t turn around. Couldn’t. If she looked at him, she might do something stupid. Like cry. Or thank him. Or try to claw his eyes out.

“How is he?” She asked the window. The city blurred.

“Stable.” Damien’s footsteps were silent on the marble. “Dr. An said the next 72 hours are critical, but the nanite-assisted graft is holding. If he makes it to Saturday, his odds jump to 84%.”

_Nanite-assisted._

The word snagged in her brain. The Kaine Foundation was famous for experimental tech, but nanites? In a heart?

“Thank you,” she said before she could stop herself. It tasted like acid.

“Don’t.” He was closer now. She could feel him. Cold. Controlled. Like standing next to a glacier. “I didn’t do it for you. I did it because a dead father-in-law is bad optics for the wedding photos.”

There it was. The Damien Kaine she’d married on paper 48 hours ago. Transactional. Brutal. Honest in the worst way.

She finally turned.

He was in a black suit. No tie. Top button undone like he’d been working. Dark circles under his eyes that hadn’t been there in Ep 1. The man looked like he hadn’t slept since he signed Addendum A.

Good.

“Is that why you picked the dress?” She gestured to the monstrosity swallowing her. “Bad optics if I look happy?”

Something flickered in his gray eyes. Amusement? No. That would require a soul. “I picked it because my board members’ wives wear dresses like that to remind everyone they’re untouchable. If you’re going to be Mrs. Kaine, you don’t get to look vulnerable.”

He stepped onto the platform. Into her space. Always into her space, like he was reclaiming territory.

“Vivienne says you haven’t chosen a ring yet.” He nodded to the box the assistant had left on the glass coffee table. “Pick one. The media will notice if your hand is bare.”

Alina stepped down from the platform. The dress rustled like dead leaves. “I don’t want your rings.”

“You don’t get to want.” He said it without malice. Just fact. Like explaining gravity. “You signed a contract, Alina. Clause 3.1: _Party B will maintain the appearance of a committed, loving spouse in all public and private venues deemed necessary by Party A._ That includes jewelry.”

He opened the box himself.

Eight rings. Diamonds. Sapphires. One with a ruby the size of a bullet. Each one probably cost more than her childhood home.

“Pick,” Damien said. “Or I pick for you. And you won’t like what I choose.”

Alina’s hand shook. Not from fear. From rage. She grabbed the smallest diamond. A simple solitaire. Platinum band. It was still obscene. Still too much.

“This one.”

Damien took it. He didn’t ask. He just grabbed her left hand. His fingers were cold. Always cold. He slid the ring on. It fit. Of course it fit. He knew her ring size. He probably knew her blood type and her childhood trauma score.

He didn’t let go of her hand.

“Three weeks,” he said, eyes on the ring, not her face. “Three weeks until the wedding. Until then, you stay here. The penthouse is secured. Your mother is in a safe house upstate. She tries to contact the press again, the deal is void and your father’s care ends.”

Alina yanked her hand back. “You’re threatening my mother?”

“I’m stating terms.” He finally looked at her. Really looked. And for a second, she saw it again — that crack in the glass from Ep 3. Exhaustion. Something that might’ve been guilt, but was probably just a headache. “My father owns half the police in this city, Alina. If she talks, he won’t arrest her. He’ll erase her. And then he’ll erase your dad to ‘tie up loose ends.’”

_His father._

The man from the sub-basement. The man who said _increase Subject A’s dosage_.

“You keep saying ‘my father’ like you’re not both named Kaine,” Alina hissed. “Like you’re not both monsters.”

Damien’s jaw ticked. Once. “My father and I want different things. He wants control. I want my company. Sometimes those goals align.” His voice dropped. “This time, they don’t.”

He turned to leave. Then stopped.

“The penthouse is secure, but the staff reports to me. If you need anything — food, clothes, books — tell Maria. She’s the head of house. Don’t try to leave. The elevator requires my fingerprint. The stairs are locked. The windows don’t open.”

“A prison, then,” Alina said. “At least call it what it is.”

Damien looked over his shoulder. “A gilded cage is still a cage, Miss Reyes. I never claimed otherwise.”

The door closed behind him with a soft, expensive _click_.

*That Night — 2:13 AM*

Alina couldn’t sleep.

The dress was gone. She was in an oversized t-shirt she found in a drawer. Probably his. It smelled like cedar and nothing.

The penthouse was too quiet. Too big. She kept expecting to hear hospital machines. Instead she heard her own heartbeat.

She padded barefoot into the kitchen. The fridge was stocked like a grocery store had exploded. Fruit. Water. Meal kits with instructions in three languages.

She grabbed water and froze.

There, on the stainless steel of the fridge door, was her reflection.

And behind her reflection, in the glass of the cabinets, was a red light. Small. Blinking.

A camera.

Mounted in the corner, disguised as a fire sprinkler.

She wasn’t just in a cage. She was in a zoo.

Rage was a living thing in her chest. She grabbed a knife from the block. Not to hurt anyone. To feel like she could.

She turned it toward the camera.

And the world _tilted_.

One second she was in the kitchen.

The next, she was on the floor.

On her knees. Knife clattered somewhere to the left. Her head was pounding. Her vision swam. The last thing she remembered was the red light blinking.

Then... nothing.

Blank.

How long? Seconds? Minutes?

She pushed up, gasping. Her palms stung. She looked down.

The marble floor under her hands was _cracked_.

A hairline fracture, spiderwebbing out from where her left hand had been.

