Chapter 2 — The Man Who Knows Where Adrian Is

"He's alive. And if you walk away from this altar, he may not stay that way."

I heard him say it and my brain just sat on it for a second, refusing to do anything useful with the words. All that anger I'd walked up the aisle with, the humiliation, it drained out of me so fast I actually felt unsteady on my feet, like I'd stood up too quickly from a chair. What replaced it was quieter and worse.

"What does that mean." It came out flat. I wasn't asking him so much as making him say more.

He looked past me toward the priest, who was standing close enough to hear every word and doing a terrible job pretending otherwise, then toward the doors at the back of the church.

"I can't explain it here."

"You can't or you won't, Alexander, because from where I'm standing those are two very different things and I need you to pick one."

"Lucy, please, just" He stopped himself, ran a hand back through his hair, which I had never once seen him do, not in three years, not even the year his father made him give the toast at Christmas dinner about a merger nobody wanted to hear about. "I'm asking you to trust me for about ninety seconds."

"Trust you." I almost laughed, and it came out closer to a cough. "I've known you for three years and you've never once said more than four words to me at a family dinner. And now you want me to trust you at my own wedding, standing in for your brother, telling me he might die if I open my mouth."

"That's exactly what I'm telling you."

I went to turn around, to face the pews, to just ask somebody, anybody, where the actual groom was, and his hand caught my wrist before I'd even finished deciding to do it.

"If you say that out loud," he said, and his voice had dropped so low I had to lean in without meaning to, "you're not protecting yourself. You're telling whoever did this exactly where to start looking."

I stopped. Not because I believed him yet. Because something in how he said it made the back of my neck go tight in a way I didn't have time to examine.

Up close I could see he hadn't slept, not really, the kind of tired that sits under the eyes and doesn't wash off. His collar had already gone crooked, like he'd been pulling at it since before I ever walked in. This wasn't the Alexander who used to sit at the far end of the table making sure I knew exactly how unwelcome I was. I didn't know what to do with that.

"Explain it to me," I said. "Now, quietly, or I swear to God, Alexander, I will finish that sentence."

He glanced once more at his parents. Something about the look on his face shifted, like he'd just decided something he didn't want to decide.

"There are people in this church who think whatever they did to Adrian worked. That he's gone and he's staying gone. The second that's not true anymore, the second word gets out that he's alive, they stop covering it up and they go find him."

"Find him and do what?"

"I'm not doing this here."

"You keep saying that like it's an answer."

"Because I don't have a better one right now that I can say out loud in front of six hundred people, half of whom I don't trust and the other half I haven't had time to figure out."

I stared at him. I wanted to be angrier than I was. But underneath the fear, something kept nagging at me, something I couldn't quite let go of.

He wasn't surprised. Not by any of it. Not that I'd found out, not that I'd threatened to make a scene. He had an answer ready every single time, like he'd already had this fight with me in his head before I'd even lifted the veil.

"You knew this was how today would go," I said, slower now. "You knew I'd figure it out. You knew what I'd threaten. You had all of this ready before I said a word."

He didn't answer that one right away, and the not-answering told me plenty.

"How long," I said. "How long have you known this exact conversation was coming?"

"Three days." He said it like it had been sitting behind his teeth the whole time, waiting to get out. "I found out three days ago and I've spent every hour since trying to figure out how to keep you both alive, so if I sound like I rehearsed this, it's because I have, over and over, at two in the morning, because I didn't know what else to do with myself."

That wasn't the answer I expected. It knocked something loose in my chest that I didn't have room to deal with right now.

The priest cleared his throat behind him. Somewhere in the pews a phone camera flashed, and I could hear the noise of the crowd building behind us, that low restless hum of people who'd come for cake and an open bar and were getting a story they'd tell at dinner parties for the next decade.

"I need to sit down," I said, and stayed exactly where I was.

"You need to marry me." He said it fast, almost apologetic, like he hated the shape of the sentence even as it left his mouth. "I know how it sounds. I know what I'm asking you to do. But if this doesn't happen in the next few minutes, your father doesn't have a company left by tomorrow."

That got through in a way none of the rest of it had.

"What does my father have to do with this?"

He hesitated, just long enough that I knew whatever came next was going to be worse than I could guess.

"His company's financing runs through the Vale Group. Has for months. Adrian set it up to keep Bennett Engineering afloat after last year."

"I know about the loan."

"You don't know about the clause." He said it carefully, like each word had a weight he was trying to set down gently. "If the wedding doesn't happen today, the financing defaults automatically. No grace period. Nobody to call and fix it tomorrow. It's just gone."

I felt that land somewhere under my ribs, sharp in a way I hadn't braced for.

"You're lying."

"I wish I were."

"Adrian wouldn't do that to my father. He wouldn't."

"Adrian didn't write the clause. My father did. Adrian signed it because it was the only offer on the table that would save your father's company at all, and he didn't have time to find a better one."

I wanted to tell him that was insane, that no decent person structures a business deal like a hostage situation, but I realized halfway through the thought that I didn't actually know what Richard Vale was or wasn't capable of. I'd spent eighteen months loving Adrian and skipping every single conversation about how his family made its money, because it was easier that way, because I didn't want to know.

"I don't believe you," I said, and even I could hear how little conviction was left in it.

My phone buzzed against the satin of my clutch.

I almost didn't check it. Then I saw my father's name light up through the mesh and something in my stomach folded in on itself.

"Now's really not the time," Alexander said, glancing at his parents again.

"It's my father." I already had it out of the bag. "I'm answering it."

I turned my back to him and put the phone to my ear, and my thumb was shaking badly enough that I fumbled the screen twice before I got it right.

"Dad?"

Silence. Long enough that I thought the call had dropped.

"Lucy." His voice wasn't right. Thin. Pulled tight, the way it got the day the bank called about the second mortgage, the way it got in the hospital hallway the week before my mother died.

"Dad, what's wrong, are you okay, is somebody—"

"I'm fine." He wasn't. I knew the sound of my father lying to protect me, I'd heard it my whole life. "Lucy. Listen to me."

"I'm listening."

"Whatever they're asking you to do." A pause that went on a beat too long. "Do it."

"Dad, what"

"Please." His voice cracked, actually cracked, and I had never heard that happen before, not once, not even standing next to my mother's casket. "Do what they're asking. I need you to do this."

"Somebody has to tell me what is actually going on, I can't just—"

"I love you," he said. "I love you so much. Please, just do this for me."

"Dad, wait, don't hang up"

The call ended.

I stood there with the phone still against my ear, listening to a dial tone that wasn't even there anymore, and the church around me felt very far away, even though I could still hear it, still hear the whispering and the shuffling of six hundred people waiting to see what happened next.

I lowered the phone and turned around.

Alexander was watching my face, and whatever he found there made something in his own expression give way.

"He knows." My voice sounded strange to me, like it belonged to somebody else. "My father knows exactly what's happening. He's not confused about any of this. He's not in the dark the way I've been for the last twenty minutes."

Alexander stayed quiet.

"He told me to do what you ask." I felt my voice climbing and let it. "My father does not beg people for things, Alexander. Not ever. So you are going to tell me, right now, what your family has on him."