Fictitious Reality

CHAPTER ONE

I hear her before I open the door.

That sound. I know that sound. I've heard it through walls at parties, through phone calls she didn't mean to pocket-dial, and now I'm hearing it through my best friend's bedroom door at 10pm on a Tuesday while my cramps are so bad I drove here because I needed help.

I open the door.

---

The lamp is on. They're in the bed.

Ryan. Selena.

My keys hit the floor.

Nobody moves. Nobody speaks. Ryan's shoes are still on. That's the detail that does it. He didn't even take his shoes off.

My ears ring. The room smells like her perfume and sweat and six years of me being a complete fool.

"Rose." Ryan sits up. His voice is steady. Not even close to broken. "Listen to me."

I look at Selena.

She can't look at me.

That's all I needed to see.

I pull the ring off. It takes too long because my fingers are swollen and shaking and I hate every second of it. I throw it at the floor and it bounces once and disappears under the bed.

Ryan stands. "Don't be dramatic."

There it is.

"How long." Not a question.

Silence.

"Okay." I pick up my keys. "Okay."

I walk out.

Past the kitchen. Past the photos on her wall. Past six years of sleepovers and secrets and me thinking this woman would be my maid of honor in four months.

I don't run. I don't slam the door. I walk out like the building is on fire and I refuse to give it the satisfaction of watching me panic.

---

The street is wet. Cold air. My heels catch on the pavement and I'm not walking straight but I keep moving.

"Rose." Ryan's behind me. "Rose, stop."

I walk faster.

His hand grabs my arm and I spin and my knee comes up hard. He catches it. We're standing in the middle of the street and he's looking at me like I'm the problem.

"You need to calm down."

I shove him with both hands. He stumbles. I turn and run.

My ankle rolls on the second step. Pain shoots up my leg but I keep going. Around the corner. Down the block. I stop when my lungs give out and double over with my hands on my knees.

I pull out my phone.

I don't know what I'm doing. My thumbs open his I*******m on their own. Photos of us. A hundred of them. Him with his arm around me, both of us smiling, me looking like the happiest idiot alive.

I step off the curb without looking.

The air pressure changes. The horn is so loud it goes through my whole chest.

I look up.

White light. Massive. Close.

My body tries to move. My ankle gives out. I go down hard on the wet asphalt.

The light is everything.

I think: *This isn't how it ends.*

Then it does.

---

White ceiling.

That's the first thing. Not a hospital white. Not that flat, dead color. This is a warm white. Expensive. The kind of ceiling that costs more per square foot than my monthly grocery budget.

I'm in a bed that is not my bed.

I sit up and my whole body screams at me. My ribs. My left shoulder. My hands, both of them wrapped in clean white bandaging.

The room is large. Floor-to-ceiling windows on one wall, city somewhere far below. No machines. No IV. No nurses. Just dark furniture and a silence so complete it has weight.

And a man sitting in the corner.

He's not reading. Not on his phone. He's just sitting there in the low light, one ankle crossed over his knee, watching me the way you watch something you're deciding what to do with.

Dark suit. Dark eyes. A face that would be beautiful if it wasn't so completely still.

I pull the sheets up on instinct.

"Good." His voice is low. Italian accent underneath the English, not heavy but there. "You're awake."

"Where am I." My voice comes out wrecked. Dry and cracked and nothing like mine.

"My home." He doesn't move. "You've been unconscious for three days."

Three days.

"I need to leave." I push the sheets back.

"You need to stay still." Not a suggestion. Not concern either. Just a fact he's delivering, like a weather report.

"Who are you."

He looks at me for a moment like he's deciding how much to give me.

"Alfonso Tommaso."

The name lands. I know that name. Everyone knows that name. It's on buildings. On the financial page. On the kind of headlines that come with photographs of yachts and women who look like they were built in a lab.

"You pulled me out of the street." I'm putting it together slowly. My head is thick. "You brought me here instead of a hospital."

"A hospital would have notified your family." He tilts his head slightly. "Your fiance reported you missing two days ago. Very publicly. Very tearfully." A pause. "He gave a rather moving statement about your depression."

My stomach drops.

"They think I'm dead."

"They think you're gone." He unfolds from the chair. He's taller than I expected. He crosses to the window and looks out and I get the feeling this is a man who owns every room he walks into without trying. "Which means right now you have something rare."

"What."

"Time." He turns. "And the element of surprise."

I stare at him.

"I don't know what you want," I say. "But I have nothing. Ryan has already started moving on my assets, I'd assume, and I'm sitting in your house wrapped in bandages so whatever you think I'm worth right now—"

"I know exactly what you're worth." His eyes move to mine and stay there. "Rose Alexander. Sole heir to Alexander Co. Engaged to Ryan Angelo, who has been quietly funneling money out of your family's accounts for fourteen months. Your best friend has already given two interviews. Your board of directors has called an emergency meeting."

Everything goes very quiet inside me.

"You've been doing research."

"I've been busy." He moves to the desk in the corner. Opens a folder. Sets it on the edge of the bed in front of me without coming any closer.

I look down.

It's a contract.

"You need power you don't currently have," he says. "Access. Reach. A name that makes people in this country pick up the phone at midnight."

I look up at him.

"And what do you need."

Something moves across his face. Not a smile. Colder than that.

"A wife. Temporarily. On paper." He straightens. "You get my name, my resources, and everything you need to burn Ryan Angelo to the ground."

The room is silent.

My hands are still wrapped in bandaging. My ribs hurt every time I breathe. Two days ago I was dead to everyone who knows me and the two people I trusted most in the world left me bleeding on a street.

I look at the contract.

"I should thank you," I say. "For pulling me out of the road."

"I don't want your thanks, Rose Alexander." His eyes don't move from mine. "I want your signature."