Valentina arrived at exactly ten a.m. with the same military precision that defined her existence. But today, the air she brought with her wasn't just cold; it was somber. Her assistants carried only one garment bag—heavy, black, and as ominous as a funeral shroud. The penthouse, usually a vacuum of silent luxury, felt charged with a different kind of energy. The sunlight hitting the marble floors seemed paler, weaker.
"Mr. Blackwood's specific request for the opera gala tomorrow," Valentina said, her voice clipped and unusually hollow. For the first time, she didn't meet Elara's eyes. She moved to the center of the room and unzipped the bag with a slow, rhythmic pull of the metal teeth.
The dress emerged like a pale specter from a forgotten grave.
It was ivory chiffon, but not the bright, hopeful white of a bride. This was an aged, tea-stained ivory, the color of old lace and fading memories. The cut was vintage, elegant in a way that spoke of a different era—delicate cap sleeves, a modest sweetheart neckline, and a full, dramatic skirt that looked like it would whisper secrets when she moved. It was breathtakingly beautiful. And it was hauntingly familiar.
Elara's breath caught in her throat, a sharp, cold ache blooming in her chest. She had seen this dress before. It was the same one in the silver-framed photograph she had turned over on Adrian's desk.
"This is…" Her voice died, replaced by a sudden, irrational fear.
"A replica," Valentina confirmed, her tone carefully neutral, though her hands trembled slightly as she smoothed the fabric. "A perfect recreation of the gown Sophia Blackwood wore to the Viennese Opera Ball in 2004. The last major public event she attended before her death." She held the dress up against the light. The chiffon floated in the air, ghostly and ethereal. "Mr. Blackwood was obsessive about the details. The stitching, the specific drape of the silk. He provided the original... or what was left of it... for reference."
A cold, hard knot formed in Elara's stomach. "Why would he do this? Why would he want to see a ghost?"
Valentina's whiskey-colored eyes finally flicked to hers, holding a flicker of warning—and a deep, silent pity. "In this house, the past isn't dead, Elara. It's just waiting for a new body to inhabit. My job is to ensure it fits yours." She gestured toward the bedroom, her face hardening back into a mask. "Please. We have very little time."
In the privacy of her room, the chiffon felt like cold cobwebs against Elara's skin. As she stepped into the gown, the fabric slipped over her body with an unnerving, parasitic perfection. The waist nipped exactly where her breath caught; the bodice hugged her ribs like a cage. When she finally turned to the full-length mirror, she didn't see herself. She saw a silhouette filled by the wrong woman.
Sophia Blackwood had been shorter, curvier, a woman of warmth. Elara was taller, leaner, a woman of sharp edges and growing anger. The dress on her felt like a lie—a beautiful, tragic lie.
When she walked out into the living room, Valentina's normally impassive face tightened almost imperceptibly. One of the assistants gasped, quickly covering her mouth.
"Turn," Valentina commanded flatly.
Elara obeyed. The chiffon whispered against the floor, a sound like a long-forgotten sigh. The assistants remained silent, their eyes downcast as if they were looking at something they weren't supposed to see.
"It fits," Valentina said, her voice devoid of its usual professional pride. She began making minute adjustments, pinning the hem with clinical speed. "You'll wear your hair up. Sophisticated. Regal. Exactly as she did." Her fingers, quick and icy, brushed the back of Elara's neck. "The pearls, of course. And these."
One of the assistants opened a small velvet box. Inside lay a pair of diamond chandelier earrings in an Art Deco style, dazzling with a light that felt far too bright for the gloom of the room.
"Also hers," Valentina said. "The last things she took off before the flight to Zurich."
Elara felt a wave of genuine nausea. "I can't wear her jewelry, Valentina. It's... it's macabre. It's wrong."
"You can, and you will."
