Chapter 4

Elise said two hours.

She took forty-seven minutes.

That was the first sign that she was afraid.

Elise did not rush for ordinary scandals. Ordinary scandals were breakfast for her. A model seen leaving a club with a married woman. A politician’s son photographed with powder on his cuff. A sponsor’s wife liking old photos at three in the morning. Elise handled those things with black coffee, a bored voice, and three phone calls to people who knew better than to disappoint her.

This was different.

I knew because she came back to the kitchen without lipstick.

Her mouth was bare. Her hair had been pushed behind one ear. She held her phone in one hand and a tablet in the other, both screens alive with my name.

Yvette sat across from me, still in the borrowed clothes Grandmother’s maid had found for her. A soft blue dress. Too simple for Elise’s taste, too modern for Yvette’s comfort. She kept touching the seam at her wrist as if checking whether the fabric would bite.

Grandmother had forced more food on her.

Yvette had eaten half of it in silence.

I pretended not to notice the way she stopped herself from eating too quickly.

Elise placed the tablet on the table.

“Read,” she said.

I looked down.

A statement filled the screen.

Mercado family heir and model Ferdinand Alexander “Sandro” Alfonzo Mercado II confirms his private engagement to Yvette Veronica Gonzalez after speculation following last night’s Gonzalez Mansion event. The couple asks for privacy and understanding as Ms. Gonzalez recovers from exhaustion caused by the overwhelming public attention surrounding the event.

I stopped at confirms.

“Private engagement,” I said.

“It sounds better than sudden engagement.”

“It sounds like I misplaced a fiancée in my pocket and remembered her yesterday.”

Elise ignored me and looked at Yvette. “You will be Yvette Veronica Gonzalez. No Mendoza for now. Fewer names, fewer questions.”

Yvette’s hand went still on her sleeve.

“No.”

Elise closed her eyes.

I leaned back slightly.

There it was.

The first crack in the plan.

Yvette lifted her chin. “My name is Yvette Veronica Mendoza Gonzalez.”

“You used Gonzalez last night.”

“I gave him the name I chose to give him.”

Elise opened her eyes. “Darling, I am trying to keep the country from chewing through your life before lunch. Every extra surname becomes a door. People will open it.”

“Let them.”

“They will not stop at the door,” Elise said. “They will dig under the floor.”

Yvette looked at the tablet. Her face remained calm, but her fingers had curled against her palm.

I watched her.

There were women who performed strength because someone might be looking. Yvette performed nothing. She simply refused to lower her head, even when fear stood behind her like a second body.

It irritated me.

It interested me.

It made me want to find the exact place her pride would bend.

Grandmother entered quietly from the veranda, her cane tapping once on the tile.

“Let the girl keep her name,” she said.

Elise turned. “Madam Mercado, with respect—”

“With respect,” Grandmother repeated, smiling in a way that made servants leave rooms faster, “let the girl keep her name.”

Elise inhaled through her nose.

A rare defeat.

Beautiful, in its own way.

She picked up the tablet and edited the line with quick, angry fingers.

Yvette Veronica Mendoza Gonzalez.

The name looked too long on the screen.

Too old.

Too stubborn to fit inside a public statement.

“There,” Elise said. “Happy?”

“No,” Yvette replied.

Elise laughed once. “Good. Then we are all in the same room.”

She handed the tablet to me. “Approve it.”

I read the rest.

Private relationship. Mutual affection. Overwhelming attention. Medical care. Gratitude to supporters. Request for privacy.

Such clean words for such a dirty little arrangement.

“Mutual affection,” I said.

Elise’s stare flattened. “Do you want me to write mutual blackmail?”

Yvette looked up.

I smiled. “No. Affection is fine.”

“It is not fine,” Yvette said.

Elise set both hands on the table and leaned toward her. “Nothing about this is fine. Fine is gone. Fine died outside the Gonzalez mansion when twenty cameras saw Sandro carry you unconscious into his car. What we have now is survivable. That is better than honest and much more useful.”

