War has a strange way of distorting time stretching seconds into hours, and days into memories that feel like dreams. Or perhaps it was a dream. One I haven't woken up from.
I was a soldier once. A warrior in a wasteland of broken loyalties and burning skies. The bullets in my rifle ran out before my will did. But will means little when the enemy swarms like shadows. They dragged me through dirt and silence, past rows of their own, past faces that stared too long and said too little, and into the presence of a woman they called Godmother.
Her presence was heavy, like smoke elegant and cruel. At her side stood a young woman with wary eyes and a wedding band that glinted like a trap. They kept me caged like an animal, watched me with fascination and unease.
For two days, silence ruled. Then, on the third, something changed.
A man's face flickered onto the screen just outside my cell. Cold eyes. A dangerous smile. The kind of man stories warn you about. The Godmother's voice trembled not with fear, but with frustration. "No woman dares marry him," she said. "He's no man. He's a storm. A mafia prince with a heart of stone."
And then, as if something ancient stirred inside me, I heard a voice cut through the roombold, reckless, mine.
"I'll marry him."
That was the moment everything changed.