Chapter 6

Chapter 5: The Wedding

The wedding took eleven minutes.

No cathedral. No orchestra. No white roses cascading down an aisle. Just a quiet judge in a private study at Blackwood Estate, two witnesses who didn't meet her eyes, and a man in a black suit who slid a ring onto her finger as though he were sealing a deal.

Which, Celeste reminded herself, he was.

The ring was a pale diamond set in platinum, simple and cold. It fit perfectly. She noticed that, and wondered how he had known her size.

"You may kiss the bride," the judge said.

Celeste's pulse stumbled.

*We didn't discuss this.*

Damian turned to her. For one suspended second, she saw something flicker behind that impenetrable calm. Hesitation, maybe. Or a question.

*Is this allowed?*

She gave him the smallest nod.

His hand rose to her cheek, light as a breath. His lips touched hers briefly, carefully, a kiss so restrained it was almost reverent. It lasted perhaps two seconds.

It was the gentlest thing anyone had done to her in years.

When he pulled back, his eyes held hers a moment too long.

"Mrs. Blackwood," he murmured.

Her name. Already changed. As easily as a signature.

By morning, the world knew.

Celeste sat at the long marble breakfast table in a borrowed silk robe, a cup of coffee going cold in her hands, and watched her face scroll across a dozen screens. Damian's assistant, a crisp, silver-haired woman named Mrs. Hale, had laid out the newspapers in a neat fan.

**BLACKWOOD WEDS IN SECRET.**

**WHO IS THE MYSTERY BRIDE?**

**BILLIONAIRE'S SHOCK MARRIAGE: JULIAN VALE'S WIFE?**

The last one made Celeste's stomach tighten. Someone had leaked the photograph, a single image taken as they left the courthouse, Damian's hand at the small of her back, her face turned slightly toward him. In the photo, she looked composed. Almost serene.

*You'd never know I'd been sleeping in a stranger's guest room two nights ago.*

"The announcement has been trending for six hours," Mrs. Hale said, tapping a tablet. "Forty million views. Three networks have requested interviews."

"Decline them all," Damian said from the doorway.

He had come in without a sound, already dressed, a navy suit and an unreadable expression, a folder tucked under one arm. Celeste hadn't slept more than an hour, and he looked as though he hadn't slept at all.

"Julian?" she asked.

"His office has called four times." The corner of Damian's mouth shifted. "I haven't answered."

"Good."

She meant it to sound fierce. It came out almost like a question.

Damian's eyes lingered on her, and she had the strange sense that he was listening to what she hadn't said.

"Would you like to see it?" he asked quietly.

"See what?"

He crossed the room and set a tablet in front of her.

The video was grainy, shot from a distance. It showed the glass lobby of Vale Holdings, the morning after. A crowd of staff stood frozen around a wall-mounted screen playing the news.

And in the center of the frame, in the middle of the floor, stood Julian.

Celeste leaned closer.

He was in the same dark suit he'd worn at the penthouse. His coffee cup hung forgotten from his hand. On the screen above him, her face filled the frame, and beneath it, in crisp white letters:

**MRS. CELESTE BLACKWOOD.**

She watched the color leave him.

It happened slowly, from his forehead downward, as though someone had pulled a plug. His jaw went slack. His fingers loosened, and the cup slipped from his hand, tumbling to the marble and shattering into a hundred pale shards.

No one moved.

"Julian?" someone whispered off-camera. "Sir?"

He didn't answer. He stood in the spreading puddle of coffee, staring at the screen as though it had spoken his name.

Then his lips moved. Celeste couldn't hear it, but she didn't need to.

*Impossible.*

Something warm and unfamiliar bloomed in her chest. Not joy, exactly. Something darker and far more satisfying.

"He looks," she said, "like a man who's just been told the ground isn't there."

"He looks," Damian said, "like a man who finally understands what he lost."

Celeste glanced up. He was watching her, not the screen. There was no triumph in his face. Only a quiet, guarded patience, like a man waiting to see whether she would flinch.

She didn't.

"More," she said. "Show me the rest."

The second clip was from a restaurant. A private dining room, a candlelit table, two figures seated close together.

Isabella.

She wore a pale green dress and a perfect smile. She was laughing at something an older woman said, her hand resting on her stomach, the gesture practiced and gentle. A diamond necklace glittered at her throat.

Not the pearls. Celeste noticed that at once. Julian had told her not to wear them in public.

*Coward.*

Then Isabella's phone buzzed. She glanced at the screen. The camera caught the change before she could stop it: the smile faltering, the blush draining from her cheeks. Her eyes widened. Her lips parted.

She read it again.

When she looked up, the older woman was still talking, but Isabella wasn't listening. Her fingers tightened around the phone. She forced her mouth into a curve, but the corners trembled, and for one unguarded moment, the smile cracked like thin ice.

Celeste watched it with a stillness she barely recognized in herself.

*Seven years of friendship. And now you can't even hold a smile.*

"She's been calling the estate since dawn," Mrs. Hale offered, with the faintest air of disapproval. "Eleven times. And Mr. Vale's mother left two messages."

"Delete them," Damian said.

"Wait." Celeste raised a hand. "Let me hear one."

Mrs. Hale glanced at Damian. He gave a small nod.

A moment later, Isabella's voice drifted from a speaker, thin and breathless.

*"Celeste, it's me. Please call me back. I know you're angry, and you have every right to be, but this isn't what it looks like. You don't understand what you're getting into. Damian Blackwood is not who you think he is. Please. Please call me."*

The message ended with a soft, shaky inhale.

Celeste stared at the speaker.

*You don't understand what you're getting into.*

Why would Isabella, who had smirked in her mother's pearls only two nights ago, sound afraid?

She looked at Damian.

His face was perfectly smooth. Perfectly still. But for the briefest instant, a muscle in his jaw tightened.

"She's trying to frighten you," he said evenly. "Julian's people will say anything to pull you back."

"Is she lying?"

A pause. Barely a heartbeat.

"She wants you to doubt me," Damian said. "That's all."

It wasn't an answer. Celeste noticed that, and filed it away with the omission from the car, the too-perfect ring size, the way he had looked at her in the rain.

*He's hiding something.*

But the screen was still glowing, Julian's stunned face frozen on the marble, and the ache in her chest had never felt so sweet.

She set down her coffee and rose from the table.

"Tell me where to begin," she said.

Damian's gaze held hers, dark and unreadable, and for the first time since the rain, Celeste had the unsettling feeling that the man across from her was afraid.

Not of Julian.

Of her.