Yvette’s mouth tightened.

Grandmother moved behind her chair and placed a hand lightly on her shoulder.

Yvette went still again.

Not relaxed.

Never that.

But she allowed it.

“Elise,” Grandmother said, “send your statement. Then give her time to breathe.”

“If I give the internet time first, it will breathe for her.”

Elise held out the tablet to me.

I pressed approve.

The statement went out from my official account, my management account, and the Mercado family office account within three minutes of each other.

Three clean lies, dressed in formal grammar.

Then the world found Yvette.

At first, there was only the silence of waiting screens.

Then Elise’s phone began to vibrate.

Once.

Again.

Again.

The tablet lit with notifications faster than human hands could open them.

My own phone, abandoned beside my coffee, shuddered against the table as calls and messages struck it in waves. Sponsors. cousins. old classmates. women who had cried when I smiled at them and now wanted to know whether they had been betrayed by an engagement they had invented rights over.

Elise watched the numbers climb.

Her face became very calm.

That was another bad sign.

“Trending in seven minutes,” she said.

I reached for my phone.

“No,” Elise snapped.

“I want to see.”

“You want to make yourself angry.”

“That is my hobby.”

“Find a quieter one.”

I took the phone anyway.

The first headline appeared before I unlocked it fully.

SANDRO MERCADO ENGAGED TO MYSTERY GONZALEZ HEIRESS?

Then another.

WHO IS YVETTE VERONICA MENDOZA GONZALEZ?

Then another.

FROM SCANDAL TO ROMANCE: MERCADO PRINCE CONFIRMS ENGAGEMENT AFTER GONZALEZ BALL CHAOS.

A video autoplayed without sound. Me stepping out of the car. Yvette’s hand in mine. Her face turning toward the cameras with that corrected smile Elise had taught her. The clip slowed at the exact moment the flashes hit her eyes.

Someone had already added music.

Someone had already circled her face in red.

Someone had already written, She looks scared.

Beneath it, thousands of strangers agreed, disagreed, laughed, accused, worshipped, and decided pieces of her life with the confidence of people who would never have to stand close enough to see the damage.

She’s pretty but why does she look familiar?

Gonzalez??? As in THAT Gonzalez family?

No records of her anywhere. Fake name?

Sandro always had secret girlfriend vibes lol.

She looks like the old portrait from the mansion exhibit. Am I crazy?

Girl blink twice if you need help.

Lucky bitch.

He can do better.

She can do better.

This is PR. Obviously.

Kidnapping cover-up.

Engagement after one night? Rich people are insane.

My thumb stopped.

There.

A photo.

Not from the front entrance.

Not from the courtyard.

A grainy picture taken from inside the mansion, half-obscured by a doorframe.

Yvette in the west room.

Standing before a covered portrait, the cloth pulled aside just enough to reveal a painted face behind her.

The angle was poor.

The lighting worse.

But even blurred, even distorted, anyone could see the resemblance.

The same dark eyes.

The same tilt of the chin.

The same face, separated by paint and time.

The caption beneath it read:

why does sandro mercado’s fiancée look exactly like antonio nataniel gonzalez’s dead daughter???

I looked at Elise.

She had seen it too.

Her lips pressed into a thin line.

Yvette had not.

She sat very still, looking at the phone in my hand as if it were a weapon I might aim at her.

“Give it to me,” she said.

“No.”

Her eyes sharpened. “It is my face.”

“That is exactly why you do not need to see it.”

She stood.

Grandmother’s hand fell from her shoulder.

“Sandro,” Grandmother warned.

I locked the phone.

Yvette walked around the table and held out her hand.

“Give it to me.”

I should have refused.

A sensible man would have kept the worst from her until Elise could bury it under other stories. A kind man would have protected her from the speed with which strangers could turn a person into meat.

I was neither sensible nor kind enough.

I placed the phone in her hand.

Her fingers closed around it carefully.

“Swipe up,” I said.

