Page 37 of Gilded Shackles
We stop just before the chapel doors.
Mother stands beside me, tall and proud and utterly unbothered, like she didn't just destroy me and expect me to thank her for it.
Something inside me refuses to stay quiet any longer.
"After today, you don't get to control me ever again," I say, my voice cold enough to borrow from her own playbook.
The backlash, the rage, the guilt... none of what I expect comes my way. Mother turns to me, her eyes as cold as stone.
She just exhales, like she's been waiting years to say what comes next.
"Good," she says, in the sweetest voice she's ever used on me. "You have been exhausting to manage."
I freeze. She adjusts one pointless fold in my sleeve like she's fixing a mannequin.
"You fight everything. You question everything. You make everything harder than it needs to be." Her tone never rises. "So yes. I'm relieved. I am done bending my life around your chaos."
It hits like getting slapped with ice water. I've spent years fantasizing about standing up to my mother, about breaking free. But in none of those fantasies did she simply... let go. Walk away like I didn't matter.
The last thing I expected was for her to sound like I was a job she could finally quit.
I open my mouth to tell her she can't talk like that, that she's my mother, goddamn it, and that's not how mothers love their girls. But nothing comes out.
Because for a split second, she actually looks lighter. Like freeing herself from me is happiness.
She doesn't even look at me when she adds, "Focus on not humiliating yourself. Or me." As if that's the last inconvenient burden I owe her. Twenty-six years, I think, and this is how she chooses to let me go.
A lifetime of swallowing my hurt, of trying to be the obedient, perfect daughter, burns up in a single second. I don't cry. But God, I want to.
The chapel doors open, and the sound hits first: soft strings, a faint murmur of guests shifting to stand. I step forward, and the long ivory aisle feels like a tunnel.
I swallow. Hard. Force air into my lungs. My voice scrapes out raw as I give my mother one last look.
"Right. Then it's goodbye," I say to the woman who held me back for far too long. My heart is hammering so loud my ribs ache, but I hold her stare until I see that first flicker of offense. Because I'm not begging. I'm not even breaking loud.
I'm just done.
And suddenly I'm walking toward a future I never wanted, because it's still better than the cage she built for me.
Everyone is staring. I feel heat on my cheeks and try not to think about how if I trip and faceplant, I will never recover socially as long as I live. My heart is kicking at my ribs like it wants out. My palms are sweating inside these silk gloves like I'm smuggling anxiety instead of fingers.
I see him.
Nikolai Ivanov.
He stands at the altar like he didn't walk out of hell but owns a controlling share. Broad shoulders, dark suit cut sharp enough to kill. Silver hair swept back like armor. His tattooed hands are clasped behind his back, ink dark against white cuffs, like he's afraid he might reach for me if he lets them free.
And his eyes.
Dear God.
Blue and burning and fixed on me like I'm the only thing in this church worth looking at. He is looking at me like he could devour me alive in front of all these people and not feel even a flicker of shame.
My pulse jumps like it's auditioning for acrobats, and I'm no longer walking toward him. I'm gliding, floating, or maybe just plain blacking out. I'm in my own astral projection where Nikolai is all I see.
He watches me come to him with thoughts that would be banned on national television. Eyes glazed, peeling me naked from head to toe, wondering what's beneath this dress.
My lungs forget what oxygen is. He was handsome before. He is lethal now.
