Chapter 3

Yvette woke like someone coming back from the dead angry about it.

One moment, she was lying still beneath the white sheets of the guest room, pale against the pillows, her hair spread over the linen like spilled ink. The next, her eyes flew open and fixed on me with pure, violent alarm.

I had been sitting in the chair beside the bed for most of the morning.

Not watching her.

Waiting.

There was a difference, though I doubted she would appreciate it.

Her gaze moved from my face to the room, then to the tall windows, the carved ceiling, the dark wooden wardrobe, the Mercado crest stitched into the blanket over her legs.

Her breathing changed.

Fast.

Uneven.

Then she scrambled backward so quickly that the headboard struck the wall.

“You should not come near me,” she said, grabbing the nearest pillow with both hands, “or I’ll shout.”

The threat would have been more impressive if her voice had not cracked on the last word.

I leaned back in my chair. “Good morning to you too.”

“Where am I?”

“In my family’s ancestral mansion.”

Her fingers tightened around the pillow.

That was when I realized my answer had not helped.

“At the Mercado estate,” I added, because apparently I had chosen violence without meaning to.

Yvette stood on the bed.

Actually stood.

On the mattress, barefoot, wild-haired, holding the pillow as if it were a weapon handed down through generations of warriors.

“I said do not come near me.”

“Shouldn’t you thank me instead of acting like I abducted you?” I stood and moved closer to the bed. “You collapsed. I carried you out of that rotten mansion, brought you here, called a doctor, and gave you the safest room in the house. You are very lucky that I—”

The pillow hit me square in the face.

For one stunned second, the world went white and soft.

Then the pillow dropped to the floor.

Yvette was already climbing off the bed.

I stared at her.

She had struck me.

Again.

With a pillow this time, yes, but the disrespect was clearly developing a pattern.

“What a disgraceful woman,” I said, touching my nose.

“Let me out.”

She ran for the door.

I followed, more irritated than worried, until she threw it open and nearly collided with my grandmother.

“Oh, dear,” Grandmother said.

She stood in the doorway in a pale morning dress, her silver hair pinned neatly, one hand resting on her cane. She looked at Yvette, then at me, then at the pillow lying dead on the floor behind us.

Her eyes brightened with immediate betrayal.

“Did Sandro scare you?” she asked.

Yvette froze.

I pointed at myself. “Me?”

Grandmother ignored me and touched Yvette’s shoulder with gentle fingers. “Don’t worry. I am here. I am on your side.”

“Grandmother.”

“You stay quiet.”

“I am your grandson.”

“And I know exactly what you are like.”

Yvette looked between us, still tense, still ready to run, but confusion had slipped into her fear.

Good.

Confusion was better than panic.

Grandmother smiled at her. “You fainted last night. The doctor said exhaustion, shock, and hunger. Nothing broken. No fever. But you need rest and food.”

“I need to leave,” Yvette said.

“You need breakfast first.”

“I cannot stay here.”

“No one is asking you to marry the house, dear. Only to eat.” Grandmother patted her back as if Yvette had always belonged there, another difficult girl under the Mercado roof. “Sandro will take you to the kitchen.”

Yvette’s eyes flicked to me.

Distrustful.

Naturally.

I lifted both hands. “I will not approach the dangerous lady without permission.”

Grandmother’s smile sharpened. “You will also behave.”

“I am always behaved.”

Yvette made a small sound.

Not quite a laugh.

Close enough to annoy me.

Grandmother glanced at her, pleased. Then she looked back at me and winked, quick and shameless, as if she had not just betrayed her own blood in front of a stranger.

“I’ll be on the veranda,” she said. “Bring her breakfast. Both of you eat. No fighting before coffee.”

“She threw a pillow at me.”

“Then consider yourself fortunate she chose something soft.”

Grandmother left before I could defend my dignity.

For a moment, Yvette and I stood in the doorway with the silence of two people who had survived different wars and blamed each other for the smoke.

“Let’s go,” I said. “Before the food gets cold.”

I walked ahead.

Halfway down the corridor, I realized no footsteps followed.

I turned.

No Yvette.

Of course.

I found her back in the guest room.

She was not trying the window or searching for a weapon, which showed some improvement. She stood near the far wall, staring at the portrait hung above the fireplace.

My great-grandfather.

Ferdinand Mercado.

The nation’s hero.

The revolutionary blade.

The man whose painted face had watched over my childhood from halls, textbooks, and government buildings. In this portrait he wore a dark military coat, one hand resting on the hilt of his sword. His eyes were painted with the stern patience of a man already certain history would forgive him.