She did, clumsy at first, then with growing control.

Modern technology frightened her less when anger held her hand.

She read.

I watched her face.

The first comments confused her. The next made her frown. Then she found the photo.

The color left her mouth.

For a moment, she looked less like a girl and more like the portrait itself, paint under varnish, trapped where everyone could look and no one could ask permission.

“Who took this?” she asked.

Elise answered. “Someone who wants attention or leverage. Possibly both.”

“Remove it.”

“We are trying.”

“Trying?”

“The internet is not a door I can lock with a key.”

Yvette’s eyes lifted slowly.

“No,” she said. “It is worse. Doors only keep people out.”

She looked back at the screen.

Her thumb moved again.

Another comment.

Another theory.

Another stranger deciding what she was.

Dead heiress cosplay.

Mental patient.

Gold digger.

Reincarnation.

Secret child.

Fraud.

Ghost.

Witch.

Fiancée.

Yvette laughed.

The sound made every person in the kitchen still.

It was soft. Almost polite. A laugh with no breath behind it.

“So this is how people know each other now,” she said.

No one answered.

She turned the phone toward me. “They do not need to meet me. They do not need to hear my voice. They only need my face.”

I took one step toward her.

She stepped back.

Good.

Fear again.

No. Not good.

The thought came strangely, like a correction written in someone else’s hand.

Not good.

“They will grow tired,” I said.

Elise looked at me as if I had disappointed her professionally.

Yvette did not look at Elise.

Her attention stayed on me. “Will they?”

“They always do.”

“Did you?”

The question slid cleanly between my ribs.

I smiled because the kitchen had become too quiet, because Grandmother was watching me, because Elise knew too much, because Yvette had found the ugliest part of the truth without even trying.

“No,” I said. “But I have better taste than the public.”

Yvette handed the phone back.

“You mistake hunger for taste.”

Grandmother closed her eyes briefly.

Elise muttered, “I am going to need stronger coffee.”

Before anyone could speak again, a servant entered the kitchen with the stiff face of someone carrying news they did not wish to own.

“Señorito,” he said to me, bowing slightly. “There are more reporters at the front gate. Some at the west wall also. Security says two tried to climb the service fence.”

Yvette looked toward the windows.

The garden beyond them was bright with morning, green and careful and cruelly beautiful. Far past the lawn, beyond the trees, the gates waited.

With people outside.

With cameras.

With questions.

With her name in their mouths.

“Double security,” I said.

Elise’s head snapped toward me. “No uniforms at the front. It makes you look guilty.”

“I am not asking for decoration.”

“And I am not asking for your mood. If they photograph additional guards, the kidnapping rumors revive.”

“They are climbing the fence.”

“They are reporters.”

“They are trespassers.”

“They are optics.”

I stood slowly.

Elise stopped speaking.

Even she knew when my patience had become something else.

“This is my house,” I said. “My gate. My family name they are shouting outside. If one of them gets past the wall and comes near her, I will have them dragged out by the throat and you may explain the optics after.”

Yvette stared at me.

Grandmother did too.

Elise only exhaled.

“There he is,” she said quietly.

I looked at her.

She did not flinch.

“The Mercado heir,” she continued. “Always most honest when threatening people on family property.”

I smiled. “Then write that in your next statement.”

Elise picked up her tablet. “No. The next statement will be warm, humble, and nauseatingly romantic.”

“There is a next statement?” Yvette asked.

“There is always a next statement.”

Yvette sat back down as if her legs had lost interest in holding her.

Grandmother moved first, taking the phone from my hand and placing it face down on the table.

“No more of that,” she said.

Yvette looked at her.

“No more for now,” Grandmother amended.

Elise’s phone rang.

She checked the screen and cursed softly.

“Family office,” she said. “Sandro’s father has seen the announcement.”

My stomach tightened, which was irritating because I had not given it permission.

“Let it ring,” I said.

“It is the family office.”

“I know.”

“It will be worse if you ignore them.”

“It is always worse when I answer.”

