CHAPTER 2

Serena POV

The car stops in front of Le Jardin, the French restaurant on 72nd and Madison. The awning is pale gray, the name written in gold letters that look like handwriting. Two giant pots of white roses stand on either side of the door like guards.

Marco opens my door. A cold October wind slips under my coat and bites my legs. I pull the cream cashmere wrap tighter around my shoulders. Liam chose this coat last week (camel color, fits perfect, costs more than most people make in two months).

“Text when you’re ready to leave, Miss Serena,” Marco says quietly.

I nod and walk inside.

The hostess knows me the second she sees me. “Miss Serena , your parents are already here. This way.”

I follow her through the restaurant. It smells like butter and lemon and money. Crystal glasses sparkle. Every table has a small vase with one perfect white orchid. Heads turn as I pass (some stare, some pretend not to). I keep my chin up the way Liam taught me (high enough to look confident, not so high I look arrogant).

Dad booked the private room in the back. The door is frosted glass. I see shadows moving inside. My stomach knots the way it always does when I have to see Caroline and Chloe together.

The hostess opens the door.

My heart is already knocking against my ribs.

Inside, the room is bright from a wall of windows looking onto a tiny secret garden with a fountain. Round table, white linen, more orchids. Three place settings. Dad is standing by the window on the phone, back to the room. Caroline is sitting, scrolling her phone, blonde hair in a perfect low bun, diamonds flashing on her wrist. Chloe is next to her, legs crossed, smiling at something on her own screen.

They haven’t noticed me yet.

Dad ends his call and turns. His face lights up. “There’s my girl.”

He crosses the room in four long steps and hugs me tight. He still smells like the same cedar cologne he wore when I was little, before Mom got sick, before everything changed. For one second I let myself lean into him.

“Hi, Dad.”

“You look beautiful,” he says, holding me at arm’s length. “Doesn’t she look beautiful, Caroline?”

Caroline looks up. Her smile is small and perfect and cold. “Stunning as always, Serena. That coat is divine.”

“Thank you.” My voice is polite the way Liam likes.

Chloe finally lifts her eyes. She is twenty-four, three years younger than me, but sometimes she looks fifteen with that baby face and huge blue eyes. Today her blonde hair is in two low braids, innocent schoolgirl style, but the dress she’s wearing costs five thousand dollars and shows half her chest. She stands up and hugs me, arms tight around my neck, perfume sweet and heavy.

“Sis! I missed you!”

She smells like cotton candy and something sharp underneath.

“I missed you too,” I say into her hair.

She pulls back, holds my hands, looks me up and down. “You’re so tiny! Have you lost weight again? Liam must be starving you.” She laughs like it’s a joke. Caroline laughs too.

Dad frowns a tiny bit. “She looks healthy to me.”

I force a laugh. “Wedding diet. Six weeks to go. Madame Laurent will murder me if the dress needs letting out.”

“Six weeks!” Chloe squeals and claps. “I still can’t believe my big sister is marrying Liam Voss. It’s literally a fairy tale.”

Dad beams. “He’s a good man. Takes excellent care of her.”

I sit where the place card has my name in gold ink. Dad is at the head, Caroline to his left, Chloe to his right, me between Dad and Chloe. A waiter appears like magic, pours water with lemon slices, takes Dad’s mimosa order, my tea, Caroline’s sparkling, Chloe’s Bellini.

Dad starts talking about the venue (The rooftop at Voss Tower, the one that costs two hundred fifty thousand for one night). He is proud because Liam let him “help” pay for the flowers. Dad sold his company for a lot of money ten years ago, but Liam has ten times that. Still, Dad likes feeling useful.

Caroline sips her water. “The guest list is… ambitious. Five hundred?”

“Five-fifty,” Dad says.

Chloe leans toward me, eyes shining. “Did he really invite the President?”

“Former,” I say. “And only to the ceremony.”

She squeals again. I wish she would stop squealing.

The waiter brings bread. Tiny rounds of brioche in a silver basket. Chloe takes one, tears it, puts the piece back, takes another, repeats. She is on her “bride-diet” too, she says, but hers is champagne and celery.

Dad is talking about the string quartet from Vienna that will play during cocktail hour. Caroline is nodding like she cares. I try to listen, but Chloe keeps touching my engagement ring, turning the ten-carat diamond so the light catches it.

“It’s so big,” she sighs. “I hope whoever I marry has taste like Liam.”

I smile with my lips closed.

Dad reaches over and covers my hand with his big warm one. “Your mom would be so proud, sweetheart. I know this wedding would have made her cry happy tears.”

I feel my throat close. Mom died when I was sixteen. Breast cancer, fast and mean. After the funeral Dad was lost for a year. Then he met Caroline at a charity auction. She was thirty-five, he was fifty-one. She smiled pretty and laughed at his jokes and six months later they were married. Six months after that she moved Chloe in.

I was already at college by then, but every break I came home to my house feeling less like my house. My bedroom turned into “the blue guest room.” Mom’s pictures came off the walls. Caroline said “fresh energy” was important after trauma.

I clear my throat. “She would love the roses,” I tell Dad. “She always said Park Avenue in October smells like heaven.”

He squeezes my hand again, eyes soft. “We’ll have nine hundred white roses. Liam ordered them from Ecuador. Special variety. They smell stronger.”

