Chapter 5 - The Game Begins

Elara's POV

I followed Ian out of the hall at a distance of thirty feet and slipped behind a marble pillar in the corridor, where the noise of the show dropped to a low hum. The lace half-mask across my eyes was my own choice. Spectra Minds had been teasing "a face to be unveiled at the end of the night" for a week, and half the industry had decided I was either a publicity stunt or a very expensive joke. My pulse was steady. Five years had taught it how to hide. But my hands had gone cold, and I flattened them against the stone to keep them from showing me what they wanted to do.

He had his phone against his ear, and I could hear the other end clearly, because his mother had never in her life learned to lower her voice.

"You need to hurry up with Camila, Ian. You're thirty-three. Do you think you're still young? This isn't the old days, and you can't keep clinging to ideals that went out of fashion. A marriage to her would be good for the family's name. You're a businessman. You know what that's worth."

Her tone softened for one second, and the softness was worse. "As long as she can be a good wife, that's enough."

My nails dug into my palms. I knew that voice. I could have drawn the exact shape of her mouth saying it.

She had never liked me and had never bothered to hide it, not at the wedding, where she looked at me as if I'd tracked mud into a church, and not at the dinners where she called me "the girl" within my hearing. The single time she had ever called me the perfect daughter-in-law was at a family dinner with Ian's grandmother watching, and she had stopped smiling the moment the old woman looked away. Now she was handing her son to my former best friend like a gift basket, and she had never once wondered where the first wife was buried.

Ian's face didn't change. "I know, Mum."

"You always say you know. And then you do nothing."

The call ended. He lowered the phone and let out a long breath through his nose, and for a second he stood in the empty corridor with his shoulders slightly bowed, a man tired of being told what to do. I pressed myself deeper behind the pillar, certain he would feel me there. I had loved that back for three years. I knew the exact way it tensed.

"Elara."

My whole body went still.

He had said it quietly, almost to himself, and my lungs locked. Had he seen me? I waited for his footsteps. They didn't come toward me. He was looking down the corridor, where a woman in a long silver dress was walking toward the showroom, and from behind she was me. The same height, the same dress, the same dark waves down her back, down to the way the light slid over the fabric.

Ian straightened. His pupils narrowed, and he started after her.

I stayed where I was and held my breath. Watching Ian trail a stranger down a hall because she carried my silhouette gave me a sharp, bitter satisfaction that tasted almost like a victory. Walk faster, Ian, I thought. Chase it. See how it feels.

He caught her at the showroom doors and put a hand on her shoulder. "Elara?"

She turned, startled. A completely unfamiliar face looked up at him, young and heavily made-up, with a glossy smile that grew as she took in his suit and his watch.

"Sorry, handsome, do I know you?" she said, tilting her head. "Or do you just want my number?"

Something in Ian's expression closed like a door. "Wrong person. I apologize."

He walked away without another word, and the woman stared after him, then sneered. "Unbelievable. You grab a stranger in the dark and you can't even see properly? Are you blind as a mole or what?"

Her voice carried down the corridor. Ian never looked back.

I stepped out from behind the pillar and into the stream of guests heading for their seats, wearing the same dress as the woman at the doors, with a mask covering the top half of my face. A small, cold smile curved my lips. I adjusted the mask until it sat right.

Five years ago I loved you, Ian. I treasured you with my whole life, and you called me a nuisance. A burden. Fine. I walked on, steady. This time I'll be your worst nightmare, and you'll have no idea until it's too late.

The memories came, as they always did when I let them, the bedroom and the slap and the ropes and Finn's voice shouting at me to go. My throat tightened. But tonight wasn't for pain. I had cried my share. Hatred, I had learned, wasn't hot, the way people said. It was cold, and orderly, and patient, and it sat in my chest like a stone I had grown used to carrying.

The lights dimmed and the first models stepped out onto the runway, one breathtaking look after another. The hall shimmered and applauded, and I sat very still in my seat with my fingers laced in my lap and my eyes fixed on the two people who had ruined my life. Ian sat in the front row with his arms crossed. Camila sat beside him with her hand on his knee, leaning in to whisper to him in the slow, proprietary way of a woman who needed other people to see her do it.

