The following morning, Frederick sent for Amelia in his home office. Frederick didn’t ask if she wanted to attend the gala. He just told her. “You’ll need to be ready by seven. Car leaves at seven-thirty.”
Amelia stared at him. “What kind of event is it?” “Charity. Press. Investors. A chance to be seen.” She blinked slowly. “That’s a lot of people to lie to.” He didn’t flinch. “It’s part of the job.” She wanted to argue, but it felt pointless. The contract didn’t promise comfort—it promised visibility. Control. Appearances. So she nodded and went back to pretending this was still her choice. The dress was delivered around noon, hung neatly on her bedroom door with a note in handwriting that wasn’t his. Classic black. Floor length. High thigh slit. Elegant enough to belong to someone with a family name carved into buildings. She stared at it for a full minute before touching it. By evening, she’d convinced herself she could do this. Smile, nod, play the part. She’d done harder things. She’d held bleeding hearts in her hands. But when she stepped into the living room and saw him standing by the window in a black suit, tailored within an inch of control, the air shifted. He turned slowly when he heard her heels. His eyes moved over her, carefully, quietly. His breath hitched and he swallowed. She expected a comment. He gave her silence instead. “Is this when you pretend to be stunned?” she said. “No,” he replied. “That would’ve been a lie.” She almost smiled at that, but didn’t give him the satisfaction. The ride to the venue was quiet. The car smelled like leather and something expensive. He sat beside her, too close and too far all at once. She kept her hands in her lap. He didn’t look at her until they were two blocks away. “There will be questions,” he said. “I’m good at answers.” He paused, then added, “Stay close to me." The venue was all glass and stone, lit like a stage. They walked in hand-in-hand, her fingers thrummed against his suit. Cameras clicked. Lights flashed. Voices rose. She didn’t falter. If anything, she straightened. Inside, everything shimmered. People turned when they entered. Some smiled, others stared. She caught whispers behind champagne glasses—her name passed between mouths that didn’t belong to friends. Frederick guided her from group to group, introducing her as “the one I got lucky enough to convince.” His voice was smooth, casual, too practiced. She smiled when expected. She held his arm when prompted. The woman beside him wasn’t the one she was hours ago in sweatpants and a bun. This version had posture and polish. But her spine ached with it. He leaned in once, between conversations. “You’re doing well.” “You sound surprised.” “I’m not.” She hated how that pleased her. They danced once and just because someone asked, and refusing would’ve looked suspicious. His hand was firm on her back. They didn’t talk while the music played. She looked past his shoulder, focused on the chandelier. When the song ended, he didn’t let go immediately. She had never been close to him before. His body heat spread through her as they stood. He firmed his grip on her back and he dropped his head into her neck. Slowly, the music began again. With his head in her neck, she could not breathe for fear of the thing in her chest bursting. This was fake and he is a good actor, that's all. The dance stretched on for another five minutes before she cleared her throat. "I have to use the bathroom." He didn't let go immediately. Their eyes met immediately and she felt her heart tug. she slipped away to the restroom just to breathe. Her reflection looked like someone she wasn’t sure she wanted to become. She fixed her lipstick anyway. When she came back, Frederick was talking to a man she didn’t recognize—gray suit, tired smile. He turned to her when she approached. “So this is the fiancée,” the man said. “Didn’t think you’d go for someone with dirt under her nails.” Amelia blinked. Frederick’s jaw twitched. “Emergency medicine,” she said calmly. “I prefer blood to boredom.” The man raised his eyebrows. “Sharp one.” She smiled. “Scalpels tend to be.” Frederick placed a hand on her back. A warning. Or maybe a thank-you. "A bit surprising we're only hearing of a fiancée now that your 31st is approaching and she...well she's not..." "Charles, I'd appreciate if you don't insinuate anything about my fiancé. Good night." With his hand still on Amelia's back, he led her away. When they got home, neither of them spoke on the ride up. The silence felt thicker than it had the night before. She was still wearing the dress when she walked to the kitchen and poured herself a glass of water. He followed, loose tie, no jacket. “You didn’t have to defend me,” he said. “I didn’t. I defended myself.” He nodded. “Same thing tonight.” She set the glass down and leaned against the counter. “Do they all think I’m temporary?” “They know you are.” She didn’t answer. That felt like a sting. No, a reminder of what this was and that she had gotten way ahead of herself. He looked at her like he wanted to say more. Instead, he walked past her, stopped near the hallway, then turned back. “You were right earlier.” “About what?” “You don’t lie well. But you perform better than most people I know.” She watched him disappear down the hall, unsure if it was a compliment or a warning. She changed slowly, showered, peeled away the version of herself she’d worn all evening. When she entered her room, she noticed something resting on her pillow. A folded piece of paper. No envelope. No handwriting on the outside. She unfolded it with steady hands. Four words. You’re not welcome here. She sat down, holding the note like it might burn through her fingers. She didn’t sleep.The screen went black.The last flicker of that familiar hair burned into Amelia’s mind, lodging itself behind her eyes like a splinter she couldn’t pry free. The silence that followed was worse than the ping of alarms, worse than the static hum of the machines. It was heavy. Crushing.Frederick didn’t move at first. He stood there, muscles locked, jaw clenched, one hand braced against the console as if the weight of the entire Empire rested on that single point of contact.She wanted to reach for him, to close the gap, but she knew him well enough now to recognize the stillness. It wasn’t calm. It was storm.When he finally spoke, his voice was a low scrape of gravel. “They want me to believe it’s you.”Her throat tightened. She took one step closer, her bare feet whispering against the polished floor. “And do you?”The question hung between them.Slowly, painfully, Frederick turned his head. His eyes found hers, dark and raw, threaded with a kind of fear she had never seen in him be
