My Escape: A Marriage of Convenience

For five years, I was the perfect girlfriend. I stood by Adler when his family lost everything, helping him build a tech empire from scratch. I thought our love was real.

But one night, I heard him moaning another woman's name in his sleep-Annika, the ex who abandoned him the second his money was gone. I realized with horrifying clarity that I wasn't his love. I was his placeholder.

The cruelty was a slow burn that became an inferno. When a chandelier fell at a party, he instinctively saved her, leaving me to be crushed. He left me bleeding on the side of the road after a car crash to go comfort her.

He chose her. Every single time. He told me he loved me, but his actions screamed that I was disposable. His love wasn't a home; it was a cage built of comfortable lies.

After he abandoned me on a yacht to save Annika from her own staged drama, I was finally done. So when his sister begged me to help her escape an arranged marriage to a monstrous, disfigured recluse, I saw my escape. I texted her back, "Don't worry. I'll marry him."

Chapter 1

The first sign was a deep shudder that ran through Adler' s body.

I stopped, my hand resting on his back. "Are you okay? Do you have a fever?"

His skin was slick with a thin layer of sweat, but it wasn't hot. He was just... tense. Every muscle in his body was coiled tight. We' d been together for five years, lived together for three. I knew every line of his back, every shift in his breathing. This was different.

"I'm fine," he murmured, his voice strained. He didn't turn to look at me. "Just tired. Long week at the office."

I tried to ease the tension in his shoulders, my fingers working the knots I found there. "Let me get you some water. Maybe some aspirin?" My mind raced through possibilities. The pressure of his company, Monroe Tech, was immense. He had single-handedly resurrected his family's name from the ashes of a financial scandal, building an empire from nothing. He carried the weight of it all.

"No, Hazel. Don't," he said, his tone gentle but firm. He shifted away from my touch. "Just... let me sleep."

He turned his back to me completely, pulling the covers up to his chin. The distance he created felt wider than the few inches of mattress between us. I lay there in the dark, listening to the sound of his breathing, which was too ragged for sleep. A cold knot formed in my stomach. Something was wrong.

I gave him an hour before I slipped out of bed. I needed to finish a graphic design proposal for a client, and the unease in the room was making it impossible to rest. I padded barefoot into the living room, retrieved my laptop from my bag, and settled onto the sofa. I' d just started to work when I realized I' d left my favorite pen in the bedroom.

Tiptoeing back to the doorway, I stopped.

A sound came from the bedroom. A low, guttural moan. It wasn't a sound of pain. It was something else. Something private.

My heart hammered against my ribs. I froze, hidden in the shadows of the hallway.

Then he said her name.

"Annika."

The name was a ghost, a whisper of a past I thought we had buried. Annika Morse. His ex-girlfriend. The narcissistic socialite who had abandoned him the second his family' s fortune evaporated. The woman who was now, suddenly, back in our city, her face plastered across gossip sites now that Adler was a tech mogul again.

I leaned forward, my body trembling, and peered through the sliver of open doorway.

The moonlight cut a stripe across the bed. Adler was on his back, his eyes closed, one hand moving under the sheets. His face was a mask of desperate longing, an expression I had never seen directed at me. Not once.

"Annika," he breathed again, his voice thick with a raw, agonizing need. "Please..."

The sound ripped through me. It was a violation. He was in our bed, the bed we shared, and he was fantasizing about another woman. Not just any woman, but her.

In all our years together, through all our moments of intimacy, he had never shown this kind of feverish, all-consuming passion. With me, it was warm, comfortable, and steady. He was a perfect boyfriend on the surface-attentive, generous, the man who rebuilt his family' s legacy. But this... this was an obsession. This was a sickness.

And I saw with horrifying clarity that I wasn't his love. I was his comfort. I was the stable ground he stood on while he yearned for a storm. I was his substitute.

The coldness in my stomach spread through my entire body, a creeping ice that settled deep in my bones. I felt hollowed out, a spectator to my own life's demolition.

The shrill ring of his phone on the nightstand shattered the moment.

