Chapter 2: The Second Bride

"Found her where?"

Damian didn't answer. He turned the guard's phone toward the window light, like that would make the screen load faster, and for a second, the only sound in the room was the guard's breathing and the tick of a clock I hadn't noticed until now.

"Turn on the feed," Damian said. "Now."

The guard fumbled with the phone, and then a livestream filled the screen, shaky and vertical, clearly filmed by someone standing in a crowd.

A woman stood on the steps of what looked like a courthouse, a coat pulled tight around her even though it wasn't cold. Her hair was darker than mine, cut shorter, but something about the way she held her shoulders made my stomach twist.

Guarded. Braced.

Like she already knew whatever she said next was going to cost her something.

"That's her," Damian said.

His voice had gone flat in a way I hadn't heard yet.

"That's Lena."

"Bride number two," I said.

It wasn't a question.

He didn't correct me.

On the screen, a reporter shoved a microphone toward her.

"Ms. Cross, can you confirm you were engaged to Damian Cole?"

Lena's mouth opened. Closed.

Her eyes cut sideways, off-camera, toward someone I couldn't see.

"I signed something," she said finally. "I don't know what it was anymore. I just know I'm not supposed to..."

The feed cut.

Not ended. Cut.

One second she was mid-sentence; the next, the screen was a black rectangle with a spinning wheel and the words Stream Unavailable.

"No," Damian said.

For the first time since I'd walked into his office, he sounded less like a man reading a contract and more like a man watching something slip out of his hands.

"No, no..."

"What just happened?" I said. "Who cuts a livestream mid-sentence?"

"Someone with more money than the platform hosting it."

He handed the guard's phone back without looking at him.

"Get Evelyn. Tell her I want to know who pulled that feed before I ask her myself."

The guard left at a near-run.

The door shut.

And then it was just the two of us again, the contract still sitting between us, my pen still hovering over a line I hadn't signed.

"She said she didn't know what she was supposed to do," I said. "Supposed to do about what, Damian?"

"I don't know."

"You do. You went pale the second you saw her face."

"I went pale because a woman I haven't spoken to in eight months just resurfaced on a livestream mid-sentence before someone made sure she couldn't finish it. Forgive me for not having a rehearsed answer."

I stood, walked to the window he'd been standing at minutes ago, and looked out at the same skyline he owned pieces of.

It didn't look like it belonged to someone scared.

But he was.

I could hear it now, underneath the flat control... a thread pulled tight enough to snap.

"Tell me what clause fourteen actually means," I said, without turning around. "Not the version you gave me. The real one."

Silence behind me.

Long enough that I turned back to check he was still there.

He was standing exactly where I'd left him, one hand braced on the desk, looking at the folder like it might answer for him.

"If the marriage doesn't hold for the full ninety days," he said slowly, "or if the board finds any evidence it was never real to begin with, I don't just lose the company. Every executive who's been loyal to me instead of Evelyn loses their job within a month. She's made that part very clear, off the record, more than once."

"That's not what clause fourteen says. I read it. It says something about prior arrangements."

His jaw worked.

"Clause fourteen says if a previous fiancée speaks publicly about the terms of her arrangement before the current one is finalized, the current arrangement is voided automatically. No appeal."

The room went very quiet.

"So the second I saw Lena on that screen," I said, "you didn't just lose your bride's silence by accident. Someone made sure she talked at exactly the moment it would blow this up before I signed."

"Yes."

"Who benefits from that?"

"Ask me something I actually know the answer to."

"I am asking you. You just don't want to answer it."

"There's a difference between not wanting to and not being able to. I've spent eight months trying to find out who got to Lena the first time. I don't have a name. I have a folder full of dead ends and a lawyer who conveniently changes the subject every time I bring it up."

"Evelyn."

"I didn't say that."

"You didn't have to."

I crossed my arms.

"You said 'lawyer.' You have exactly one lawyer who walks into your office without knocking."

For a second, something close to respect crossed his face.

"You're faster than the last two."

"Don't compare me to them. Not until you tell me what happened to them."

"I will. Not today. Today I need a signature, not a confession."

"That's convenient."

"It's honest. I know the difference matters to you."

He nodded at the contract still sitting between us.

"You wanted to know if signing still counts. It does. But I won't pretend the timing isn't strange, or that I don't think someone wanted you to see that stream before you picked up the pen."