Grandmother’s gaze moved to me with quiet warning. “Sandro.”

I took the phone from Elise and answered.

My father did not greet me.

“What have you done?”

His voice was low, controlled, and far too familiar. The voice he used in boardrooms, hospitals, funerals, and on the rare occasions when I had inconvenienced the family badly enough to require correction.

I looked at Yvette.

She was watching the window, not me.

“I got engaged,” I said.

“Do not be clever.”

“I thought clever was encouraged.”

“Not when the country is asking whether my son abducted a woman from the Gonzalez estate.”

Elise mouthed, Careful.

I ignored her.

“The statement is out,” I said. “The narrative is controlled.”

“For now.”

“For now is all anyone ever has.”

A pause.

Then my father said, “Who is she?”

The kitchen seemed to narrow around the question.

Yvette turned from the window.

I held her gaze.

“My fiancée,” I said.

My father’s silence was colder than anger.

Then, “Bring her to Manila when this settles. Your mother wants to see her.”

A lie.

My mother wanted to see no one before noon and nothing scandalous after.

“And Father?” I asked.

“Yes?”

“Tell the family office not to brief against her.”

Another pause.

This one longer.

“You are giving instructions now?”

“I am making one request.”

“No,” he said. “You are making your first mistake as a man who believes a woman is worth damaging his name for.”

Yvette’s expression did not change.

But I saw the way the words landed.

A woman.

Not a person.

A risk.

An error with hair and a face.

I smiled into the phone.

“Then I must be maturing.”

My father ended the call.

Elise took her phone back with both hands. “Do you enjoy making enemies inside your own house?”

“Family are not enemies.”

Grandmother laughed softly.

Everyone looked at her.

She took her cup of tea from the counter. “Forgive me. I am old enough to know better.”

Yvette lowered her eyes.

Something passed through her face too quickly to name.

I did not like that she understood my grandmother more than I did.

By noon, the statement had been shared across every platform Elise cared about and several she hated. By one, the first fan edits appeared. By two, someone had found a school record belonging to another Yvette Mendoza and declared it proof of fraud. By three, the Gonzalez portrait photo had been removed from five major accounts and reposted by hundreds more.

By four, Yvette stopped asking to see.

She sat in the library while Elise took calls and Grandmother spoke quietly with the housekeeper about preparing the east guest room for a longer stay.

I stood in the doorway and watched her.

Again.

Not watching.

Waiting.

There was a difference.

Yvette held one of the history books from the shelf, but she had not turned a page in ten minutes. The book was open to a chapter on the revolution. A black-and-white photograph of Antonio Nataniel Gonzalez filled the left page.

Her finger rested near his printed name.

Not touching it.

Almost.

Outside the library windows, cameras flashed beyond the trees.

“They have made me real,” she said without looking up.

I entered. “Elise said they would.”

“No.” Her voice was quiet. “They made a version of me real. That is different.”

I stopped beside the table.

She finally looked at me.

“What happens when they prefer their version?”

I had no good answer.

So I gave the one that came naturally.

“Then we make ours louder.”

Yvette studied me.

“You truly believe everything can be won.”

“Yes.”

“And if it cannot?”

“Then it was not worth wanting.”

Her eyes darkened.

For a moment, I thought she would argue.

Instead, she closed the book.

“That is a sad way to live, Sandro.”

I almost laughed.

A girl with no documents, no country she recognized, no family she could claim without sounding insane, and reporters gathering outside my gates like insects, pitying me.

It should have been ridiculous.

It was not.

Before I could answer, Elise appeared in the doorway.

“Good,” she said. “You are both here. We need a photograph.”

Yvette’s face closed at once.

“No.”

“Yes.”

“Elise,” I said.

“A controlled image,” Elise said. “One photo. Here, in the library. Soft light. No kissing. No ring close-up yet. Something intimate but respectable. If we do not give them an image, they will keep using the worst ones.”

Yvette’s hands curled on the closed book.

I looked at her.

She looked back.

