Chapter 1: The Unchosen Fate

Some people beg for death, yet the world forces them to live. Others cling desperately to life, yet fate pries their fingers away, leaving them to fall.

Calista wasn’t sure which one she was.

She had met Elias long before fate turned them into something twisted. Back then, they were just two lost children in a world that never loved them.

She was the girl with hollow eyes, trapped in a house full of wealth but starved of affection. He was the boy with nothing, fighting for scraps in an unforgiving world. They shouldn’t have met. Their worlds weren’t meant to touch. But fate was cruel, and loneliness was a thread that wove them together.

She remembered the first time she saw him. A boy with storm-colored eyes and bruised knuckles, staring at her through the rusted iron fence of her family estate. He wasn’t afraid of the guards, the dogs, or the walls meant to keep people like him out. He only watched her, unblinking, as if he had found something worth looking at in a world that had given him nothing.

And she? She had never been looked at like that before.

Calista didn’t know why she had done it—why she had slipped through the gates late that night, offering him a stolen piece of bread and the smallest of smiles. But she had. And he had taken it, not just the bread, but the moment, the silent understanding that they were both trapped in different kinds of cages.

Their friendship had been built in stolen moments and whispered secrets, in the quiet rebellion of two children who refused to be forgotten. She gave him books, and he taught her how to fight. She gave him a name to say when the world grew too dark, and he gave her the feeling of safety she had never known.

But childhood promises were fragile things. The world had a way of tearing apart what was never meant to last.

Years later, standing before the towering mansion that now belonged to him, Calista knew one thing for certain—Elias was no longer the boy behind the fence. And she? She was no longer the girl who believed in safe places.

The black iron gates had closed behind her minutes ago, locking away whatever remnants of her past had still clung to her. There was no turning back. Her father had signed away her freedom with a single stroke of his pen, and just like that, she had become his.

Not a daughter, not a person—just an exchange.

A deal sealed in silence.

Her fingers curled into fists, nails digging into the flesh of her palms, as if pain could tether her to something real. But reality had never been kind to her, and it wasn’t about to start now. The front doors loomed ahead, polished and pristine, utterly untouched by the storm raging around her. She wondered if he was already inside, waiting.

Elias.

The man who had everything, yet still wanted her.

She knew his name long before tonight. Whispers of him traveled through shadows, slipping between fearful lips and trembling hands. Ruthless. Powerful. A man whose empire was built on blood, yet whose soul remained unreadable. He was an enigma of contradictions—a man who fought to live, yet carried the gaze of someone who wouldn’t mind dying.

Calista took a slow, measured breath, the weight of the night pressing against her chest. Fear was useless now. Hesitation was a luxury she could no longer afford.

With one final glance at the rain-drenched sky, she stepped forward and walked through the doors of her new reality.

Into the world of Elias.

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