"So this was a warning."

"Or a test. I haven't decided which yet."

"Comforting."

"Fine."

I walked back to the desk, picked the pen back up, and held it over the blank line.

"Then answer this one. If I sign this right now, does it still count? Or did Lena just void it by opening her mouth on camera?"

Something flickered across his face, not quite relief, not quite fear.

Calculation, maybe. The same fast kind I'd caught earlier.

"She didn't finish her sentence," he said. "The clause requires a completed public statement about the terms. A cut feed isn't a completed statement. Legally, you're still clear to sign."

"Legally."

"It's the only kind of clear I can offer you today."

I looked down at my own name typed above the line, at the pen in my hand, at the ninety days stretching out in front of me like a hallway with no visible end.

My mother's face came into my head... not sick, the way she looked now, but the way she used to look before all of this, laughing at something on the porch with a mug of coffee going cold in her hands.

I signed it.

The scratch of the pen across the paper felt louder than it should have. Damian didn't move, didn't say anything, just watched the line fill with my name like he'd been waiting to see if I'd actually go through with it right up until the ink dried.

For a second, neither of us spoke.

I set the pen down and looked at my own signature, still wet, and felt the strange emptiness of having just done something enormous that didn't feel like anything at all yet.

No alarm went off.

No door opened.

Just a piece of paper, and a version of my life that hadn't existed twenty minutes ago.

Damian picked up his phone and typed something short, two-fingered and efficient, then set it face-down before I could read it.

"Congratulations," he said quietly. "You're my fiancée."

"Don't sound so thrilled."

"I'm not built for thrilled. You'll learn that about me."

I almost asked him what he was built for, but my phone buzzed in my bag before I got the chance.

A text, from a number I didn't recognize, no name attached.

I almost ignored it, except something about the timing made my skin go cold before I'd even opened it.

I turned the screen away from Damian and read it once, then again, the way I'd read clause fourteen twice, because some part of me needed to be sure I wasn't imagining it either.

He's not telling you why the first two really left. Ask him about the fire.

My thumb hovered over the keyboard.

I wanted to type back... Who is this? What fire? How do you know my number?

But a second message landed before I could.

Don't tell him you got this. Not yet.

I looked up.

Damian was watching me from across the desk, arms crossed now, his expression unreadable in the particular way I was starting to realize meant he was working very hard to keep it that way.

"Everything okay?" he asked.

"Fine."

My voice came out steadier than I expected, which surprised me almost as much as the message had.

"Just my mother."

"You went white reading a text from your mother."

"She does that to me. You'll learn that about her, since apparently we're sharing personal facts today."

He didn't smile.

He didn't call me on the lie outright either, which was somehow worse. It was like he was choosing to let it sit there between us, filed away for later, the same way he'd filed away Lena's unfinished sentence and the folder and every other thing in this office he wasn't telling me.

"We leave for the penthouse in twenty minutes," he said instead. "Security will meet us at the east entrance, not the front. Given what just happened on that livestream, I'd rather the first photo of you as my fiancée not be taken by someone who cut Lena off mid-sentence."

"You think whoever did that is watching this building."

"I think whoever did that has been watching me a lot longer than you have."

He picked up his phone, scrolled once, and set it face-down without another word... a habit, I was starting to notice, that meant he'd seen something he didn't want me to see.

"Twenty minutes, Ms. Calloway. Get used to moving fast. It's the only speed this job comes in."

I nodded, slid my phone back into my bag, and felt the weight of the unread third message pressing against my palm through the fabric.

I hadn't opened it.

Part of me didn't want to, not yet, not with him still close enough to read my face if I let it show.

I waited until his back was turned to check it.

Ask him who was in the building the night of the fire. Ask him if your name was already on a list before you ever walked in for that interview.

I read it twice.

Then a third time, slower, like the words might rearrange themselves into something less frightening if I gave them enough time.

A list.

Not a stroke of luck.

Not a lucky application that happened to land on the right desk.

Someone had put my name somewhere before I'd ever heard of Damian Cole, and whoever sent these messages knew it.

The bag suddenly felt heavier than it should have.

I looked up at Damian's back, at the careful, controlled set of his shoulders, and understood, for the first time since I'd sat down in that chair, that I had just signed my name to something far larger than a marriage of convenience.

It was the first lie I told him.

It would not be the last.