The voice came from the doorway, low and gravelly. Adrian stood there, having returned from Tokyo twenty-four hours early. He looked exhausted; his hair was disheveled, his jaw shadowed by a day's worth of stubble, and his tie hung loose around his neck. But his eyes were terrifyingly sharp, taking in the scene with a hunger that made Elara's skin crawl.
"Leave us," he commanded, his gaze never leaving Elara.
Valentina and her team packed their tools with frantic speed, disappearing into the elevator in less than a minute. The heavy doors clicked shut, sealing Elara in the room with her husband and the ghost that stood between them.
"Take it off," Adrian said, his voice dropping to a low growl.
"You just had her spend an hour pinning it on me!" Elara snapped, her fear turning into defensive fire.
"I said take it off. Now."
His tone held a ragged, raw edge she hadn't heard before—a crack in the armor of the billionaire king. Elara turned her back to him, her fingers fumbling blindly with the dozens of tiny silk buttons that ran down the spine of the gown. Her hands were shaking too hard. The buttons were too small, too delicate.
"I can't—they're stuck," she whispered, her voice thick with frustration.
"Let me."
His hands were on her before she could protest. He pushed her fingers aside with a rough, impatient movement. His knuckles brushed the bare skin of her spine with every button he undone, and the touch was agonizingly intimate. The gown began to loosen, the ivory chiffon slipping off her shoulders. Elara caught the fabric at her chest, clutching it to her heart as if it could protect her.
"Why?" she asked, staring at the blank white wall. "Why this dress, Adrian? Why do you want to see me as your mother?"
His hands stilled on the final button at the small of her back. She could feel the heat of his breath on the nape of her neck, a stark contrast to the cold fabric. "To see if you could bear it," he murmured.
"Bear what? Wearing a dead woman's clothes?"
"Bearing the weight of my history." He finished the last button and stepped back, but didn't move away. "Turn around."
She turned, clutching the gown to her chest. Beneath it, she wore only a simple silk slip. His eyes swept over her, but there was no lust in them. Instead, there was a deep, unsettling scrutiny—a man looking at a monument he had built to his own pain.
"My mother loved this dress," Adrian said, his voice sounding distant, as if he were miles away. "She said it made her feel like Grace Kelly. She wore it the night before she left for Zurich. The night before the flight." He reached out, his long fingers touching the chiffon sleeve still draped over Elara's arm. "The investigators... they pulled scraps of this fabric from the wreckage. This exact shade of ivory, stained with jet fuel and ash."
Elara's blood ran cold. The dress in her hands suddenly felt heavy, cursed, as if it were still burning.
"And you want me to wear this to the opera? In front of everyone?"
"I want everyone to see." His gaze lifted to hers, and the storm in his gray eyes was fully unleashed—grief, rage, and a pain so old it had calcified into pure cruelty. "I want them to look at you and remember her. I want them to remember exactly what was taken from this city. And I want you to remember exactly who you are paying for."
The confession hung in the air, ugly and honest. This wasn't just a marriage or even a revenge plot. It was a ritual. A public haunting where Elara was the sacrifice.
"I'm not her, Adrian," Elara said, her voice trembling with a mixture of fear and newfound defiance. "I will never be her."
"I know." He took a sudden step closer, his finger hooking under the thin strap of her slip, tracing the line of her collarbone with a terrifying slowness. "You're the substitute. The stand-in for the sacrifice. You wear her dress, you carry her name, and you pay her debt with every breath you take in this house."
He leaned in, his lips a hair's breadth from her ear, his scent—sandalwood and the metallic tang of a long flight—filling her lungs. "Tomorrow night, you will smile. You will be the perfect picture of a Blackwood bride. And every time someone compliments that gown, Elara, you will think of the fire and the metal tearing through the sky. That is your penance."
He pulled back, his expression shutting down instantly, the raw emotion vanishing behind his mask of cold control as if it had never been there. "Get dressed. We have dinner with my grandmother in an hour. She doesn't like to be kept waiting, and she is far less patient than I am."
He left her standing there, the ghost's gown pooling at her feet like a spilled secret.
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