My Groom’s Mistress Tried to Burn Me Alive

The Plaza Hotel's bridal suite was bathed in soft morning light as I stood before the ornate mirror. My reflection stared back at me—eyes bright with anticipation, cheeks flushed with excitement. Today was supposed to be the beginning of forever.

"You look beautiful," my makeup artist had whispered just moments ago. "Caspian won't know what hit him."

I smiled, touching the delicate lace of my custom Vera Wang gown. Ten years of love, of building a life together, all culminating in this perfect day. My fingers trembled slightly as I adjusted my veil.

"I'm just nervous," I whispered to my reflection, trying to calm the flutter in my stomach.

The lights above me flickered once, twice. I frowned, glancing upward.

"Caspian?" I called, thinking he might have ignored my request for privacy and sneaked in to see me before the ceremony.

The room fell silent. Too silent.

I turned toward the doorway, but before I could take a step, strong hands gripped my shoulders from behind. A woman's body pressed against mine, her breath hot against my ear.

"Don't scream," she hissed.

I opened my mouth to do exactly that, but her grip tightened, spinning me around and dragging me toward the connecting door that led to a service corridor.

"Let me go!" I struggled against her, but she was surprisingly strong.

"Quiet," she commanded, pulling me into the dimly lit corridor. "We don't have much time."

I finally got a good look at her face and froze. My heart stuttered painfully in my chest.

It was me—but not me. An older version of myself, lines etched around her eyes, a hardness in her expression that I'd never seen in my own mirror.

"Elyse," she said, using my name as if it were a weapon. "I don't have time to explain everything."

"Who are you?" I whispered, my voice barely audible.

"Twenty-five years from now, you." She pulled me further down the corridor, away from the bridal suite. "I've come back to stop you from making the biggest mistake of your life."

I laughed, a high, nervous sound. "That's impossible."

"Isn't it?" She reached down and pulled up her dress, revealing a jagged scar on her thigh—identical to one I'd received during a childhood accident. "Only you know about this scar, Elyse. Only you."

My mind reeled as she produced a tablet from a small bag slung across her body.

"Look," she said, her voice softening slightly as she handed me the device.

The screen illuminated my face as I hesitantly pressed play on the first video file. My breath caught in my throat.

There, in high-definition clarity, was Caspian—my Caspian—in bed with Reyna. His hands tangled in her hair as he kissed her with a passion I hadn't seen in years.

"Where did you get this?" I whispered, my fingers trembling as I scrolled through folder after folder.

"Digital graveyard," she said grimly. "Five years of evidence. Vacations you paid for. Hotels you booked. And this—" she tapped a document on the screen—"their wedding certificate from Aspen. While you were visiting your father's grave."

I scrolled through photographs dated throughout our relationship. Caspian and Reyna at the beach house in the Hamptons. In Paris. In Aspen. Always together when I wasn't looking.

"There's more," my future self said, her voice tight with controlled emotion. She played another video.

Caspian's voice filled the corridor: "She's so gullible, Reyn. So desperate to make up for what happened to my leg that she'll believe anything."

Reyna's laughter, cold and cutting. "And her family's money... we'll never have to work again."

I sank against the wall, my legs no longer able to support me. "This can't be real," I whispered, even as the evidence mounted before my eyes.

"It gets worse," Future Elyse said, kneeling beside me. "If you walk down that aisle today, you're walking into a nightmare. He'll bleed you dry, emotionally and financially. He'll make you doubt your sanity until you have nothing left."

I looked up at her, tears blurring my vision. "Why are you here? Really?"

"To save your life." Her eyes met mine, unflinching. "Twenty years from now, you'll be found dead in a bathtub. Suicide, they'll call it. But it was the final act of a woman who'd been destroyed from the inside out."

She gripped my shoulders, her fingers digging into my skin. "If you walk down that aisle today, you die in a bathtub twenty years from now. You must stall."

The tablet slipped from my fingers, clattering to the floor as the full weight of her words crashed over me.