Yvette stared at him as if he had just spoken.

The color had gone from her face again.

“Miss Scaredy Cat,” I said, softer than I meant to. “Breakfast.”

She did not blink.

I followed her gaze to the portrait. “You recognize him?”

“No.”

Too fast.

Too cold.

A lie with teeth.

I came closer and gently took her arm.

She did not pull away this time, but her eyes stayed fixed on the painted man until the doorway swallowed him from sight.

The kitchen was bright, polished, and warm with the smell of garlic rice, eggs, hot chocolate, and brewed coffee. Morning light fell through the tall windows onto copper pans and white stone counters. The servants had prepared enough food for a family of six, because old houses hated moderation.

Yvette sat where I indicated, tense but too hungry to pretend otherwise.

I pulled out the chair across from her.

We ate in silence.

Not peaceful silence.

A guarded one.

She watched the spoon before using it, watched the steaming cup before drinking, watched the servants as they moved around us. Every modern thing still made her pause. The refrigerator. The coffee machine. The small light under the cabinet. She tried to hide it, but fear and wonder kept betraying her in tiny movements.

I should have found it amusing.

I did.

I also found myself telling the servants to leave us.

When the kitchen door closed, Yvette looked at me. “Why did you do that?”

“You looked ready to stab someone with a fork.”

“I do not stab people without reason.”

“Comforting.”

She returned to her food.

I watched her eat, then looked away when I realized I was watching.

The peace lasted seven minutes.

Then Elise arrived like bad news wearing perfume.

The kitchen doors flew open.

“Bad news,” she said.

She stood in the doorway with her phone in one hand, sunglasses pushed up on her head, and panic carefully dressed as anger. Elise never looked truly undone. Even now, breathing hard, she seemed more offended by the inconvenience of disaster than frightened by it.

“We are in trouble,” she said. “Serious trouble. We need to settle this before the media turns it into something we cannot kill.”

I set down my cup. “Good morning, Elise.”

“Do not good morning me.”

Yvette’s eyes moved between us.

Elise walked to the table and dropped her phone in front of me.

A photo filled the screen.

Me, carrying Yvette through a side exit of the Gonzalez mansion.

Her head against my chest. Her body limp in my arms. My face turned away from the camera, jaw hard, expression unreadable enough for the internet to ruin it creatively.

I swiped.

Another photo.

Yvette outside the mansion earlier, barefoot and frightened, running from the front entrance.

Another.

Me opening the car door for her.

Another.

Her gripping my arm beneath the flashes.

Another.

A blurred image from the courtyard, my hand around Steffi’s wrist as Yvette stood behind me.

Each photo told part of the truth.

Together, they made a lie convincing enough to sell.

“What are they saying?” I asked.

Elise laughed once. There was no humor in it. “Which version do you prefer? That you brought an unstable woman to the party for attention. That you paid a girl to pretend to be a Gonzalez. That you kidnapped her from the mansion. That you threatened her into accompanying you. That you assaulted a guest when she tried to help.”

Yvette went very still.

I looked up at Elise. “Kidnapped?”

“It is trending.”

The word landed with obscene lightness.

Trending.

As if my life were a shirt color. As if Yvette’s terror were a dance people could copy.

Elise swiped again and held up a video. The audio was poor, but the image was clear enough. Yvette struggling outside the gates earlier. The guards dragging her. Me later leading her past reporters. Her fainting body in my arms.

The caption read: MERCADO HEIR’S MYSTERY GIRL: RESCUED OR TAKEN?

Beneath it, comments multiplied by the second.

I felt something sharp move beneath my ribs.

Not fear.

Not exactly.

Fear belonged to people who had never watched their family lawyers erase mistakes before breakfast.

This was irritation with consequences.

“They cannot prove anything,” I said.

“They do not need proof,” Elise snapped. “They need a story. And right now the story is that Ferdinand Alexander Mercado II was seen with a distressed, unidentified woman who later collapsed in his arms and disappeared into the Mercado estate.”

Yvette pushed back from the table.

The chair scraped the floor.

“I should leave.”

“No,” Elise and I said at the same time.

Yvette’s eyes sharpened.

Elise noticed and adjusted first. Her voice softened, but not kindly. Elise’s softness was another kind of tool.

“Darling, if you leave now, the story worsens. They will follow you. They will find out you have no documents they can verify, no current address, no family willing to claim you, no history that makes sense in this century.”

