Chapter 1

Leah's POV

I stared blankly at the photo.

Just yesterday, my fiancé, Holden Sinclair, and I went to the wedding venue for our menu tasting.

After a long day, we had just returned home, and I'd just finished showering when Holden held up his phone and said he wanted to take some photos of me and post them on social media to officially announce our wedding in ten days.

I was secretly pleased, yet I couldn't help being annoyed that he'd waited until after I'd taken off my makeup to take the photos.

But he told me that I looked equally beautiful with or without makeup.

Thinking that my straight-laced fiancé had finally learned to say the right things, I happily let him take as many photos and videos as he wanted.

But after he was done, nothing came of it. I assumed he'd forgotten about posting them. I never expected to see my photos here.

An overwhelming sense of absurdity washed over me. My fingers trembled as I typed, "Who's this?"

The reply came almost instantly.

"Someone irrelevant. She just happens to look a lot like my girlfriend. Will you take this job? If so, I'll send you all her photos and videos. We can decide on the price later."

My heart skipped a beat, but I still clung to a sliver of hope. "Sure. We can even generate a short AI video of you and the bride for free and have it played at the wedding. Just send me your photos too."

There was a pause on the other end before he sent a short reply.

"Okay."

He then sent me a compressed file.

After I extracted it, I stared at the videos of me and the dozens of photographs inside, my mind momentarily blank.

In the five years I had been with Holden, the total number of photos he had ever taken of me was nowhere near the number in this folder. But what cut even deeper were the dozen or so selfies of him mixed in.

I finally knew for certain that the devoted man who had commissioned me to create a holographic wedding with his late girlfriend was none other than my own fiancé, Holden Sinclair.

My movements turned stiff. The ring on my finger felt like a branding iron, burning so hot I could barely hold my phone.

Then, he sent me more than a dozen messages listing various changes he wanted—remove the tiny mole on the woman's nose, elongate the outer corners of the eyes slightly, make her eyes less lively and the brows less sharp, and deepen the dimples on her cheeks just a little more.

And because she had been ill, he said that she always carried a faint sadness in her expression, and her figure should be made a little thinner as well.

I instinctively touched the mole on my nose. It was barely larger than the tip of a needle. I'd always liked it, thinking it gave me a distinctive look.

But Holden had constantly urged me to have it removed, saying he was worried it might develop into something cancerous and risk my health.

Back then, I thought it was really sweet that he was so attentive and caring, so I even went to the hospital to have a doctor examine it.

Now, thinking back, when I showed him the doctor's had said no special treatment was needed, the expression on his face had clearly been stiff and impatient.

I unconsciously bit down on my lip.

Holden continued sending me messages.

"If you need any other information from me, feel free to ask for it. I want this holographic image to be as lifelike as possible. I want her to take my arm, walk down the aisle with me, and say 'I do' with her own voice."

I asked, almost masochistically, "I can't create such an interactive hologram by myself. But I have a team with me. It'll cost roughly 30,000 to 100,000 dollars per minute.

"What you described would take at least ten minutes, and with the equipment rental on top of that, the entire package would come to approximately 700,000 dollars. Are you sure you want to go ahead with this?"

The reply came quickly. "I'll give you a budget of a million dollars. I want it as detailed as possible, and I need the finished product in nine days."