CHAPTER 6: The Gala.

The car smelled like leather and Alexander's silence.

I sat with my knees pressed together, watching the city blur into gold through tinted glass. The dress he'd chosen was red, silk that moved when I breathed, cut lower than anything I'd owned. I kept wanting to cover my chest with my palm. I kept stopping myself.

"Stop fidgeting." Alexander didn't look up from his phone. "Your hand has moved twelve times in two minutes."

"I'm adjusting the strap."

"You're performing nervousness." He finally looked at me. The blue eyes caught the streetlights, cold and assessing. "Rachel will look for that. She'll see the strap adjustment, the hand at your throat, the way you keep checking your reflection in the windows." He paused. "She'll know you're uncertain. And she'll use it."

"I'm not uncertain." I turned to face him. "I'm realistic. I don't belong here."

"You belong where I put you." He returned to his phone, thumb moving. "That's the only reality that matters tonight."

The car stopped. Valets opened doors. Camera flashes sparked against the windows, small explosions of light that made me flinch.

Alexander stepped out first. Extended his hand. Not as help, but as command. I took it. Stepped into the noise.

The venue was a museum, glass and steel, modern and cold. Three hundred people moved through the atrium, champagne in hand, diamonds catching light, voices overlapping into a sound like rushing water. I kept my chin up and tried to remember how to walk in heels that made me six inches taller, that made me feel like I was standing on someone else's legs.

Alexander's hand found my waist. His fingers dug in, proprietary and precise, guiding me through the crowd. Heads turned. Whispers started. I smiled at no one, looked at everything, felt his grip tighten when I almost stumbled on the marble stairs.

"Dianne." The voice came from above.

Rachel stood at the top of the stairs, green-gray eyes fixed on me, wearing white like a rebuke. She smiled, not the sharp smile from the bakery, but something warmer, more welcoming. More dangerous.

"Alexander," she said, extending her hand to him, not me. "I'm so glad you came."

"We were invited." He took her hand, released it. "By the board."

"Of course." She leaned in, kissed his cheek, her hand resting on his shoulder one second too long. Then she turned to me, her smile widening. "And the new Mrs. Blackwood. How lovely to finally meet you properly."

She said finally. She said properly. She said it like there had been other meetings, secret ones, ones I didn't know about.

"Thank you for having us," I said.

"Oh, I didn't have you. The board had you. I merely..." she paused, her eyes moving over my dress, my hair, the strap I'd adjusted too many times in the car, "...suggested it. Everyone's so eager to meet you. To know the woman who captured Alexander so completely. So quickly."

She stepped closer. Close enough that I could smell her perfume, aggressive, floral, like something blooming in a closed room.

"Tell me," she said, her voice dropping to an intimate register that still carried, still turned heads, still made people near us pause their conversations. "How long did you know each other? Before the wedding?"

The question was simple. The answer was landmine.

I felt Alexander's hand tighten on my waist. Felt the warning in his fingers, the pressure that said lie, that said perform, that said give the answer we rehearsed.

But I'd never rehearsed. We'd never spoken of this. The car ride had been silence and corrections, not preparation.

"Three days," I said.

The silence spread. Rachel's smile froze. Alexander's hand became a vice on my hip, bruising, desperate.

"Three days," Rachel repeated. She turned to the people nearest us, her laugh musical and surprised. "Three days! Such a whirlwind. Such..." she looked back at me, eyes glittering, "...certainty. To know someone so completely in three days. To abandon everything for them. It must be love."

"It must be," I said.

Alexander stepped forward. "Rachel. The board is waiting."

"Of course." She didn't move. She held my gaze, searching for the crack, the doubt, the uncertainty she'd seen in the car. "Dianne. Enjoy the party. Everyone is watching." She leaned closer, her whisper warm against my ear. "I hope you give them a good show."

She walked away, white dress disappearing into the crowd, leaving silence and speculation in her wake.

Alexander's hand dropped from my waist. He turned to face me, and his eyes were winter again, colder than the streetlights, colder than the museum's marble.

