My fiancé died before he finished saying "I do."
The word never reached his tongue.
The sound that replaced it was short. Mechanical. Clean.
Adrian's fingers tightened around mine — not in romance, not in devotion — but in confusion.
Then something warm struck my face.
For a second, I thought someone had thrown wine.
Then Adrian's grip loosened.
His body folded.
Not dramatically. Not theatrically.
Just… folded.
Like a marionette with its strings cut.
He hit the marble floor at my feet.
The church did not erupt instantly.
There was a suspended moment — a held breath between worlds — where everyone seemed to be deciding whether what they had seen was real.
Then someone screamed.
Chairs scraped.
Fabric rustled.
The priest dropped the book.
But I was still staring at Adrian's eyes.
They were open.
Not wide.
Not terrified.
Just confused.
As if he had been interrupted mid-thought.
There was a small, dark circle near his temple.
Neat.
Precise.
Intentional.
A single shot.
No panic.
No chaos.
Whoever did this didn't need a second attempt.
I didn't scream.
I didn't cry.
I didn't move.
Because somewhere behind the shock, something else was happening.
Something colder.
The doors at the back of the church opened.
Not violently.
Not dramatically.
They opened the way doors open for someone expected.
A slow shift of wood and brass.
Measured footsteps followed.
Even through the ringing in my ears, I could hear them.
Not hurried.
Not cautious.
Deliberate.
The crowd parted before I understood why.
No one blocked the aisle.
No one ran toward him.
It wasn't fear in the usual sense.
It was recognition.
And then I saw him.
Black suit. No tie.
Dark hair pushed back from his forehead as if nothing about today required adjustment.
He wasn't holding the gun anymore.
He didn't need to.
The air around him felt arranged.
Structured.
Controlled.
His eyes found me immediately.
Not scanning.
Not searching.
Found.
Like I had always been the destination.
He didn't look at Adrian.
Didn't confirm the kill.
Didn't spare the body a second glance.
He stepped over it.
I felt something in my chest shift.
Something instinctive.
Predatory.
His gaze didn't feel violent.
It felt claimed.
He stopped three steps away.
Close enough that I could see the faint line of a scar near his collarbone beneath the open shirt.
Close enough that I realized he wasn't breathing heavily.
No adrenaline.
No tremor.
"You're late," he said.
It wasn't addressed to me.
It wasn't addressed to anyone.
It sounded like he was correcting the universe.
My voice scraped its way out of my throat.
"You—"
It broke before forming shape.
He tilted his head slightly, studying me as if measuring a change in lighting.
"I wondered," he said softly, "how long you would go through with it."
The words didn't make sense.
Go through with what?
This was my wedding.
This was supposed to be—
My gaze flickered down to Adrian again.
Supposed to be forever.
"You killed him."
It came out flat. Almost observational.
"Yes."
No justification.
No anger.
Just confirmation.
The simplicity unsettled me more than denial would have.
Gasps echoed behind him, but no one intervened.
No one dared approach.
The man in front of me was not chaos.
He was authority.
He stepped closer.
I wanted to step back.
My body didn't respond.
His eyes moved over my dress slowly.
Not with hunger.
With assessment.
White silk.
Lace sleeves.
A veil that now brushed against Adrian's blood.
He reached out.
My muscles finally reacted, flinching away—
But he didn't grab me.
His fingers touched the edge of the veil instead.
Lifting it slightly.
Inspecting the stain.
Then his thumb brushed my cheek.
Warm.
Slow.
He wiped away the blood that had splashed there.
The intimacy of the gesture made my lungs tighten.
"You shouldn't wear another man's name," he murmured.
My heartbeat stuttered.
Another man's—
"What are you talking about?"
His eyes returned to mine.
Steady.
"You were never going to finish this ceremony."
The certainty in his voice cracked something fragile inside me.
"You don't get to decide that."
He held my gaze for a moment longer.
Then, from inside his coat, he removed something small.
A ring.
Not my engagement ring.
That one was still on Adrian's hand.
This was different.
Platinum.
Minimal.
Severe.
I stared at it without understanding.
"Don't," I whispered.
He didn't respond to the word.
He took my left hand.
I pulled back.
He tightened his grip — not painfully — but with an unspoken warning.
If he wanted force, he could use it.
He didn't need to.
My resistance faltered.
He slid the ring onto my finger.
It fit.
Perfectly.
Not tight.
Not loose.
Exact.
My breath caught.
"You measured me?"
He almost smiled.
"Years ago."
The church felt smaller.
The air heavier.
"What?"
He turned my hand slightly, angling the ring toward the light filtering through stained glass.
"There," he said quietly.
I looked down.
Inside the band.
An engraving.
Not fresh.
The edges softened by time.
Elena.
My name.
Dated.
Four years ago.
Four years.
My pulse roared in my ears.
"That's not possible."
His thumb brushed over the engraved metal.
"It was always possible."
Four years ago, I had been in university.
Four years ago, I had never seen this man.
Four years ago—
"You don't know me."
His gaze sharpened.
"I know what you read before you sleep."
The words struck like another bullet.
"I know you hate thunderstorms but pretend you don't."
My breath grew shallow.
"I know you switch seats in restaurants because you don't like having your back to doors."
The church disappeared.
The guests.
The priest.
The body on the floor.
All of it blurred.
Because the man in front of me wasn't confessing obsession.
He was listing facts.
Calmly.
"I know," he continued, "that you almost died two winters ago when your car skidded on black ice."
My knees weakened.
"That was an accident."
He didn't blink.
"No."
A cold realization crawled up my spine.
The accident.
The brakes that failed.
The truck that never hit me because it had swerved at the last second.
"You—"
"I corrected it."
The word choice was surgical.
Corrected.
Not saved.
Not protected.
Corrected.
Like my death would have been an error in a calculation he was unwilling to accept.
"You've been watching me."
"Yes."
The honesty was suffocating.
"For how long?"
He looked at Adrian's body for the first time.
Not with remorse.
With dismissal.
"Longer than he ever deserved."
Something inside me fractured.
This wasn't a kidnapping.
This wasn't a sudden act of violence.
This was continuity.
This was something that had begun long before today.
The crowd was gone now.
Or maybe they were still there.
I couldn't tell.
All I could see was the ring on my finger.
Four years.
"You don't get to just take me," I said, though my voice trembled.
He leaned closer.
Close enough that I could see faint lines near his eyes — not from laughter.
From restraint.
"I'm not taking you," he said quietly.
"I'm preventing a mistake."
My chest tightened.
"I don't belong to you."
He studied me for a long moment.
Not angry.
Not offended.
As if I had made a minor miscalculation.
Then he lifted my hand again.
Pressed his lips lightly against the engraved metal.
Not a kiss of passion.
A confirmation.
"You were engraved before he proposed."
The world tilted.
Adrian's blood was still drying on marble.
The priest was still frozen in shock.
My wedding was still in ruins.
And the man who destroyed it looked at me as if he had simply corrected a timeline that went wrong.
He stepped back slightly.
Extended his hand.
"Come."
It wasn't a command.
It was inevitability.
I looked down at the ring again.
The date burned into my vision.
Four years ago.
Four years before Adrian.
Four years before the accident.
Four years before I even knew his name.
Lucien Voss.
The man who killed my fiancé.
The man who walked into my wedding like it was overdue.
The man who didn't look like he had stolen me—
But like he had arrived to collect something that had always been his.
My fiancé died before he finished saying "I do."
And the man who killed him had engraved my name into his wedding ring four years earlier.