My breath hitched, and a gasp threatened to escape my throat, but a sudden, iron grip clamped over my mouth from behind. Arnav had managed to slide off the wheelchair and onto the floor without making a single sound. He pulled me down into the shadow of the heavy mahogany bedframe, his chest pressed against my back. His heartbeat was steady, terrifyingly slow for a man facing an assassin.
“Stay down,” his voice breathed against my ear, so faint it was almost a thought. “Don’t move, no matter what you hear.“
He released me, and before I could even turn my head, he vanished into the darkness of the room. He didn’t walk; he moved like a phantom, shifting through the shadows with lethal grace, entirely invisible.
The door opened wider. The assassin stepped into the room, their boots making absolutely no sound on the hardwood floor. They raised their weapon, aiming it directly at the center of the bed, where the silhouette of blankets looked like a sleeping couple.
Pfft. Pfft. Pfft.
Three muffled shots tore through the silence, ripping into the mattress, and feathers exploded into the air, drifting like snow in the moonlight.
In that exact microsecond, before the assassin could realize the bed was empty, a shadow materialized directly behind them. Arnav rose from the darkness like a demon born from the night.
With blinding speed, his left hand shot forward, clamping around the assassin’s wrist and forcing the weapon upward. A muffled shot fired into the ceiling. Simultaneously, Arnav’s right elbow drove viciously into the attacker’s throat. A sickening gasp left the assassin as their windpipe collapsed.
But this wasn’t a common thief. The assassin recovered instantly, using their momentum to drive a heavy tactical boot into Arnav’s ribs. Arnav took the blow, grunting softly, but he didn’t break his grip. He twisted the assassin’s wrist with a sickening crack, forcing the gun to drop to the floor.
The two men engaged in a brutal, silent tango of death in the center of our bridal suite. No words were spoken. Only the heavy, ragged breathing and the dull thuds of flesh striking flesh echoed through the room. I pressed myself harder against the bedframe, my hands over my ears, watching the violent silhouettes dance in the moonlight.
Arnav was a master of close-quarters combat, but the assassin was heavy and wearing reinforced armor. The attacker managed to slip a hand into their tactical vest, pulling out a wicked, serrated combat knife. The blade caught the moonlight, flashing silver.
The assassin slashed wildly. Arnav dodged backward, but the tip of the blade tore through his white wedding shirt, leaving a dark, rapidly widening stain of crimson across his chest.
“Arnav!” the scream died in my throat.
Ignoring the wound, Arnav ducked under the next wild swing, grabbed the assassin by the tactical vest, and used the attacker’s own weight to slam them violently against the heavy oak wardrobe. The wood splintered with a loud crash.
Before the assassin could recover, Arnav locked his forearms around the man’s neck from behind, applying a lethal sleeper hold. The assassin thrashed wildly, their boots kicking against the floor, trying to find leverage, trying to reach the knife. But Arnav’s grip was an iron vice. Slowly, the attacker’s movements grew weaker, their limbs going limp, until finally, they slumped forward, completely unconscious or dead.
Arnav stood over the body, his chest heaving, his hand pressing against the bleeding gash on his ribs. The white silk of his attire was ruined, soaked in blood. He looked feral, dangerous, completely detached from the billionaire prince I was supposed to marry.
Suddenly, a loud, frantic pounding echoed from the hallway outside.
“Arnav sir! Aarohi ma’am! We heard a crash! Are you alright?!” It was the voice of Vikram, Arnav’s chief of personal security. Heavy footsteps were sprinting down the corridor toward our room.
Arnav’s eyes snapped to the door, then to the unconscious assassin on the floor, and finally to me. The panic in his eyes wasn’t for his life—it was for his secret. If his security team burst through that door right now and saw him standing over a dead assassin, his five-year-old deception was over. The trap he had built would spring on him.
“Aarohi,” Arnav rasped, his voice strained as he fought through the pain of his wound. He stumbled slightly, the blood loss catching up to him. He dragged himself back toward the empty wheelchair, but he was too weak to lift himself back into it. He collapsed onto the floor right next to it.
The doorknob outside began to jiggle violently. They were going to break the door down.
“Aarohi… listen to me,” Arnav whispered fiercely, staring at me from the floor, his face pale under the moonlight. “You have to choose right now. If you open that door and tell them I walked… you walk away free, but my enemies will hunt you down to eliminate the witness. If you want to survive the night, you have to help me hide this body and get me into that chair before they smash the lock.“
“I… I can’t…” I stammered, looking at the blood, the dead man, the shattered wardrobe.
“Decide!” he hissed, as a heavy shoulder slammed against the outside of the door, making the wood groan. “Are you my wife, or are you their next victim?“