Adler' s eyes snapped open. He fumbled for the phone, his voice groggy but instantly alert when he saw the caller ID. "Cory? What' s up?"

Cory Vinson was his business partner and closest friend. He was also the only one who ever dared to call Adler out.

"Are you insane?" Cory' s voice was sharp, even through the phone. "I just saw Annika' s latest post. She's at that new club downtown, telling everyone you' re still wrapped around her finger."

Adler sat up, running a hand through his hair. "It' s not like that."

"Isn't it?" Cory shot back. "You publicly humiliated Hazel at the gala last week to run after Annika when she 'tripped.' You left Hazel standing alone on that yacht when the engine caught fire because you had to make sure Annika was safe first. Now this? Adler, what are you doing?"

I squeezed my eyes shut. The yacht fire. He' d told me he was just making sure everyone got off safely. A lie. It was always about Annika.

"Annika is... complicated," Adler said, his voice dropping. "I owe her."

"You owe her nothing! She left you with nothing but debt and a broken heart. Hazel stood by you. Hazel helped you rebuild. She loves you, you idiot."

A long silence stretched out. I held my breath, my entire future hanging on his next words.

"I know," Adler finally said, and the two words were devoid of all emotion. "Hazel is good. She' s kind. She's stable."

"But you don't love her," Cory stated, his voice flat with resignation.

"I can't," Adler admitted, his voice cracking. "With Annika... it was everything. It almost destroyed me. I can' t go back to that. I won't. Hazel... Hazel is safe. It' s better this way."

"So you're just using her? You're just settling? That' s cruel, Adler. She deserves more than to be your goddamn placeholder."

"It's not like that," Adler insisted, but his voice lacked conviction.

"It's exactly like that," Cory said. "You're going to lose her. And when you do, you're going to regret it for the rest of your life."

"She won't leave," Adler said, a chilling certainty in his tone. "She loves me." He paused. "Even if she did, it would be for the best. I can' t give her what she wants."

The line went dead.

I backed away from the door, my movements silent and mechanical. I stumbled into the living room, the city lights outside the panoramic window blurring into a meaningless smear.

He wouldn' t care if I left.

He was waiting for it.

He said I was safe. A safe harbor. But a harbor is just a place a ship waits before it sails off to where it really wants to be.

I sank to the floor, my back against the cold glass of the window. The memories flooded in, a torrent of carefully constructed lies I had mistaken for a life. Our first meeting was at a university party. I was a quiet graphic design student, dragged along by my best friend, Charley Monroe-Adler' s younger sister. The air was thick with the scent of cheap beer and perfume.

Then he walked in.

Adler Monroe wasn't just handsome; he was electric. He had a way of standing in a room that made everything else fade into the background. He wore a simple black t-shirt and jeans, but he carried himself with an innate confidence that drew every eye.

I was instantly, hopelessly captivated.

"That's my brother," Charley had whispered, rolling her eyes. "Try not to stare. He hates it."

He was a legend on campus. Smart, driven, and notoriously aloof. Girls threw themselves at him constantly, and he rejected them all with a polite but unbreakable coolness. I was just another face in the crowd, content to admire him from afar, my sketchbook filled with secret portraits of him.

Then Annika Morse arrived.

She was everything I wasn't: loud, flashy, and relentlessly aggressive in her pursuit of him. She chased him for months, a vibrant, demanding force of nature. To everyone's shock, Adler, the untouchable prince, finally relented.

He didn't just date her; he worshipped her.

I saw them once, cutting across the main quad. He was laughing, a full-throated, joyful sound I had never heard from him before. He lifted her up, spinning her around as if she were the center of his universe. He bought her a car for her birthday, paid off her student loans, and even got into a fistfight with a guy who insulted her at a bar. He was a man possessed by love.

I was possessed by a quiet, searing jealousy.

Then the Monroe family fortune collapsed. His father was caught in a massive embezzlement scandal, and they lost everything overnight.

The day the news broke, Annika packed her bags. She told him she couldn't be with a "charity case" and walked away without a backward glance.

