My Groom Kept Me Blind to Protect His Mistress

Light. It wasn't just a concept to me anymore; it was a piercing, brilliant reality.

"Blink slowly, Kendra," Dr. Elena Rodriguez murmured, her skilled hands gently pulling the final layer of gauze from my face.

I blinked. The blurry, sterile white of the private clinic sharpened into crisp, undeniable lines. For ten years, my world had been a canvas of absolute black, defined only by the tap of my cane and the terrifying, repressed echoes of the Los Angeles warehouse where I was taken at fifteen. But now, at twenty-four, just days before my wedding, the darkness was gone.

Dr. Rodriguez guided a hand mirror into my trembling fingers. I stared at the stranger looking back at me. Pale skin, a delicate jaw, and eyes—striking, piercing eyes that belonged to the mother I could barely remember. The classified cornea transplant was a complete success.

"Perfect," Dr. Rodriguez whispered, an approving smile touching her lips.

I traced my cheekbone, my chest tightening with a giddy, desperate warmth. I wasn't going to tell him. Not yet. I would walk down the aisle on my twenty-fifth birthday, look into the eyes of Bentley King—the wealthy heir who had rescued me, sheltered me, and loved my broken pieces—and finally see the man I was giving my life to.

The King family estate was a sprawling labyrinth I had navigated by touch for a decade. Returning early that afternoon, I walked its arched, mahogany-paneled halls without my cane, my footsteps swallowed by the plush Persian runners. The visual opulence of the mansion was staggering, far colder and sharper than I had imagined in my mind's eye.

I approached the double doors of Bentley’s private study, eager to hear the familiar, comforting cadence of his voice. The heavy oak door was slightly ajar, spilling a slice of golden light into the dim corridor. I reached out to push it open, but a sound froze the blood in my veins.

A wet, breathless sigh. A woman’s throaty laugh.

I pressed my eye to the crack. My knuckles immediately turned bone-white against the doorframe.

Bentley—my savior, my fiancé—stood by his massive mahogany desk. He was devastatingly handsome, his tailored suit perfectly pressed, but his hands were buried in the dark hair of a woman I didn't recognize by sight. But the voice, I knew instantly. Adelina Foster. The so-called "family friend."

"You're cutting it dangerously close, Ben," Adelina purred, tracing the lapel of his jacket with a manicured nail. "Three days until you marry the charity case. Tell me again why we have to wait."

Bentley caught her hand, kissing her knuckles with a fierce reverence he had never once shown me. "Patience, Lina. The blind mouse has served her purpose perfectly. For ten years, every enemy of the King empire thought she was my weakness. They aimed all their fire at her, and they missed you."

A phantom hand wrapped around my throat, choking the oxygen from my lungs. A decoy. I was nothing but a human