Alina stared.

She wasn’t strong. She’d never been strong. She could barely open jars. She’d dropped out of nursing school because she couldn’t move patients.

But the marble was cracked.

And her left shoulder blade was burning.

She stumbled to the bathroom. Yanked the t-shirt off. Turned her back to the mirror.

There it was. The scar from Ep 3. Small. Round. Like a cigarette burn, but deeper.

It was red. Inflamed. And there were faint lines under her skin around it, like veins, but glowing. Faintly. Silver.

_Increase Subject A’s dosage._

Damien Sr.’s voice echoed in her head from the sub-basement footage she wasn’t supposed to have seen.

_What did they do to me?_

*Next Morning — Kaine Tower, 55th Floor, Damien’s Office*

Damien didn’t look up when Maria announced her. “Miss Reyes is here to see you, sir.”

He was reading three screens at once. Stock tickers. Legal briefs. A security feed of the lobby. He looked like he hadn’t slept either.

“You installed cameras,” Alina said. No hello. No preamble. “In the kitchen. In the living room. Probably in the bedroom too.”

Now he looked up. Gray eyes flat. “Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because my father tried to kill the last woman he thought I cared about.” He said it like he was commenting on the weather. “Car bomb. 2019. She wasn’t even my girlfriend. Just a PR intern he thought was a ‘distraction.’ I don’t take chances with assets.”

_Assets._

Not people. Not wives. Assets.

“I’m not your asset,” Alina said.

“You’re my wife on paper. That makes you his target.” Damien leaned back. “The cameras are for your protection. My father’s security team can’t get to you if I’m watching 24/7.”

“Or,” Alina said, stepping closer to his desk, “they’re for you to watch Project V. To see what his drugs do to me.”

The room went dead silent.

Damien’s face didn’t change. But his hand, resting on the desk, curled into a fist. Once. Then flat again.

“How do you know about Project V?” His voice was soft. Dangerous soft. The kind of soft that came before someone got ruined.

“I saw your tablet in Ep 3. _Subject A: Compatible. Proceed with Phase One._” Alina lifted her shirt an inch, just enough to show the edge of the scar. “What did he inject me with? And don’t tell me you don’t know. You’re Damien Kaine. You know everything.”

For a full ten seconds, Damien didn’t speak. He just looked at her. Then he stood. Walked around the desk. Too close. Always too close.

“I didn’t know until after the first night,” he said, and the words sounded like they cost him. “My father has been running trials through the Foundation for years. Performance enhancers. Neuro-stabilizers. Stuff he sells to militaries I don’t ask about. He needed a test subject with a specific genetic marker. Your dad’s medical files were in our system because Carmen applied for a grant five years ago. You had the marker.”

He reached out, but didn’t touch her. His hand hovered over her shoulder, over the scar. “He poisoned your dad to make you desperate. He pushed your mom to me. And he dosed you the night of the ‘sale.’ Low dose. Just to see if you’d bond to the nanites.”

_Bond to the nanites._

Alina stepped back. “And you? Did you know when you... when we...”

“No.” The word was immediate. Hard. “I thought you were a contract. I didn’t know you were an experiment until I saw the file at 3 AM. That’s why I voided it. I wasn’t going to pay my father for his research.”

He ran a hand through his hair. The first un-controlled gesture she’d ever seen from him. “But then he threatened to kill your dad for real. And I needed a wife. So I wrote a new contract. One where I control the variables.”

“Variables,” Alina repeated. “Is that what I am?”

“Yes.” He didn’t lie. “And no. You’re also the only person in this building who isn’t afraid of me. You’re the only one who looks at me like I’m the villain. Everyone else looks at me like I’m the prize.”

He was so close she could see the exhaustion in his eyes. The cracks in his glass house.

“My father thinks he’s using you to control me,” Damien said. “I’m using you to destroy him.”

He finally touched her. Just his fingers, brushing her wrist. Where her pulse was hammering.

“Clause 10,” he whispered. “_In the event of mutual enemy, partnership overrides ownership._”

Alina stared at him. At the man who bought her, who didn’t pay, who married her, who was now offering her revenge instead of money.

“Prove it,” she said. “Prove you’re not him.”

Damien held her gaze. Then he did something she didn’t expect.

He took her hand, turned it over, and pressed a keycard into her palm.

“Maria’s fingerprint. The elevator. The stairs. The windows.” His thumb brushed her knuckles. “You’re not a prisoner anymore, Alina. You’re a partner.”

He let go. “But if you run, he’ll kill your dad. And if you stay, he’ll try to kill you. Pick your poison.”

*Sub-Basement — 1:00 AM*

Damien Sr. watched the office feed. He saw the keycard. He saw his son’s hand on Alina’s wrist.

He smiled.

“Phase Two is ahead of schedule,” he told the lab coat. “She knows. He told her. Perfect.” He zoomed in on Alina’s face. On the anger there. “Pain makes weapons, doctor. And rage makes them unstoppable.”

He tapped a button. On screen, Alina’s vitals appeared. Heart rate: 112. Nanite integration: 31% and spiking.

“Increase the dosage again,” Damien Sr. said. “I want to see what Subject A does when she realizes she can crack more than marble.”

*To Be Continued...*

*Author’s Note*: She cracked the FLOOR and Damien just gave her the keys?! Is he saving her or setting her up? Ep 5 drops Wednesday. Comment “NANITES” if you need to know what Project V really is.

---

*

***Download NovelToon to enjoy a better reading experience!***