Adler shattered. He dropped out of school, locked himself in his tiny apartment, and refused to see anyone. Charley was frantic. She begged me to check on him, to bring him food, to just make sure he was alive.

So I did. For weeks, I left meals outside his door. I slipped notes of encouragement under it. I just... stayed.

One day, he finally opened the door. He looked gaunt, his eyes hollow. He stared at me for a long moment.

"You're still here?" he asked, his voice rough from disuse.

I nodded, unable to speak.

"Why?"

I just looked at him, my years of silent adoration written all over my face.

He let out a long, weary sigh. "Do you like me, Hazel?"

I nodded again.

"Fine," he said, stepping aside to let me in. "Let's be together. Maybe you can help me forget her."

I knew, even then, that I was a rebound. A tool for his recovery. But I was so in love, I didn't care. I thought my devotion could heal him. I thought my quiet, steady love could eventually replace her loud, destructive passion.

For five years, I believed it was working. I supported him as he worked three jobs, paid his bills, and helped him launch his first small tech startup. When Monroe Tech finally took off, he became the man he was always meant to be: powerful, successful, brilliant. He showered me with gifts, took me on lavish vacations, and told the world I was the woman who had saved him.

He was the perfect boyfriend. He was kind. He was my best friend's brother. He was the love of my life.

I thought I had won. I thought I had healed his heart.

But I hadn't healed it. I'd only put a bandage on a wound that was still festering underneath. And the moment Annika returned to the city, rich and successful again, she ripped that bandage right off.

He started acting strangely. He' d cancel our dates at the last minute. He' d be on his phone, smiling at a text, and I' d see her name flash on the screen. He started going to parties he knew she' d be at, all while telling me he was in late-night meetings.

The auction was the first public crack. He was being honored at a charity gala, and he' d "donated" an evening with Annika for the auction, a sick, twisted game of power and revenge. He wanted to show her that he was now the one in control, the one with the money. But as he stood on that stage, watching men bid on her, his eyes held not triumph, but a familiar, desperate longing. He was still obsessed.

Now, sitting on the cold floor of our apartment, the pieces of my life clicked into place, forming a picture of unbearable clarity.

All his kindness, all his generosity-it was all a performance. It was a lie he told himself, and a lie he told me. He wasn't trying to hurt me. In his mind, he was being good to me. But his version of "good" was a cage built of comfort and stability, designed to keep me from leaving while his heart remained chained to another woman.

He never loved me. He loved the idea of me. He loved that I was easy, that I was loyal, that I wasn't Annika.

I was nothing more than a ghost, a placeholder for the one he could never truly have or truly let go of.

I looked at my reflection in the dark window. My face was pale, my eyes wide with a pain so deep it felt like it had physically carved a hole in my chest. For five years, I had molded my life around him, believing my love was enough.

It was never enough. It was never even in the running.

I stood up, my legs shaking. I walked to the bathroom and stared at my face in the mirror. The woman looking back was a fool. A loving, devoted fool.

A tear slid down my cheek, hot and stinging. Then another. I didn't sob. The pain was too profound for that. It was a silent, internal scream.

I would not be a substitute anymore. I would not be his safe harbor.

I took a deep breath, the decision settling in my soul like a block of ice. I would leave. I would disappear from his life so completely it would be as if I never existed.

My phone buzzed on the counter. A text from Charley.

Heard from Mom. The Mccalls are finalizing the marriage contract. I have to marry that monster. Hazel, I can't do it. Please, help me.

The arranged marriage. A deal struck years ago between the Monroes and the powerful, old-money Mccall family to secure a business alliance. Charley was supposed to marry the heir, Christian Mccall-a man rumored to be disfigured and cruel, a recluse who hadn't been seen in public for a decade. Charley was desperately in love with her musician boyfriend and was terrified.

An idea, insane and terrifying, sparked in the wreckage of my heart.

It was an escape route.

I picked up the phone, my fingers typing a message that would change everything.

Don't worry, Charley. I'll handle it. You won't have to marry him.

I will.

"You'll what?" Charley's voice screeched over the phone. "Hazel, are you out of your mind? You can't be serious."