Chloe rolls her eyes when Dad isn’t watching. “Nine hundred. Obsessed much?”

I pretend I didn’t hear.

The first course arrives (soft egg with caviar for Dad, fruit for Chloe, plain yogurt with berries for me). Caroline has nothing; she “did brunch earlier.”

Chloe picks one raspberry, licks the yogurt off, puts it back. “So the bridal shower is in few weeks ” she says, “and I finalized everything. The penthouse at Sixty Vestry, rooftop, all white theme, two hundred white balloons, white peonies, white cake, white gifts only. And the entertainment” She stops, mouth open like she almost said too much, then giggles. “It’s a surprise.”

My stomach drops a little. Chloe’s surprises are never good for me. When we were teens, her “surprise” for my eighteenth birthday was telling everyone I’d slept with the tennis coach so I spent the party hiding in the bathroom crying.

I keep my face happy. “Can’t wait.”

“It’s going to be legendary,” she promises, and reaches over to tuck a piece of hair behind my ear exactly the same way Liam does. Her nails are long and white. “You deserve the best send-off before you become Mrs. Liam Voss.”

Dad raises his glass. “To Serena. May your marriage be as happy as mine is now.” He looks at Caroline when he says it.

Caroline raises her sparkling water. Chloe raises her Bellini. I raise my tea. We all drink.

Dad has to take a call (something about the Tokyo market opening soon). He kisses my forehead and steps back into the little garden, phone to ear.

The second he’s gone, the air changes.

Caroline puts her phone down very carefully. “Serena,” she says, voice like ice cubes, “your father is very generous with the wedding. But we need to discuss boundaries.”

I blink. “Boundaries?”

Chloe is suddenly busy on her phone, pretending, badly.

Caroline leans forward. “Liam called me yesterday. He’s concerned you’ve been… distant lately. Not answering texts fast enough. Canceling plans last minute. He thinks the stress is making you forget your place.”

My heart starts hammering so hard I feel it in my fingertips.

“I haven’t”

She holds one hand up, quiet. “A man like Liam Voss does not wait, Serena. He chooses. And if the woman he chooses makes him feel insecure, he will choose someone else. I would hate for you to throw away the opportunity most girls would kill for because you’re having cold feet six weeks before the big day.”

Chloe looks up then, gives me a tiny, sympathetic smile that is not sympathy at all.

I swallow. “I’m not having cold feet. I love Liam.”

“Good,” Caroline says, and the smile comes back, sharp as glass. “Because your father has put a great deal of social capital into this merger ,I mean marriage. It would break his heart if it fell apart now.”

Merger. She actually said it out loud.

I stare at my yogurt. The blueberries look like tiny bruises.

Chloe reaches over and pats my hand. “Don’t look so scared, sis. Liam adores you. He told me himself last week how obsessed he is with you.”

Last week. Liam was in Aspen for “meetings.” He told me he was alone.

I force my voice steady. “He was in Aspen last week?”

Chloe realizes her mistake. She laughs. “Oh! Right, he meant in the group chat with his assistant or something boring. You know how he bragged about the ring again. Boring man talk.”

Caroline gives Chloe a look that could freeze fire.

Dad comes back, cheerful. “Sorry, darling. Duty calls.” He sits, pats my cheek. “Everything okay?”

“Perfect,” Caroline says before I can open my mouth.

The second course comes (sole for Dad, Dover sole for Caroline, grilled salmon for Chloe, poached chicken for me because Liam said fish makes my hair smell).

I eat three bites and push the plate away.

Chloe is talking about the bachelorette weekend she wants to plan in Tulum, even though Liam already said no, because he doesn’t want me out of the country without him.

Dad frowns a little. “Whatever Serena wants.”

“Oh she wants!” Chloe chirp. “I already booked the jet!”

I open my mouth to say no, thank you, but Caroline cuts in smoothly, “Let’s survive the rehearsal dinner first, Chloe.”

Dad checks his watch. “I hate to eat and run, but I have a board meeting at two.”

He kisses my cheek again. “I love you, honey. See you at Liam’s family dinner, yes?”

Liam’s family dinner. Roman will be there. Liam’s older brother who has hated me since the first time Liam brought me to the house and Roman looked at me like I was dirt. I haven’t seen him in two years. Liam says it’s because Roman is “jealous of what we have.

“Yes, Dad.”

Dad and Caroline leaves. Chloe walks out with them, blowing me a kiss from the door. I sit alone at the table. The waiter asks if I want anything else. I shake my head.

I pull out my phone under the table.

No new messages from Liam since this morning.

I type:

On my way to the fitting. I love you.

I love you.

I stare at Chloe’s last text from this morning again: It’s going to be legendary.

I don’t write back this time.

I sit there a long minute. The orchid in the vase is perfect white and spotless. I reach and touch one soft petal with one finger.

It bruises under the slightest pressure. A brown mark spreads from where I touched.

I pull my hand back fast, wipe the brown off on the linen napkin, and text Marco that I’m ready.

When I walk out into the cold October air, the wind feels like a warning.

Six weeks until the wedding.

And for the first time in five years, a tiny voice whispers inside my head, Run.

I look left and right on the sidewalk, half expecting Liam is watching.

Only Marco waiting, car door open, face blank as ever.

I get in.

He closes it behind me, and the lock clicks like a jail.