Chapter 4 ✮⋆˙ 4 ˙⋆✮

Wedding bells rang behind me like the estate itself was laughing.

I hit the street barefoot, half blind from the sudden glare of sun on wet pavement, my ruined dress gathered in both fists and my heart trying to claw its way out of my chest. The world outside Nico’s estate was too bright, too loud, too open. Cars lined the curb. Black sedans. White floral ribbons. A delivery truck idling near the corner. Beyond the walls, normal life continued as if a bride fleeing her own wedding was something that happened every day.

For one dizzy second, I had no idea where to go.

Left led toward the front gates.

Right curved along the estate wall, past a row of parked cars and a narrow street shaded by old trees.

Behind me, men shouted my name.

I ran right.

The pavement bit into my feet. Stones cut my soles, sharp and immediate, but pain meant I was still moving. My veil dragged loose behind me, catching in the wind. Somewhere over my shoulder, alarms screamed. The chapel bells kept ringing anyway, sweet and bright and obscene.

“Ava!”

My father’s voice.

I almost looked back.

Almost.

Then a deeper voice shouted, “Cut her off!”

Nico’s men.

I forced myself faster.

The dress was made for walking slowly toward captivity, not sprinting away from it. The train twisted around my legs. Lace snapped. One pearl button popped free and skipped across the street. My lungs burned so badly each breath felt torn out of me.

No phone. No shoes. No money. No plan beyond away.

A black sedan’s engine roared to life ahead.

My stomach dropped.

The car pulled from the curb at an angle, blocking half the street.

I stumbled, skidding on bare feet. A man stepped out of the passenger side, one hand going beneath his jacket.

Not a guest.

Not security.

A weapon flashed at his waistband.

My body went cold, but panic did something useful this time. It shoved me sideways before my mind could catch up. I ducked between two parked cars, scraping my thigh against a bumper, and burst onto the sidewalk.

“Stop!” the man shouted.

I did not stop.

A woman near the corner gasped when she saw me. She was holding a pastry box and wearing sunglasses too large for her face. For one insane second, our eyes met, and I saw the exact moment she decided this was none of her business.

I hated her.

I understood her.

I kept running.

The sidewalk ended at a side street where the estate wall dipped lower, giving way to a stretch of curb crowded with motorcycles. Not wedding vehicles. Not polished enough. Heavy black machines with chrome catching the light, parked in a loose line like predators too bored to hide.

And beside the closest one sat a man.

He was not dressed for a wedding.

Black boots. Dark jeans. Black shirt stretched across broad shoulders beneath a sleeveless leather cut. Ink climbed both of his arms and disappeared beneath the fabric. His hair was dark, wind-touched, and his jaw was shadowed with stubble. He held a helmet loosely in one hand, and he watched the chaos behind me with the calm of a man who had expected the world to catch fire.

My steps faltered.

Danger.

Every instinct I had left recognized it.

This man was not safe.

But safe had brought me to an altar with Nico Varra.

Behind me, tires screeched.

The sedan reversed hard. Men poured onto the street.

I looked at the motorcycle.

At the man.

At the road beyond him.

He turned his head, and his eyes locked on mine.

Gray, maybe. Or green. Something cold and sharp enough to cut through the sunlight. He took in the dress, the bare feet, the torn veil, the blood I could feel dampening one heel where the pavement had opened me.

He did not look surprised.

That was the first thing I noticed.

Not shocked. Not confused. Not even startled by the sight of a runaway bride sprinting toward him with armed men behind her.

He looked like a man watching a plan arrive early.

“Help me,” I tried to say, but the words came out broken.

His gaze flicked over my shoulder.

One of Nico’s men shouted, “Get away from her!”

The biker’s mouth curved.

Not kindly.

My fear changed shape.

“What did you do?” I asked, breathless and insane, because of all the questions to ask a stranger while being chased, apparently that was the one my brain chose.

His eyes came back to mine. “Depends who’s asking.”

The sedan door slammed behind me.

No time.

No choices.

I had been wrong in the bridal suite. Freedom was not wide. Freedom was narrow. It was a single second. A single machine. A single dangerous stranger who might kill me slower than Nico or save me faster than anyone else could.

I grabbed the back of his leather cut and threw myself onto the motorcycle.

He did not move to help me. He did not move to stop me either.

The bike shifted beneath my weight, heavy and hot and alive. I nearly slid off the other side, silk tangling around my knees. I clutched at him with one hand and gathered my dress with the other.

“Drive,” I gasped.

He looked over his shoulder at me.

Up close, he was worse. Too big. Too calm. Too much violence held in stillness. A scar cut faintly through one eyebrow. His tattooed hand rested on the throttle like it belonged there more than most men belonged in their own skin.

“Please,” I said, and hated that the word sounded like begging.

His gaze dropped to my hand fisted in his cut.

Then to the men running toward us.

“Miss Rosetti!” Marco shouted. “Get off the bike!”

The biker’s expression changed.

Not surprise.

Recognition.

He knew them.

Oh God.

For one breath, I thought I had chosen wrong. That I had thrown myself from one trap onto the back of another. That the universe was cruel enough to dress every cage in a different kind of danger.

The man lifted the helmet and pushed it back toward me.

“Put it on.”

“No.”

His eyebrow twitched.

“I don’t have time for—”

A gunshot cracked against the sky.

I screamed and ducked against his back.

The biker moved so fast I barely saw it. One hand caught my wrist, hard enough to get my attention but not enough to hurt, and shoved the helmet against my stomach.

“Put it on or crack your skull open when I take the corner.”

The command hit me like cold water.

I did and it was too large. It smelled like leather, smoke, and something clean beneath it. My fingers fumbled with the strap, but he reached back and snapped it into place without looking.

Nico’s men were almost on us.

The biker glanced at them once, and the smile came back.

This time, it was worse.

It was not amusement.

It was recognition sharpened into promise.

“Hold on, runaway bride,” he said.

Then the motorcycle roared beneath me, and the street disappeared.

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