I stood in the terminal at JFK, the chaos of the airport a dull roar in the background. "I'm perfectly serious. I'm going to take your place."

"No! Absolutely not! I was asking for your help to run away, not for you to sacrifice yourself! They say Christian Mccall is a monster. Horribly scarred from a childhood accident, with a temper to match. He never leaves his mansion. This isn't a marriage; it's a prison sentence!"

"It's a done deal, Charley," I said, my voice calm. It was a strange, hollow calmness, the kind that comes after every emotion has been burned out of you.

There was a pause on the other end of the line. "Did... did my brother do something to you?"

"Adler and I are over."

"What?" she shrieked, drawing the attention of a man wrestling with his luggage nearby. "He broke up with you? That bastard! I'm going to kill him! After everything you did for him! Is it because of Annika? I swear to God, Hazel, I will ruin him."

Her fierce loyalty was a sharp pang in my chest. "It doesn't matter anymore, Charley. This is my choice. You deserve to be happy with Liam. Go. Get on that plane to Paris and don't look back."

I had already booked her ticket. I' d used the last of my emergency savings, the money I' d been setting aside for a down payment on a house for me and Adler. The irony was a bitter pill.

"But Hazel... your life..." Her voice was thick with guilt.

"My life is my own now," I said, and for the first time, the words felt true. "I want you to be happy. That's all that matters to me."

We said our goodbyes, a tearful, rushed affair at the security gate. She hugged me so tightly I could barely breathe.

"I owe you everything," she whispered against my hair.

"Just live a beautiful life," I told her, pushing her gently toward her gate. "That's all the payment I need."

I watched her plane taxi down the runway and lift into the sky, a silver bird disappearing into the clouds. Freedom. For her, at least.

I stood there for a long time, the memory of another airport visit playing in my mind. It was three years ago. Adler had just secured his first major funding round for Monroe Tech. He' d surprised me with tickets to Italy. We' d stood in this very terminal, and he' d kissed me, telling me that none of it would have been possible without me. I had cried with happiness, believing him with every fiber of my being.

What a naive little fool I had been.

My first stop after the airport was a high-end bridal boutique on Madison Avenue. The Monroe family' s liaison for the arranged marriage had called, coldly informing me that "the bride" needed to be fitted for a dress today. They didn't even use a name. It could have been any Monroe daughter. It didn't matter who the woman was, only that the contract was fulfilled.

A saleswoman with a practiced, plastic smile greeted me. "Miss Monroe? We have the Versailles suite ready for you. We've pre-selected some of our most exquisite gowns."

I waved a dismissive hand. "Just show me your simplest design."

She looked momentarily flustered. "Simplest? But this is for your wedding to Mr. Mccall..."

"The simplest one you have," I repeated.

She led me to a sleek, unadorned silk sheath dress. No lace, no beading, no train. It was elegant but stark.

"This one," I said.

"An excellent choice. Shall we get your measurements and begin the fitting?"

"No need," I said, pulling out the credit card Adler had given me for "emergencies." "Just box it up in a standard size six. I'll have it tailored myself."

The woman' s smile faltered. "But, Miss... not even to try it on?"

"It's a business transaction," I said flatly. "The packaging doesn't need to be perfect."

I didn' t care what I wore to marry a monster. This wasn't about love or happiness. It was about escape. The Mccall family was powerful, reclusive, and lived on the other side of the country. Marrying their heir was like entering witness protection. Adler would never be able to reach me there. The Monroes didn't care which daughter they sent, as long as the alliance was sealed. My own parents had passed away years ago, so there was no one to object. It was a clean break.

Back at the apartment-his apartment-I began the ritual. I took down every framed photo of us. The one from our trip to Italy, the one from his first company launch, the one from Christmas last year. I didn't smash them. I simply removed the photos, tore each one into four neat pieces, and dropped them in the trash.

I gathered every gift he'd ever given me-the designer handbags, the expensive jewelry, the first-edition books. I placed them all in a large cardboard box to be donated. The only thing I kept was the ugly ceramic mug I' d made for him in a pottery class, the one with a lopsided heart and our initials. I didn't know why I kept it. Maybe as a reminder of my own stupidity.

