A FRIEND OF THE FAMILY(JULIAN'S POV)

The dining room my mother had chosen for the welcome dinner sat forty people comfortably, which meant she'd invited exactly forty people, because being comfortable had never once been the point.

I found Maya by the fireplace, dressed in something borrowed from Chloe that fit her better than anything my mother's stylist would have chosen, and felt something in my chest ease slightly at the sight of her, right up until I saw who was walking toward us with a champagne flute in each hand.

"Julian Vance." The woman pressed one glass into my hand without asking whether I wanted it. "You've gotten better looking since the last time I saw you, which frankly feels unfair given how insufferable you were at nineteen."

"Bianca."

"Don't say my name like that. You'll make your fiancée think we have history."

Bianca Castellane turned to Maya with a smile that belonged on a magazine cover, warm and white and entirely too practiced.

"I don't, for the record. History implies Julian noticed me, and he was far too busy being tragic and brilliant to notice anyone at that age."

"Bianca writes for The Gilded Column," I said to Maya, keeping my voice level. "Society pages. Weddings, divorces, the occasional scandal."

"I prefer the term chronicler," Bianca said. "And I'm not here in a professional capacity tonight. Victoria invited me as a family friend. I've known this family since I was in diapers. I was at Julian's christening. I have photographic evidence of him screaming through the entire ceremony, if you'd ever like to see it."

"You've also broken three engagements in that column in the last two years," I said. "So forgive me if I don't fully believe the family friend part."

"I broke two. The third one broke itself, I merely reported the timeline."

Bianca's eyes moved to Maya with open, unhurried curiosity, the exact kind of attention I'd been dreading all evening. "So. You're the mystery woman. Maya, is it? I have to say, Victoria's description didn't do you justice. She made you sound like a con artist. You look more like someone who actually likes him."

"I do," Maya said, steady, and I felt something warm move through me that had nothing to do with the champagne.

"How refreshing." Bianca sipped her drink, watching Maya over the rim of the glass.

"Tell me everything. Where did you two meet? Victoria's version keeps changing depending on who's asking, which usually means someone's lying to her, and I do so love a mystery."

"A charity gala," Maya said. "Months ago. Nothing very interesting."

"Everything's interesting if you tell it right."

Bianca's smile didn't waver, but something behind it sharpened, the professional instinct I recognized because I'd seen it in a hundred boardrooms, the moment someone decided they weren't getting the real story and pivoted to getting a better fake one instead.

"For instance. I heard you own a shop. A bakery, is it? How wonderfully humble. Though I did hear it's had some financial trouble lately. Overdue notices, that sort of thing. Care to comment? I'm simply curious how a woman running a struggling small business happens to end up engaged to one of the wealthiest men in the country within, what was it, a matter of weeks?"

I felt Maya's grip tighten on my arm a half-second before Bianca finished the sentence, like she'd already known which direction the question was headed before the words caught up to it.

I filed the timing away without understanding it, the same way I'd started filing away everything about her that didn't quite add up — the reflexes a half-beat too fast, the way she always seemed to know a door was about to open before anyone knocked.

"I don't see how my finances are relevant to a family dinner," Maya said, her voice perfectly even, though I felt her hand find my arm, gripping just slightly harder than casual.

"They're not, of course." Bianca's tone stayed light, easy, deniable. "I never quite know if I'm looking at a fairy tale or a cautionary one until the wedding actually happens. Or doesn't."

"Bianca." I let my voice go cold, the register I usually saved for board members who'd overstepped. "That's enough."

"Is it?" She looked entirely unbothered, glancing between us with something almost fond. "I'm not trying to ruin anything, Julian. I genuinely hope this is real. I'm simply saying, if it isn't, I will find out eventually. I always do. I'd rather hear it from you first, as a friend, than piece it together from a source who isn't nearly as fond of this family as I am."

"There's nothing to find," Maya said.

"Then there's nothing to worry about."

Bianca's smile widened, genuine now, or close enough to it that I couldn't tell the difference. "I'll leave you two alone. Dinner's about to be called, and Victoria will have my head if I monopolize the mystery fiancée before the soup course."

She drifted off toward another cluster of guests, champagne flute already refilled from a passing tray, already laughing at something someone else had said, the whole exchange apparently forgotten the second it stopped being useful to her.

Maya's grip on my arm loosened slowly, finger by finger, like she had to remind her own hand to let go. She exhaled, long and unsteady, and I watched some of the color come back into her face that I hadn't noticed leaving.

"That woman is terrifying," she said.

"She's the most dangerous person in this room, and my mother invited her on purpose." I

watched Bianca laugh at something across the room, already gathering a new audience, already hunting for the next thread to pull. "She's not wrong about finding things out. She's built an entire career on it. I've seen her end careers over a badly timed photograph."

"Wonderful. That's exactly what I needed to hear tonight."

"For what it's worth," I said, "you handled that better than I would have. I've watched grown men fold under less."

"I had a lot of practice hiding things before I met you."

Maya said it lightly, almost like a joke, but something underneath it didn't quite land as one, and I filed it away with all the other small, strange fragments of her I still hadn't managed to fit together, the space heater held together with tape, the way she flinched at loud, sudden sounds, the exhaustion she wore like something older than seven months of pregnancy could account for.

She glanced toward the doorway, and I followed her gaze.

My mother stood there, surveying the gathered guests with the satisfied expression of a woman watching a plan unfold exactly as designed.

Her eyes found mine, then Maya's, then settled on Bianca with something that looked almost like approval, a small, private nod that wasn't meant for anyone but the woman receiving it.

I understood, watching that look pass between them, exactly what my mother had actually invited to this dinner.

Not a friend of the family.

A test neither of us had known we were taking, with a woman built specifically to make sure we failed it in front of forty witnesses instead of one.

Somewhere behind me, a gong sounded softly, the signal for dinner, and my mother's gaze finally moved on, sweeping the room like she was already calculating where to seat us for maximum exposure.

We had, I realized, survived exactly one test tonight. There would be more before dessert.