A cold prickle crawled down my spine when she lifted her head and swept her gaze across the crowd.

For one breathless second it landed on me, and our eyes locked across the dark, hers sharp and mine behind lace.

My pulse jumped. Does she know?

Her brows twitched, and then smoothed. She looked away. The mask had held.

You wanted me dead, I thought, with every cell in my body, and the thought was so clear that I was surprised nobody turned. Too bad for you, Camila. I'm back, and you'll pay. For me. For Finn.

My eyes stung. I blinked until the sting went away before anyone could see.

Ian leaned toward her. "Who are you looking at, Cam?"

She cupped his face with a bright smile. "No one, babe. I thought I saw an old friend."

She kissed him, and I turned my head and watched the stage instead, letting the anger cool into something clean and quiet.

When the last model had left the runway, the host stepped up and announced Camila by name, as the representative of the Vance Group. She rose in a rustle of silk and glided up the steps, as confident as a woman who had planned every one of them. The microphone was in her hand and the lights were on her face. She opened her mouth to speak.

The screen behind her shuddered to life.

"Camila, please help me. Please."

It was a woman's voice, thin and ragged, and the image that filled the wall was a woman on her knees in a dark room. Her hair was wet and her face was bruised, and she looked exactly like me. She looked into the camera as if she could see the whole hall, and she was begging.

A collective breath went through the audience.

Two weeks of planning had gone into that video. A decoy, a rented warehouse, a make-up artist who didn't ask questions, and a man in a van outside the building with a laptop and a very clear set of instructions. Every second of it was designed to turn the room against one woman, and it was working.

Camila froze with the microphone halfway to her mouth. The color drained out of her face in a slow tide, starting at her forehead.

Murmurs rose like water.

This is only the beginning, I thought, and let the sound of the room drown my whisper. The tip of the iceberg.

I picked up the champagne flute on the armrest and closed my hand around it and squeezed. The glass cracked, then shattered, and I felt it bite into my palm and the warmth spread against my skin. I sat there with my fist closed in my lap and my face perfectly calm, and I watched blood and glittering shards run down my wrist, and I felt nothing but satisfaction.

Someone shouted from the back. "What did you do to her?"

A program sailed through the air and hit the edge of the stage. A plastic water bottle followed, then another, and the sound of the crowd changed from shock to something uglier. People rose out of their seats. Phones went up in a field of tiny lights.

"What's going on?" Camila barked into the microphone, and her voice cracked through the speakers. "What's wrong with everyone? Who is that?"

She spun to look for Ian. He had stood up in the front row, and he was staring at the screen without blinking, his whole body held tight like a wire.

"Who played that?" Her voice climbed. "Turn it off! Turn it off, TURN IT OFF!"

She ran for the wings, but the press got there first. They surrounded her like a swarm, pushing recorders and cameras into her face from every direction.

"Ms. Camila, who is the woman in that video?"

"Do you know her?"

"Were you involved?"

"I don't know her!" Sweat had beaded along her upper lip, and she was shaking. "How would I know her? I've never seen her in my life!"

The flashes kept firing and the microphones kept asking. Camila's gaze darted over the crowd, searching, and when she finally looked down at the front row, Ian's seat was empty.

Her face went ashen. She lunged through the reporters in her heels, shoving at shoulders, and caught him at the foot of the stage steps.

"Ian, listen to me. This is a mistake, it's some kind of accident. It isn't what you think."

He stopped. He turned very slowly, and when he spoke, his voice was so quiet and so brittle that it cut through all the noise around them. "Then what is it, Camila?"

She opened her mouth. Nothing came out.

His jaw tightened. He looked down at her hand on his arm, and then he took it off, like picking something hot out of a fire, and let it drop. "Laura," he said, without looking away from Camila's face. "Take care of her. If anything happens, wait for me."

Then he walked out of the hall, and he didn't look back.

I watched him go through the double doors with my wounded hand tucked into my lap, and a slow smile unfolded at the corner of my mouth.

Round one, Camila. Welcome to the beginning of your downfall.