Yvette’s fingers curled against the edge of the table.

I looked at Elise.

She knew too much.

Of course she did. Elise did not survive in our world by being slow.

Yvette stood. “I am not your concern.”

“You became our concern the moment Sandro carried you past cameras.” Elise sat across from her, close enough to trap without touching. “And Sandro became yours the moment people decided he might have hurt you.”

“I can tell them he did not.”

“And they will say he paid you.”

“I will say the truth.”

“The truth?” Elise tilted her head. “Which truth, Yvette Veronica Gonzalez? The one where you are a missing dead woman from a dead family? The one where you do not understand fingerprints or advertisements? The one where an old caretaker recognized you from a portrait painted before most of us were born?”

The kitchen went quiet.

Yvette’s face emptied.

I turned slowly toward Elise. “You have been busy.”

“I had a long night.”

“You were supposed to call a doctor.”

“I did. Then I did what you pay me to do. I controlled damage.”

“You are not paid to investigate her.”

“I am paid to protect you.”

Yvette laughed softly.

Both of us looked at her.

It was not a pleasant sound.

“Protect him,” she said. “Of course.”

Elise leaned forward. “Yes. Protect him. His name carries companies, contracts, political allies, family donors, and half this country’s fantasy of noble blood. If this becomes an abduction scandal, it will not only ruin his career. It will wake people who prefer old graves closed.”

The words settled over the table.

Old graves.

Yvette understood that better than I did. I saw it in the way she stopped breathing for half a second.

“What do you want?” I asked Elise.

Her eyes moved to me.

Then to Yvette.

Then back.

“You need to make the relationship public.”

“No,” Yvette said immediately.

Elise continued as if she had not spoken. “Not simply dating. Too weak. Too easy to dismiss as a cover. We need commitment. Something dramatic enough to rewrite the narrative before noon.”

I stared at her.

She did not blink.

“No,” Yvette repeated, louder this time.

Elise folded her hands on the table. “Engagement.”

The word made the kitchen feel smaller.

Yvette stood so fast her chair nearly fell. “No.”

I leaned back. “Elise.”

“It is the cleanest option.”

“It is insane.”

“It is effective.”

“I have never proposed to anyone successfully.”

“Then consider this practice.”

Yvette looked at me sharply.

A memory passed between us without being invited.

A courtyard.

Red roses.

Her hand pushing me back in front of everyone.

My rejected oath curdling into something darker.

My mouth tightened.

Elise did not notice, or pretended not to.

“We announce that Yvette is your fiancée,” she said. “Private relationship. Long kept from media because she values privacy. Last night she became overwhelmed at the Gonzalez event. You took her home to rest under medical supervision. Romantic. Protective. Very marketable.”

“I am sitting here,” Yvette said.

Elise looked at her. “I know.”

“You speak as if I am fabric.”

“No,” Elise said. “Fabric behaves.”

Despite everything, I almost smiled.

Yvette’s glare moved to me fast enough to kill it.

“I will not play fiancée to a Mercado,” she said. “I have things to do. I need to know what happened to my house. I need to find out why no one remembers what they should remember. I do not have time to pretend I belong to him.”

Something in my chest went still.

Belong.

An ugly word.

A tempting one.

I said nothing.

Elise’s face shifted.

She had found the weak place, and like any good predator, she stepped gently on it.

“Then help us,” Elise said. “For a limited time. Help us control the scandal, and we help you.”

Yvette did not answer.

“We provide a room. Clothes. Food. Protection from reporters. Access to what records we can find about the Gonzalez family.” Elise paused. “And Sandro’s resources.”

“My resources?” I said.

“You are rich. Try to participate.”

Yvette looked at me, then away.

Elise lowered her voice. “You were unconscious last night. If Sandro had left you in that house, do you know what might have happened? Those people were already calling you a trespasser. They had hands on you. They had cameras on you. They would have made a story out of your body before anyone asked your name.”

Yvette’s face tightened.

“Elise,” I said.

She ignored me.

“You do not have to like him,” Elise continued. “God knows that is difficult. But right now, his name is a wall. Stand behind it until we build you another.”

Yvette looked down at her hands.

The kitchen clock ticked once.

Twice.

I hated how quiet she became.

I hated more that Elise’s argument worked.

Finally, Yvette sat down again.

Slowly.

As if lowering herself into chains.

“I will try,” she said.

Elise exhaled.

“But I have conditions.”