Then I went through my phone, my thumb a ruthless weapon. I deleted every photo, every text, every saved voicemail. I untagged myself from every post, blocked his number, and erased every digital trace of our five years together. It was a methodical, painless act of annihilation.

Just as I was about to wipe my laptop, a call came through from an unknown number.

"Miss Preston? This is Martin from the Oak Room club. You were here last week for the charity gala? It seems you left a small sketchbook behind. We've been holding it for you."

My sketchbook. It was filled with my designs, my ideas... my entire professional life. And, hidden in the back, dozens of old sketches of Adler.

"I'll be right there to pick it up," I said.

The Oak Room was an exclusive private club, the kind of place where billionaires made deals over whiskey and cigars. When I arrived, the main hall was buzzing with a strange, predatory energy. A crowd was gathered, their voices a low, excited murmur.

"Can you believe he's actually doing it?" a woman in a Chanel dress whispered. "Auctioning off her 'first night' all over again? It's barbaric."

"It's not her first night, darling, not by a long shot," her friend sneered. "But it's the principle of the thing. He' s putting her on a literal auction block. After she came crawling back to him, this is how he gets his revenge. It's brilliant. And sick."

My blood ran cold. I pushed my way through the crowd, my eyes fixed on the makeshift stage at the front of the room.

And there he was.

Adler stood beside an auctioneer, looking handsome and cruel in a dark suit. His expression was impassive, but his eyes burned with a cold fire as he scanned the room.

Then, two large men dragged Annika onto the stage. She was wearing a flimsy, backless red dress, her makeup perfect, her expression a mixture of fear and defiant pride. She had agreed to this. For money, for status, for a chance to get back into his orbit, she had agreed to let him publicly humiliate her.

The crowd murmured, their faces a mix of shock and titillated excitement.

"Look at him," someone behind me said. "He says it's revenge for how she dumped him when he was broke."

"Revenge?" another voice scoffed. "Please. The man is still obsessed. He doesn't want anyone else to have her, so he's 'buying' her himself, under the guise of this twisted spectacle. He' s trying to own her."

"What about that girlfriend of his? The designer? Hazel, was it?"

"Poor girl. Imagine being the sensible, boring choice while your boyfriend is still playing these kinds of sick games with his ex. She' s just a placeholder. Everyone knows it. He'll never love anyone the way he loved Annika."

The voices faded into a dull ringing in my ears. I saw it all now. This wasn't revenge. This was a mating dance. A toxic, destructive ritual between two equally damaged people. He was never going to be free of her.

He was never going to be mine. He never had been.

The auctioneer began the bidding. Adler stood there, watching, a silent, possessive king reclaiming his broken queen.

The sound of the auctioneer' s voice, the excited whispers of the crowd, the clinking of glasses-it all merged into a meaningless drone. My mind was a blank slate, wiped clean by the sheer, brutal spectacle of it all. I felt nothing. It was as if my heart had finally given up and flatlined.

Without thinking, I followed them. Adler won the "auction," of course. He placed a single, impossibly high bid that no one could match. He didn't look triumphant. He just looked... inevitable. He took Annika by the arm, his grip possessive, and led her away from the gawking crowd, up the grand staircase toward the private suites.

I trailed behind them like a ghost, keeping to the shadows of the hallway. He pushed open the door to a lavish room and pulled her inside. I crept closer, the plush carpet swallowing the sound of my footsteps, until I was standing right outside the partially open door.

"Why are you doing this, Adler?" Annika' s voice was trembling, but there was a current of excitement beneath the fear. "Is this to punish me?"

"Punish you?" Adler' s laugh was low and humorless. "No, Annika. This isn't punishment."

"Then what is it? Do you still love me? Say you still love me."

He was silent for a long moment. When he finally spoke, his voice was a cold caress. "I hate you," he said softly. "But God, I still want you. You crawled back to me, thinking you could play your games again. But the rules have changed. I own you now."

"You were always the one who chased me," she whispered, a challenge in her tone.