Neither of us wanted to agree.

For different reasons.

That was becoming a habit.

“One photograph,” she said finally.

Elise nodded. “One.”

“And I approve it before you send it.”

Elise’s mouth twitched. “You learn quickly.”

The photographer was one of Elise’s people, summoned through a side gate with more secrecy than priests used for confession. He set up in the library near the tall windows, where afternoon light fell across dark wood, old books, and the lie we were about to sell.

Elise placed Yvette in the armchair first.

“No,” she said after one look. “Too delicate. People will think Sandro owns you.”

Yvette’s eyes flicked to me.

I smiled.

Elise moved her to stand beside the table instead, one hand resting on the closed history book. Then she positioned me beside her, close but not touching.

“No,” Elise said again. “Too cold. You look like cousins waiting for a will reading.”

Grandmother, seated nearby with her tea, made a small amused sound.

Elise pinched the bridge of her nose. “Sandro, stand behind her. Not looming. God help me, do not loom. Yvette, turn slightly toward him. Yes. Hand on the table. Sandro, your hand near hers.”

Near.

Not touching.

My fingers rested less than an inch from Yvette’s.

I felt her awareness of it.

She felt mine.

The photographer lifted the camera.

“Look at each other,” Elise said.

Yvette turned her face up toward me.

The room changed.

Not visibly. Nothing so dramatic.

But the performance thinned for one second, and beneath it was the truth neither of us wanted photographed.

She did not trust me.

I wanted her to.

No.

Worse.

I wanted to be the only person she trusted.

The camera clicked.

Once.

Again.

Again.

Elise checked the images.

Then she went silent.

“What?” I asked.

She turned the camera screen toward us.

The photograph was good.

Too good.

Yvette stood beside the old table, pale dress soft against the dark wood, her hand resting on a closed history book as if she had just shut the past inside it. I stood close behind her, not touching, but near enough that the space between us looked intentional. Her face was turned toward mine. My gaze rested on her with an expression I did not remember allowing.

Possessive.

Protective.

Hungry.

The public would call it romantic.

They always mistook dangerous things for devotion when the lighting was beautiful.

Yvette saw it too.

Her face went still.

“Delete it,” she said.

Elise shook her head. “This is the one.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“I said delete it.”

“And I said this is the one that changes the story.”

Yvette looked at me.

For once, she did not look angry.

She looked trapped.

I should have told Elise to delete it.

The words were there. Easy. Waiting.

Instead, I looked at the photograph again.

At Yvette beside me.

At the world we could force to accept her if she stood close enough to my name.

“Post it,” I said.

Yvette’s eyes did not leave my face.

Elise exhaled and took the camera.

Grandmother set down her tea very softly.

The photograph went live seven minutes later.

Captioned only:

Thank you for respecting our privacy. — S & Y

The internet devoured it whole.

By sunset, every person in the country who cared about my life had seen Yvette’s face beside mine.

By nightfall, they had given her titles.

The hidden fiancée.

The Gonzalez ghost.

The girl in the library.

My future wife.

Yvette did not come down for dinner.

Grandmother said to let her rest.

Elise said she was safer unseen.

I said nothing.

Later, when the house had quieted and the reporters beyond the gates had become only distant flashes between the trees, I stood outside the east guest room.

I did not knock.

Her condition was privacy.

I knew that.

I respected it, technically.

I only stood there, listening to the silence behind the door, thinking of the photograph, the comments, the old portrait in the west room, the way she had said, You mistake hunger for taste.

From inside came the faintest sound.

Not crying.

Not quite.

Something smaller.

I placed my palm against the door.

The wood was cool beneath my skin.

“Yvette,” I said softly.

The sound stopped.

I waited.

No answer.

Down the hall, my great-grandfather’s portrait watched from the shadows.

I lowered my hand.

Outside, the cameras kept flashing at my gates.

Inside, behind a locked door in my house, Yvette Veronica Mendoza Gonzalez became famous without ever agreeing to be known.