"Three days," he said. His voice was low, controlled, furious. "You told her three days."

"It was the truth."

"The truth is not the currency here." He took my elbow, his grip hard enough to hurt, and guided me through the crowd, not toward the party, but toward a corridor, a door, a balcony that opened into cold night air.

The door closed behind us. The noise of the party became muffled, distant. We stood on a stone balcony overlooking the city, the wind cutting through my silk dress like it wasn't there.

He released me. Stepped back. Leaned against the stone railing with the exhaustion of someone who'd been holding himself together for too long.

"You were supposed to say three months," he said. "Three months of courtship. Secret, romantic, intense. That's the story."

"I didn't know the story."

"You didn't ask." He turned to look at me. The city lights caught his face, highlighting the lines around his mouth, the tension in his jaw. "You never ask. You just... react. You tell the truth to my daughter. You confess to judges. You tell my ex-wife our actual timeline as if honesty were armor."

"Isn't it?"

"No." He pushed off the railing, moved toward me, stopped just short of touching distance. "Honesty is a weapon she can use. Three days makes you look calculating. Or desperate. Or purchased." He paused. "Which, of course, you were."

The words landed. I felt them in my chest, heavy and sharp.

"Then why did you choose me?" I asked. "If I was so desperate, so calculated, so... purchased."

He moved closer. Close enough that I could smell him, the cedar, something darker, the scent of winter forests. His hand found my waist again, but different this time. Not proprietary. Testing. His thumb pressed into the silk at my hip, finding the bone beneath.

"Because you looked at me in the airport," he said, his voice dropping, becoming something almost human, almost vulnerable. "Like you didn't care who I was. Like you were already gone, and I was just... transportation."

His other hand found my jaw. Tilted my face up. His thumb brushed my cheekbone, my lower lip, the pulse point in my throat where my heartbeat was visible, frantic and exposed.

"Three days," he whispered. "Three days, and you looked at me like I was the escape. Not the destination. Not the problem," his hand dropping from my face, returning to my waist, gripping hard.

He released me. Stepped back. The mask slammed down with an almost audible click, cold and complete.

"We need to practice more," he said. "You're not ready."

"I'm not—"

"Tomorrow." He turned away, facing the city, his shoulders set in lines that suggested he was already regretting whatever had just happened. "We'll practice. The touches. The looks. The story. Until you can perform it without thinking."

"And tonight?"

"Tonight, you smile. You nod. You let me guide you. And you don't speak unless I speak first." He looked back, just for a second. "Can you manage that?"

I should have said no. Should have walked away, found a car, gone back to the apartment that wasn't mine and the life I'd abandoned.

"Yes," I said.

We returned inside. The party swallowed us, the noise, the heat, the eyes that followed us across the room, that watched his hand on my waist, that measured the space between our bodies and found it wanting.

Rachel watched from across the atrium, champagne in hand, white dress glowing under the lights. She didn't smile. She didn't approach. She simply watched, her eyes moving from my face to Alexander's hand to the way I leaned into him just slightly, performing the intimacy I didn't feel.

Or did feel. I couldn't tell anymore.

The car ride back was silent. Alexander sat on his side, I sat on mine, the space between us like a wall. He checked his phone. I watched the city pass, the lights blurring into streaks of gold and red.

At a red light, his hand moved. Found my thigh, resting on the silk of the dress, warm and heavy and unexpected. I didn't move. Didn't breathe. His thumb traced the seam of the fabric, once, twice, then lifted away as if it had never been there.

"Tomorrow," he said to the window, not to me. "We fix this."

I didn't ask what he meant. I didn't need to. I knew—we'd fix the performance. The story. The distance between what we were and what we appeared to be.

But as the car pulled up to the tower, as the driver opened my door, I felt the ghost of his hand on my thigh, warm, big and real and completely unauthorized.

And I knew, with a certainty that terrified me, that some things couldn't be fixed with practice.

Some things, once cracked, kept breaking.