"And you were the one who let me catch you," he countered. He moved closer to her, his voice dropping to a raw, intimate growl. "You made me this way. You taught me how to be cruel."

His words were poison, but his actions were a desperate antidote. I watched, paralyzed, as he backed her against the wall. His hands tangled in her hair, pulling her head back, and his mouth crashed down on hers. It wasn't a kiss of love. It was an act of possession, of rage and hunger and a history so toxic it had permanently warped them both.

The sight was obscene. The sounds were worse. The rustle of clothing, the sharp, indrawn breaths, the soft moans. He tore at the back of her dress, the rip of fabric a violent sound in the quiet room.

Then, at the peak of it all, a single, choked sob escaped his lips. A tear traced a path down his cheek.

Annika went still beneath him. "You're crying," she whispered, her voice filled with a strange, victorious wonder.

"Shut up," he commanded, his voice thick and broken.

I couldn't feel my own body. My hand was pressed against the wall, but I couldn't feel the cool plaster. My nails were digging into my palms, but I couldn't feel the sting. I just watched as he finished, his body shuddering with a release that seemed more like agony than pleasure.

He spent hours with her. I stood there, a statue of grief, and watched him take her again and again, as if trying to exorcise her from his soul by embedding her deeper within it. Finally, she passed out from exhaustion. He gently pulled a blanket over her, his touch now tender, his expression full of a sorrow so profound it made my own heartbreak feel insignificant. He looked at her sleeping face with the love and adoration he had never once shown me.

That was the moment I finally broke.

I turned and walked away, my steps mechanical. I navigated the empty hallways of the club and stepped out into the cold night air. The world felt tilted on its axis. I started walking, not knowing or caring where I was going.

The screech of tires was the last thing I heard.

A blinding flash of light, a horrifying crunch of metal and bone, and then... darkness.

I woke to the smell of antiseptic and the steady beeping of a machine. A nurse was leaning over me, her face a blur of professional concern.

"You're very lucky, Miss Preston," she said. "A fractured arm and a severe concussion, but it could have been much worse. We need to get you into surgery to set the bone." She handed me a clipboard. "We need you to sign the consent form. We tried calling your emergency contact, but..."

My emergency contact. Adler. Of course.

With a trembling hand, I took my phone from the plastic bag of my belongings. My vision was blurry. I found his name at the top of my favorites list and pressed call, my thumbprint a final, desperate habit.

It rang twice before a woman answered, her voice sleepy and smug. "Hello?"

It was Annika.

My throat closed up.

"Who is this?" Annika demanded, an edge of irritation in her voice. "Adler's in the shower. Oh, is this Hazel?" she purred, a cruel amusement coloring her tone. "He' s a little... preoccupied right now. He really wore me out last night."

I couldn't speak. I couldn't breathe.

"Adler, honey!" she called out, her voice dripping with sweetness. "Your little girlfriend is on the phone. Are you going to talk to her?"

I heard the shower shut off. Adler's voice came on the line, distant and cold. "What is it, Hazel? I'm busy."

"I... I'm in the hospital," I managed to whisper, the words scraping my throat. "I was in an accident. I need surgery."

There was a pause. For a heart-stopping second, I allowed myself to hope.

"Can it wait?" he asked. "Annika isn't feeling well. I need to take care of her."

The beep of the heart monitor beside me seemed to scream in the sudden silence. He was choosing her. Even now. My life was hanging in the balance, and he was choosing her.

"She's my property now, you know," he continued, his voice taking on that possessive growl I'd heard earlier. "I have to make sure my investments are protected."

I heard a soft giggle from Annika in the background, followed by the sound of a kiss.

The line went dead. He had hung up on me.

The nurse was looking at me with pity. "Is there anyone else we can call? A family member?"

"No," I whispered, the word a final surrender. "There's no one."

I took the pen from her. My hand was shaking so badly that my signature was an almost illegible scrawl. A drop of blood from a cut on my hand splattered onto the paper, a crimson seal on the document that signed away my old life.

Then, the darkness swallowed me whole again.