Prologue

There are a lot of things you can survive if you learn how to look pretty while breaking.

In front of the camera, I wore a smile like armor. My lipstick didn’t smudge, my heels didn’t shake, and my voice didn’t crack, not even when the press asked me the same question for the fifth time.

“Zephyra, is it true you slept with your sister’s fiancé?”

Click. Flash. Flash.

My smile didn’t move. I tilted my head slightly, the way I was trained to. “Next question.”

It didn’t matter how many times I said I wouldn’t answer it. They already made up their minds. Headlines spread faster than truth ever could.

"Socialite Zephyra Corvan in Fiancé-Stealing Scandal!

From Heiress to Homewrecker—The Downfall of Zephyra Corvan"

They loved to hate me. I gave them a show, and they devoured it.

What they didn’t know was… it wasn’t my story to explain. It never was.

Three days after the scandal exploded, I walked into my family’s mansion with shaking knees and a stubborn chin held high. Every step on the marble floor echoed louder than I expected. Or maybe I was just too aware of the silence.

Mother didn’t even look up when I entered her study. She poured herself tea. Pale rose-colored, delicate movements. Everything about her was fragile and sharp, like fine porcelain with cracks you weren’t allowed to acknowledge.

“You embarrassed us,” she said softly.

“I didn’t do anything.”

“Doesn’t matter. You’re in every paper in the country.”

My hands balled into fists. “They printed lies.”

“Lies become truth when people believe them.”

I stared at her. She still wouldn’t look at me. Not once. Not even when I whispered, “You believe them too?”

Her answer was the clink of her teacup against its saucer.

“You’re going to fix this.”

I almost laughed. “How, Mom? You want me to hold a press conference and cry?”

She finally raised her eyes then. “You’re going to marry him.”

Silence. A beat. Then...

“Marry who?”

She stood and walked over to the window, arms crossed. “Koven Elrik Mavros.”

The name tasted bitter the moment it left her lips. My blood ran cold.

“I’m sorry—what?”

“He agreed. He’ll clean your image, silence the press, and in return, you’ll marry him for a year.”

I blinked. “Are you insane?”

“No. I’m saving you.”

“You’re selling me.”

“To someone with power.”

My laugh this time was real. Broken, bitter. “You want me to marry a man who’s colder than steel, whose reputation is scarier than the mob’s, just so the Corvan name stays clean?”

My mother turned to me. Calm. Icy. Unmovable. “The engagement contract is being prepared. You’ll sign it tomorrow.”

I didn’t cry.

Not when the news broke.

Not when my sister refused to see me.

Not even when the man I loved stood behind someone else at the altar and said her name instead of mine.

But that night, I did.

Not because I was marrying someone I barely knew. Not even because I was being used like a pawn in some business playbook. But because no one asked me what I wanted.

They never had.

The room smelled like ink and expensive leather. A boardroom that felt more like a war zone. I sat across from him, fingers cold, lips pressed tight.

Koven Elrik Mavros.

He didn’t smile. Didn’t offer his hand. Just nodded at the man beside him, and the lawyer placed a thick folder in front of me.

“Read it,” Koven said, voice low and disinterested, as if this wasn’t the beginning of something that would ruin both our lives.

My eyes scanned the first page.

MARRIAGE CONTRACT AGREEMENT

Between Mr. Koven Elrik Mavros and Ms. Zephyra Aislyn Corvan

Twelve months. No intimacy unless mutually agreed. Public appearances required. Divorce to be filed on the 366th day.

Clause after clause, paragraph after paragraph. Cold, detached. Mechanical.

“Why are you doing this?” I asked quietly.

He finally looked at me.

His gaze was sharp. Not in a cruel way, more like he knew how to cut people open without using a knife. “Because you’re convenient.”

“I don’t like being used.”

He leaned forward. “Then you should’ve cleaned your name before the press did it for you.”

I hated him immediately. Not because he was rude, or because he treated me like a burden. I hated him because he was right.

We signed the contract the next day.

No ring. No flowers. No vows. Just papers and pens and cold silence.

The wedding was private. No guests. Just lawyers and our signatures.

I wore white, but not because I wanted to.

He wore black, probably because he always did.

When the judge declared us husband and wife, Koven didn’t even look at me. He simply walked out of the room and left me behind.

And that was the beginning of my new life as Mrs. Zephyra Corvan-Mavros.

They say the worst part of marrying a stranger is not knowing what you're walking into.

But for me, the worst part was knowing exactly what I was walking away from.

Love. Choice. Freedom.

I moved into his penthouse the same night. Everything was glass and silence and shadows. No warmth. No color. Just walls built high enough to keep emotions out.

He didn’t speak during dinner. Didn’t ask me how I liked the food. Didn’t care.

I stared at my untouched plate. “Are we going to ignore each other for twelve months?”

He didn’t even look up. “That would be preferable.”

My jaw clenched. “Do you treat all your wives like this?”

“You’re the first.”

“Lucky me.”

Nothing.

Not even a twitch.

I pushed my chair back. “Goodnight, Mr. Mavros.”

His voice stopped me at the stairs.

“Don’t open the third door on the left.”

I turned. “Why?”

“Just don’t.”

I didn’t ask again.

The tabloids called it a whirlwind romance.

"Koven Mavros Secretly Marries Scandalous Socialite!

Enemies to Lovers? Inside the Shocking Mavros-Corvan Union!

Is Zephyra Corvan Using Her Husband for Redemption?"

The press played us like puppets. But we stayed silent. We played the part. We smiled in photos. We stood close but never touched.

He was cold. I was distant.

He was quiet. I was tired.

We matched, somehow. Not because we fit. But because we were both broken in the same sharp way.

I started to learn his routine. He left early. Came back late. Barely said a word.

And then there were the nights he didn’t come home at all.

I never asked where he went. And he never told me.

But sometimes, I saw the blood on his knuckles. The way he flinched when a phone call came from an unknown number. The nightmares that made him lock his bedroom door even though I never knocked.

Koven Mavros was hiding something.

Something deep. Something dangerous.

And I was now his wife.

Even if it was only on paper.

The first time I caught him bleeding, it was past midnight. I heard the front door creak and padded down the stairs in silence.

There he was, shirt stained, left shoulder grazed.

I froze. “Are you hurt?”

He looked at me like I was a ghost.

“Go back to sleep,” he muttered.

“You’re bleeding.”

“It’s not yours to worry about.”

“But it’s mine to witness?”

He didn’t answer.

I stepped forward anyway. Reached for the towel hanging by the kitchen. When I pressed it to his wound, he hissed and grabbed my wrist.

“Don’t touch me.”

His voice was low. Threatening.

But I didn’t move. “Stop flinching. I’m not the one who hurt you.”

He stared at me.

And for the first time since we married, I saw something flicker in his eyes.

Pain.

Real, sharp, heavy pain.

Then it was gone.

Just like that.

He let go of my wrist and walked away.

They said marriage changes people.

But I don’t think it changed us.

It just revealed the parts we were too good at hiding.

Me? I learned how to disappear while smiling. How to laugh with a bruised heart.

Koven?

He learned how to destroy people without ever lifting a finger.

I didn’t know it yet, but I was standing on the edge of something far bigger than a scandal.

This contract wasn’t just about image.

It was a trap.

And I walked straight into it with eyes wide open.

Not knowing that behind every clause… was a secret he’d kill to keep buried.

And somehow, I was going to be the one to dig it up.

END OF PROLOGUE