Faking his wife, carrying his child.

 "Nova, please. I'm begging you."

"No."

"You don't understand, I have no one else—"

"Lyra." I pressed the phone harder against my ear. "It's midnight. Start from the beginning."

She pulled in a shaky breath. Then everything came out at once — the Chen family debt, the arrangement she'd signed months ago, the marriage contract with a billionaire named Damien Cross that would clear every loan, every unpaid bill, every last thing our dead mother had left behind. She'd agreed. She'd smiled at the lawyers. She'd let them size her for a ring.

Then three weeks ago she met Pax Rancour at a gallery event and decided that was love.

"So tell them you're backing out," I said.

"I can't." Her voice dropped to almost nothing. "Nova, I already signed. If the marriage doesn't happen the debt transfers back. All of it. Mum's hospital bills. The business loans. Everything."

I got out of bed. Walked to my window. The city outside was dark and indifferent.

"There are people attached to that debt," Lyra whispered. "People who collect. Pax says if I just disappear for a while, if someone stands in at the ceremony, just signs, just gets through one hour — they can't touch us."

"You want me to impersonate you at a legal marriage ceremony."

"One hour. That's all. You sign, you leave, I handle everything after."

"Lyra—"

"Please." A sob cracked through it. "Nova. You're the only person who has ever loved me the right way."

There it was.

She'd saved that sentence, kept it sharp, and used it exactly when she needed it. She always did. And I always felt it land exactly where she aimed it.

I closed my eyes.

"One hour," I said. "I sign. I walk out. That's where my involvement ends."

She cried with relief and I stood at my window and felt something close in around me that I didn't have a word for yet.

After we hung up I sat on my bed and told myself to sleep. Instead I picked up my phone and searched his name.

Damien Cross.

News articles loaded first. Cross Corporation. Coastal contracts. Halvenmoor's most powerful man, according to three separate publications that seemed slightly afraid of him. His face appeared halfway down the page — a press photograph, dark suit, formal event.

I leaned closer.

Grey eyes. Pale, almost colourless, looking straight at the camera with the patience of someone who had never once needed to look away first.

My stomach went completely still.

I knew those eyes.

The memory came before I could stop it. Three months ago. A masked charity gala I'd attended to deliver design work for a client who'd forgotten I existed the moment I handed it over. Too much champagne. Vesna's borrowed dress. A courtyard, dark and quiet, away from the noise inside.

A man who found me there and stayed. We hadn't exchanged names. We hadn't needed to. He had grey eyes and he looked at me like he was deciding something important, and I had let myself be looked at like that for one completely irrational evening because I was tired of being careful.

I had left at midnight without saying goodbye.

Now I pressed one hand flat against my stomach.

Thirteen weeks.

The number I'd been carrying alone since a clinic visit I'd rescheduled twice before going by myself on a Tuesday morning and sitting in the car after with the result in my hand and no one to call. Thirteen weeks and no plan and a client deadline the following morning.

And now this.

I looked at his photograph again. Those same grey eyes. Still. Certain. Completely unaware that somewhere across the city a woman he'd never asked the name of was about to walk down an aisle toward him carrying a secret that could detonate both their lives.

I should have called Lyra back right then. Should have said find someone else, find another way, find any person on earth who isn't currently thirteen weeks pregnant with your future husband's child.

I didn't call her back.

I set an alarm for six. I lay down. I stared at the ceiling for a long time.

I thought about those eyes and what they would do when they recognised me.

Because they would. I already knew they would.

The only question was when.

I put the phone face down on the mattress. But I already knew I wasn't going to sleep. Because somewhere in the back of my mind, one thought kept circling back — if he remembered that courtyard the same way I did, the moment he saw my face, everything was over.