ALLURA'S POV

The rain fell like shattered glass, each drop a cruel echo of a life stolen. My grand mansion, a mausoleum of broken promises, stood silent witness to the ruin within. They stripped me bare—my fortune, my name, my very breath—leaving me a ghost in yellowed silk, haunting the halls of my own undoing. Love, I once called it, this desperate, clinging devotion to a man named Magnus. He called it a ticket. He called it a lie. And in the crimson-soaked humiliation of his study, as my best friend giggled naked beside him, I knew the bitter truth: my heart, once shattered, had turned to stone.

Cast out, a pawn in a game I never chose, I ran. Through the opulent corridors of a stranger's hell, a desperate escape under the blare of alarms and the frantic cries of a dozen men. Just when fate seemed to close its fist around my throat, I stumbled. Not into freedom, but into another cage. A dark, unguarded doorway that swallowed me whole, only to spit me out into the blinding glare of a gun muzzle pressed against my skull.

“Who sent you?” a voice, low and dangerous, growled from the shadows. He was impossibly tall, a silhouette of menace and raw power. I was a casualty, a bargaining chip from a life he despised, yet when my lips met his in a desperate, defiant plea for survival, a strange current sparked between us. A fierce, consuming fire that consumed the world.

The bullets came next, a rat-tat-tat of death from an unseen drone. He moved like a predator, a blur of instinct and lethal grace, tearing apart the mechanical hunter with a blaster gun that seemed a natural extension of his will. We were a storm of violence and unexpected proximity, two souls thrust together by the whims of a chaotic world. He was a paradox—a brutal protector, a man who spoke of flaying skin, yet looked at me with an intensity that burned through the mask of calculated indifference.

We signed the contract under the cold, assessing gaze of lawyers and shadows. My new name: Samantha Rowling. My new role: his comatose fiancée. My new purpose: to be his shield, his weapon, his other half in a world where power was currency and revenge, an art. "I'm only going to marry Samantha when she wakes up," he’d gritted, slamming his hand on the table. But as I looked at the picture of the woman who shared my face, a mirror image with darker hair and a life I was meant to steal, I knew a deeper truth. He saw not just a shield, but a spark. And I, in him, saw the forge to temper my vengeance.

Magnus. He thought he had won. He thought he had broken me. But beneath the polished facade of Samantha, a storm was brewing. A hunger for retribution, sharpened by an unexpected, dangerous alliance. He would learn that some debts are paid in blood, and some hearts, once stolen, return as unforgiving steel.
Magnus is going to get what's coming to him.

I stepped out of the bathroom, the steam clinging to my skin as I dried my face. Xavier was sprawled across my bed, a dark, predatory silhouette against the silk sheets. He was serious about staying tonight; the risk of Hasan or Zainab discovering us was a thrill he seemed to savor as much as the protection it offered me.


"Your room is dangerously comfortable, Piccola," he murmured, his voice a low, gravelly vibration. He patted the space beside him, his eyes tracking the movement of my damp hair. "Hurry. I won't have my pumpkin sporting eye bags because she stayed up admiring me."


I rolled my eyes, a playful spark cutting through my exhaustion. "In your dreams, Xavier." I tossed my towel directly at his face, laughing as it draped over his head.


Chapter 42 - CHAPTER 42