Chapter Two: A Wedding Without Love

POV: Emily

The dress cost more than my father's first car. I knew because the stylist told me, cheerfully, while tightening the corset at the back. I stood in front of the mirror and looked at a woman I didn't recognize. White lace, fitted waist, hair pinned up with small pearls threaded through it. Beautiful, in the way that things purchased with money tend to be.

Outside the church doors, I could already hear them. Cameras. Voices. The low roar of a crowd that had gathered because Alexander Kane was getting married and that was apparently news worth standing in the cold for.

"Sixty seconds," someone said near the door.

I picked up my bouquet. White roses. No one had asked what I liked.

The doors opened. The noise hit me first. Camera shutters firing like rainfall, voices rising, a blur of faces pressed against barriers lining the path. I walked, because that was the only option. I kept my chin level and my shoulders back and I thought about my father, who was home this morning, safe, free, sitting in his kitchen probably drinking tea he couldn't taste.

I thought about that with every step.

The church interior was stunning and cold. Candles everywhere, tall white flowers, rows of guests in expensive clothes who all turned to look at me with the particular expression people wear when they are watching something they will discuss for weeks. I didn't know most of them. A few faces I recognized from newspapers or television. Business people. Socialites. A senator near the front.

And at the end of the aisle, Alexander.

He stood with his hands clasped in front of him, wearing a dark suit, watching me approach the way you watch a flight board for your departure gate. Present, but not invested. His best man stood beside him, a tall man with a relaxed smile who was clearly doing the emotional work for both of them.

I reached the altar.

Alexander looked at me. "You look fine," he said quietly.

Not beautiful, not stunning.. I smiled anyway, because sixty cameras were pointed at my face.

++++++

The vows were the strangest part. We stood facing each other and I listened to the officiant's words drift past me like sounds from another room. To love and to cherish. In sickness and in health. I repeated what I was told to repeat. Alexander did the same, in that same low, controlled voice he used for everything. Like he was confirming the terms of an acquisition.

When he slid the ring onto my finger, his hand was steady. Mine wasn't. The ring was a perfect fit, which meant someone had found out my size without asking me, and I didn't know why that bothered me more than anything else so far.

"You may kiss the bride."

Alexander looked at me. Something passed behind his eyes, too fast to name. Then he leaned in and pressed his lips to my cheek. Brief. Formal.

The crowd erupted anyway.

I heard a woman two rows back say to her companion, "He hasn't looked at her once with any warmth." The companion hushed her, but I had already heard it.

++++++++++

I noticed her during the signing. We had moved to a side room, just the two of us and two witnesses, to sign the official registry. Through the open doorway I had a partial view of the church, guests milling and talking. And standing near the back, not talking to anyone, was a woman in a fitted black dress.

She was striking. Dark hair, severe cheekbones, the kind of beauty that announces itself without effort. She was staring at Alexander's back with an expression I understood immediately because I had seen it before on my own face in harder moments.

Fury, The kind that comes from something personal. She felt my gaze and looked at me instead. I looked away first.

"Emily."

Alexander was holding the pen out. I took it and signed my name under his on the registry. Emily Rose Carter-Kane.

The hyphen felt like a leash.

+++++++++

The reception was at a hotel rooftop, glass and steel and a view of the city skyline that was genuinely breathtaking. I stood near the edge for a while, holding a glass of champagne I hadn't touched, watching guests laugh and greet each other like this was simply a wonderful party.

I overheard two older men near me without meaning to.

"Kane doesn't do anything without a reason."

"Married in under twenty-four hours. She must be very important to whatever he's building."

"Or very convenient."

They laughed and moved on. I took a sip of champagne. Across the room I watched Alexander work it. There was no other word. He moved from group to group with a handshake and a brief smile and people lit up around him the way people do around power. He laughed once, sharp and short, at something an older man said. It was the first time I had seen him laugh.

He didn't look for me. Not once.

I thought about what the neighbor's daughter had said to me this morning while I was getting ready. You're marrying Alexander Kane? My God, Emily, do you know what they say about him?

I had asked what they said.

She had hesitated. Just that he doesn't let people get close. Someone tried once. It didn't end well for her.

I hadn't asked who. I wasn't sure I wanted to know.

Now I found myself scanning the room and locating the woman in black almost immediately, because some part of me had been tracking her. She was at the bar, alone, turning a glass slowly in her hands. She looked up and found Alexander across the room, and her jaw tightened.

I was still watching her when I felt Alexander beside me. I hadn't heard him approach. He stood close, close enough that anyone watching would see a husband speaking quietly to his wife at their reception. He picked up a glass from a passing tray and looked out at the skyline.

Then he tilted his head toward me, just slightly.

"You did well today," he said. "The cameras liked you."

I kept my own gaze forward. "I'm glad I was convincing."

A short silence.

"Make sure you stay convincing." His voice was low, completely even. "Because I need to be clear about something before tonight gets any further."

I waited.

"Don't misunderstand this." The words arrived without heat, without cruelty, which somehow made them worse. "You're just a contract. Nothing more."