“Good,” Elise said at once. “Conditions make people feel less trapped.”

Yvette lifted her chin. “I will only act as his fiancée in public and only when necessary. I will have my own room. No one enters without my permission. I will have privacy. You will provide what I need during this arrangement. Clothes, information, and freedom to continue my search.”

Elise nodded, already typing on her phone. “Reasonable.”

“I can leave when the agreement ends.”

A pause.

Elise looked at me.

I looked at Yvette.

The word leave sat on the table between us, small and offensive.

“Define ends,” I said.

Her eyes narrowed. “When the scandal dies.”

“And if it does not die quickly?”

“Then you should have chosen a better manager.”

Elise made a sound. “I like her less when she is correct.”

Yvette looked back at Elise. “Put it in writing.”

“I will draft a contract.”

“Good.”

I lifted my hand. “Since everyone is arranging my engagement in my kitchen, I would like to add my own terms.”

Yvette turned to me with immediate suspicion.

Smart girl.

“No entering my room,” I said. “No disappearing without telling someone. No speaking to reporters without Elise present. And if your image affects mine, then you will allow Elise to dress you properly for public appearances.”

Yvette’s mouth tightened. “Dress me properly?”

“You cannot keep looking like you crawled out of a haunted attic.”

“I did crawl out of a haunted attic.”

“Then let us not make it your brand.”

Her eyes flashed. “Are you insulting me?”

“Yes,” I said. “But gently.”

“I am Yvette Veronica Gonzalez.”

“I noticed. You keep saying it like a warning.”

“And are you sure you are fit to be my fiancé, Sandro?” Her gaze swept over me, cool and cutting. “You look too pretty to be useful.”

Elise covered her mouth.

Not well enough.

I stared at Yvette.

Too pretty.

To be useful.

No one had ever made those words sound like an insult before.

“You are not that great,” I said.

A childish response.

An honest one.

Yvette smiled for the first time that morning.

It was small.

Mean.

Beautiful.

“Neither are you.”

The kitchen door opened again.

Grandmother stood there with her book in one hand and the expression of a woman who had heard enough foolishness for one lifetime.

“Elise,” she said, “if you are done turning breakfast into a legal proceeding, let the girl finish eating.”

Elise stood at once. “Madam Mercado.”

Grandmother looked at me. “And you. Stop provoking her.”

“She started it.”

“You are twenty-five.”

“She is violent.”

“She is frightened.”

That silenced me more effectively than I liked.

Grandmother walked to Yvette and touched her shoulder. Yvette went still but did not pull away.

“You may stay here as long as you need,” Grandmother said. “No one will enter your room without permission. Not even my pretty boy.”

“Granny.”

“Especially my pretty boy.”

Yvette’s eyes softened for half a second. “Thank you.”

Grandmother smiled. “Eat. You are too pale.”

Elise gathered her phone, already returning to war. “I will prepare the statement and the contract. Sandro, do not post anything. Do not answer calls. Do not flirt with anyone. Do not breathe near a camera unless I tell you where to exhale.”

“I am not an idiot.”

“No,” Elise said. “You are worse. You are confident.”

She pointed at Yvette. “You, darling, rest. In two hours, we make you real to the public.”

Yvette’s face closed again.

Real.

As if she had not been breathing beside us all morning.

As if existence required an announcement written by Elise and paid for with my name.

Elise left in a storm of perfume and phone calls.

Grandmother followed more slowly, pausing at the door to give me one last warning look.

Then Yvette and I were alone again.

The food had gone cold.

Outside the kitchen windows, reporters had already begun to gather beyond the distant gate. I could not see their faces from here, only the black insects of cameras and the glint of lenses waiting for a door to open.

Yvette saw them too.

Her hands curled in her lap.

“Do not look so frightened,” I said.

“I am not frightened.”

“You are.”

She looked at me. “And you are not?”

I almost laughed.

Then I did not.

Because somewhere beneath my irritation, beneath the insult of being turned into a fiancé by my own manager in my own kitchen, beneath the strange satisfaction that Yvette would not be leaving yet, there was the memory of the dream.

You are not a true Mercado.

Blood remembers what men bury.

I looked toward the corridor, where my great-grandfather’s portrait hung somewhere beyond the walls.

“No,” I said.

Yvette watched me closely.

I smiled before she could see too much.

“I am Ferdinand Alexander Mercado II,” I said. “Fear would be inappropriate.”

She looked at me for a long moment.

Then she reached for her cold chocolate and drank as if she did not believe a word.