SEVENTEEN

The suite was quiet except for the sound of Hazel removing her jewelry. Each clasp, each faint metallic click, was its own punctuation mark to the evening. She lined the diamonds on the vanity one by one, the same way Edwin had once aligned his fountain pens, symmetry as control, control as survival.

Behind her, Dimitri loosened his tie.

“You handled yourself beautifully,” he said.

Hazel met his eyes in the mirror.

“I always do.”

He moved closer, hands resting on her shoulders. The image in the mirror was convincing: a groom and his bride in soft lamplight, tenderness implied. But the air between them had cooled somewhere between the terrace and the dance floor.

“Hazel,” he began, voice lowered. “About tonight, Valentina only meant…”

“She always means.” Hazel’s tone cut through the air like the edge of the diamond earrings she now laid aside. “Don’t defend her.”

Dimitri sighed, the sound weary rather than wounded. “I’m trying to make this easier.”

“There’s no version of this that’s easy.” She rose, turning to face him fully. “You chose your side long before I stopped pretending not to see.”

He looked at her then, truly looked, as if trying to recognize the woman he’d agreed to marry. The poise, the calm, the quiet authority, it all fascinated and frightened him in equal measure.

“You think I’m your enemy,” he said.

Hazel tilted her head. “No. Enemies require conviction. You’re just… convenient.”

He almost laughed. Almost. “Then why marry me?”

“Because convenience is safer than love,” she replied simply.

The honesty of it silenced him. He nodded once, defeated, and left for the adjoining room. The soft click of the door was both exit and confession.

Hazel stood alone, the room’s perfume settling like dust. Outside, the London skyline shimmered through the rain, a watercolor of glass and distance.

She reached for her phone again, not because she wanted to, but because she always checked twice.

The screen glowed with another message from T.

> It wasn’t supposed to be you.

Her first thought was irritation. Another threat, another ghost looking for attention. The Castell name attracted them like moths to heat. But the phrasing, it wasn’t you stole, or you lied. It was supposed. A strange word, heavy with prearranged intent.

She reread it once, twice, then locked the phone and set it facedown. The light still seeped through, a pulse beneath the glass. She covered it with a silk scarf as though that could suffocate the unease.

Sleep refused her. After Dimitri’s door went silent, Hazel crossed into the corridor leading to the guest lounge, a small antechamber lined with mirrors. She often came here after events, the one space where reflection multiplied until it felt like company.

She stood before the largest panel, studying the woman who stared back.

The gown, flawless. The posture, immaculate. But the eyes, there, she found something that didn’t belong. A flicker of… question.

She imagined speaking to that reflection. Who are you when no one’s watching?

The thought unsettled her enough to break the stillness. She pressed a palm to the mirror; the cool surface offered no warmth, only confirmation of shape.

Her phone vibrated again from the vanity inside the suite. She ignored it. For the first time, she didn’t want to know.

A knock. Soft, deliberate. Not Dimitri’s pattern.

Hazel opened the door to find Valentina wrapped in a cream shawl, eyes glittering with the faint intoxication of victory.

“You disappeared before the press left,” Valentina said, stepping inside uninvited. “People noticed.”

“They always do.”

Valentina smiled thinly. “You should be grateful. Attention is currency, darling. The moment they stop watching, you stop existing.”

Hazel’s reply was calm. “Then perhaps invisibility is the truest form of freedom.”

For a heartbeat, Valentina’s mask slipped. “You sound like your father.”

“Then I should be careful,” Hazel said, “he died for less.”

Silence. The chandelier light fractured across Valentina’s face, revealing lines the makeup had disguised.

“Don’t provoke me, Hazel,” she said quietly. “I’ve built too much to let sentiment ruin it.”

Hazel met her gaze. “So have I.”

Valentina’s departure was quiet but left a vacuum behind. The suite felt colder, as if something essential had been removed, oxygen, or truth.

Hazel returned to the vanity, phone in hand. The message from T. waited, patient and glowing.

She typed a single word:

Who?

Her thumb hovered above Send.

A pause. Then she deleted it.

Instead, she opened a new note file and wrote:

Keep every message. People reveal more when they think you’re not looking.

She closed it, locked the phone again, and exhaled.

Across the river, Big Ben struck one. Each chime felt like a countdown she couldn’t yet name.

Before bed, Hazel poured herself a small glass of the red wine Dimitri had brought from Tuscany. She didn’t drink it. She only watched the color move, dark and slow, like memory thickened.

From the bedroom came the sound of Dimitri turning in his sleep, soft, human. She studied the door, wondering when exactly he’d begun to look peaceful in her presence. Perhaps when he convinced himself she felt nothing.

She whispered to the still air, “I see everything.”

The city outside gleamed back, indifferent.

When she finally lay down, the last thing she saw before sleep claimed her was the faint glow under the scarf on her phone. It pulsed once, a quiet insistence.

> T.: We share more than you think.

Hazel’s breathing stayed even, but her dreams were not. They were filled with corridors of mirrors, each reflecting a different version of herself, one crying, one laughing, one trying to open a door that never existed.

By dawn, the rain had stopped. London looked washed clean but unchanged. Dimitri was gone, a note on the pillow, Meeting with investors. Rest, my love.

Hazel read it once and set it aside. The room smelled faintly of roses, Valentina’s brand of intrusion.

She opened the curtains wide, letting light flood the marble floor. For a moment, the entire suite became a mirror. In it, she saw everything she had built, her name, her power, her composure, and felt the smallest tremor underfoot, like the world had just whispered a secret she wasn’t ready to hear.