Amelia’s chest tightened so fiercely that it felt as if her lungs had been compressed in a vice. Her fingers shook as she reached for the folder, as though touching it might erase the damning truth printed in cold black letters. She didn’t. She couldn’t. To do so would be to admit that maybe, in some twisted corner of reality, the accusation could be true. That maybe her presence at the Empire had been exploited, or worse, that someone had used her without her knowing.“Frederick…” Her voice trembled, soft, almost pleading. “You have to believe me. I wasn’t there. I didn’t—”“Then explain it,” he snapped, the words slicing through the room. His hands clenched the folder until the edges bent. “Tell me how your card was used at the Empire at the exact time the security systems were breached. Because right now, Amelia, it looks like you’ve been lying to me.”The accusation hung in the air like smoke, curling around her ribs, suffocating. She took a trembling step back, then another, the
Amelia’s breath refused to steady. She sat on the floor of her clinic, glass scattered like sharp stars around her, the note still trembling in her hand. Patients whispered, some cried, nurses tried to calm them, but all the noise blurred into the background. The only thing clear was the paper between her fingers, the threat carved into it with jagged strokes.He will never be yours.The words seared her like an open flame, and for a moment, she thought she might choke on the weight of them. She’d known from the start that being tied to Frederick painted a target on her back, but seeing it written so bluntly, so personally, cut deeper than anything else. This wasn’t just about him. Whoever had sent this wanted her gone. Wanted her broken.The phone still lay where it had fallen, Frederick’s voice spilling out in fragments. “Amelia? … answer me. Amelia.” His tone carried a sharpness that made her chest tighten, as if he were here already, pulling her up, shielding her with that unshaka
By the time the room emptied, Frederick was no closer to breathing.He had ordered them out—every technician, every guard, every last witness to the frame frozen on the wall. The silence that followed pressed against his skull, thick and suffocating, leaving him alone with the glow of screens and the shape of a woman who could not, must not, be Amelia.He replayed it again. The movement. The fall of hair over the shoulder. The turn of her body as the ID card was swiped. Credentials flashed on the corner of the screen: Dr. Amelia Hart.Each time, the same truth stared back at him, and each time he refused to believe it.His fists clenched at his sides. His pulse was a steady roar in his ears, drowning out reason, drowning out memory. Yet memory fought to surface—her voice shaking in the dark when she confessed her nightmares, the way her breath trembled against his chest, the desperate honesty in her eyes when she let him touch her as though she’d been waiting her whole life for someon
The knock at his door barely registered. It came again, firmer this time, and Luke’s voice followed.“Frederick. We need to talk.”Frederick closed the folder slowly, his jaw set. His reflection stared back at him in the glass, sharp and unreadable. The pieces were shifting, and for the first time in a long while, he felt the fragile edges of control slipping through his hands.He didn’t answer immediately. The silence stretched, filled with the faint hum of the city outside and the measured beat of his own heart. When he finally said, “Come in,” his voice was quieter than usual, almost too calm, as if the storm had already begun inside him.Luke stepped through, shutting the door behind him. He looked as though he’d aged in the last hour—eyes sharp but tired, shoulders heavy with whatever truth he carried. He hesitated only for a second before placing a flash drive on the desk between them.“You’re going to want to see this.”Frederick’s fingers tapped the wood, deliberate, steady. H
The light found them slowly. Thin streaks slipped through the curtains, crawling across the floorboards and over the tangled sheets, until they reached the bed where Frederick and Amelia still lay. The room felt quieter than it had the night before, as though it knew not to intrude. Her head rested against his shoulder, her breath moving in sync with his, while his hand remained curved possessively at her waist, anchoring her against him even in sleep.But they were awake. Not completely, not ready to leave the safety of the dim morning, but awake enough to know that the night had changed something between them.Amelia shifted first, her eyelashes brushing against his skin as she blinked up at him. She didn’t speak, only watched him, as though trying to memorize the exact weight of his presence after such an unguarded night. Frederick’s gaze followed hers, steady and unreadable at first, until his thumb began to draw idle circles against her side. A small gesture, but enough to tell h