The knock came like a blade against glass—soft, but shattering everything.
It was the night of my wedding, the night that should have bound my fate with joy. Yet as I sat in silks and gold, kohl framing my weary eyes, the silence pressed too heavily. Even the laughter from the banquet hall seemed too far, like echoes in a dream.
Then came the tap. And the voice.
“Change your clothes and get out the back. Now. If you want to live.”
The maid—an old woman with hands like paper and eyes that carried too many secrets—stood at the threshold. Panic quivered in her lips.
I froze. Surely she was mad. Surely this was superstition, some old wives’ tale spun from too much wine. But when she glanced over her shoulder, terror etched across her face, I felt it: a rope tightening around my chest.
Footsteps followed. Deliberate. Heavy. My husband’s stride.
The choice crystallized.
I stripped the gown from my body, its silks pooling at my feet like blood. My fingers shook as I tugged on plain linen garments—clothes that belonged not to a bride, but to a fugitive.
The maid pressed her hand against my back. “Hurry.”
I slipped out the rear door, each breath burning like ice. We crept through shadowed corridors until she opened a panel I had never known existed—a hidden way, cloaked in dust.
“Straight ahead,” she whispered. “Don’t turn, don’t stop. Someone’s waiting.”
Then she shut the door.
I stumbled forward. The passage spat me into the open night. Cobblestones slick with mist gleamed under fractured lantern light. My lungs burned. Then—like an apparition—there it was.
A motorcycle. Its engine growled low, a beast chained.
The rider, a man in his fifties, lifted his eyes to mine. Hard, metallic eyes that seemed to weigh every secret I’d ever held. Without speaking, he extended a hand. I took it.
The machine roared, and we shot into the darkness.
Wind slashed my cheeks. My tears sprayed into nothingness. Behind me, the house of feasting and finery shrank, swallowed by shadows. I didn’t look back. I couldn’t.
By dawn, I was miles from the city. The motorcycle pulled into a deserted safe house, its bricks sagging with age. I dismounted, legs trembling. The rider finally spoke.
“You’ll stay here. For now.”
“Why?” My voice cracked, brittle as glass. “Why save me? Who are you?”
He removed his helmet, revealing weathered features, hair streaked with grey. His gaze was sharp, unreadable.
“Name’s Viktor. That’s enough.”
I wrapped my arms around myself. “My husband—what was he going to do?”
Viktor studied me for a long moment. “The man you married is not the man you think. He bought you like cattle. By sunrise, he would’ve signed away your dowry, then…disposed of you.”
My stomach lurched. “Disposed—?”
“Accidents happen to young brides,” he said grimly. “Especially when fortunes are at stake.”
I staggered to a chair, my knees buckling. All the warmth of the wedding, the glitter, the vows—it all rotted in my mind like spoiled fruit.
“Who told you?” I whispered.
“The maid. She served your family long before you were born. She’s been waiting for her moment. She knew who to call.”
“And you?”
Viktor’s jaw tightened. “Let’s just say I have debts to settle. Saving you is one of them.”
Days bled into each other. In the abandoned house, silence was constant, broken only by Viktor’s brief instructions and the rustle of newspapers he brought. Headlines screamed of tragedy: Bride Vanishes on Wedding Night. Husband Distraught.
Distraught. The word made bile rise in my throat.
One night, unable to sleep, I crept outside. Stars clawed through the black sky. I thought of my father’s estate, the life I had known, the man I had been promised to. I thought of the maid, whose whispered warning had torn me free.
The door creaked behind me. Viktor stepped into the chill.
“You want answers,” he said flatly.
I nodded.
He lit a cigarette, the flame briefly carving lines into his face. “Your husband runs trade in places no one speaks about openly. Arms. Girls. He buys loyalty with gold, silences dissent with death. You weren’t meant to be a wife. You were meant to be leverage. And once he had your father’s holdings… you would’ve been expendable.”
My blood ran cold.
“And you?” I asked. “Why risk your life for mine?”
Viktor exhaled smoke, eyes fixed on the horizon. “Because once, long ago, someone saved me the same way. An old servant woman. She gave her life for it. Yours is still fighting.”
I pressed a hand to my mouth. The maid—my maid—hadn’t escaped with me. She had stayed behind.
“She’s alive,” Viktor said, reading my thought. “For now. But she won’t be if we wait too long.”
The next morning, he placed a folded map before me. “This is your choice. Hide here forever, nameless. Or return and fight.”
My hands shook, but my voice did not. “I’m going back.”
His eyes flickered with something—approval, perhaps.
That night, we rode again. Back toward the city, toward the estate that had nearly become my tomb. My heart pounded as we slipped through alleys, avoiding patrols.
When we reached the servants’ quarters, Viktor gave a sharp nod. I crept inside. The air was thick with fear. And then I saw her—the maid—bound but alive, her eyes lighting up when she saw me.
But footsteps thundered above.
He had found us.
My husband.
The door crashed open, his silhouette filling the frame. Rage twisted his handsome features into something monstrous. “You,” he hissed. “Ungrateful little—”
Viktor stepped forward, gun raised, voice like steel. “Not another word.”
For a moment, time froze.
Then—the gunshot.
The sound ripped through the room, echoing against stone. My husband crumpled. Silence fell like ash.
I stood trembling, clutching the maid’s hands. Viktor’s eyes locked on mine, unreadable.
“You’re free now,” he said.
But freedom was heavier than chains.
By dawn, we left the estate in smoke and whispers. I didn’t cry. Not anymore. Gratitude and grief tangled in me, but one truth rang clear: I was no longer a bride abandoned to fate.
I was alive.
And for the rest of my life, I would remember the old servant’s trembling voice at the door, the night she had whispered the words that gave me back my future:
“If you want to live.”