CHAPTER 2

Victoria's POV

There are only two answers to a question like that, and one of them gets you locked in a psychiatric ward.

"Yesterday," I said, "during the flower delivery, I saw Lily step back from the lilies and press her sleeve against her nose. Her hands were shaking. She slipped something into her clutch, and it was not lip balm."

Alexander's grip did not loosen. "You noticed that."

"I notice a great deal. It is the one thing nobody in this family ever bothered to ask me about."

It was a lie built on top of a truth, which is the only kind that holds weight. The original Victoria had been a woman who watched everyone and was thanked by no one. Alexander knew that about her, even if he had never said so. I watched the idea land in his eyes, turn over, and settle into something he could almost accept.

He let go of my wrist. Red marks bloomed against my skin, and I did not rub them.

"If you are lying to me," he said.

"Then you will have lost a few flowers."

For a long moment, he said nothing. Then he pulled a phone from his jacket and spoke into it without looking away from me.

"Marcus. Every white lily in the ballroom comes out before the doors open. All of them. Every centerpiece, every arch. Replace them with the roses. I do not care how, I do not care what it costs." A pause. "Yes. Now."

He hung up. Below us, the string quartet shifted into the bridal march.

"We are not finished," Alexander said.

"No," I agreed. "We are just beginning."

I did not look at him again until I reached the aisle.

My adoptive father was waiting for me at the church doors in a gray suit that cost more than a house in my old neighborhood. Richard Ashford had silver at his temples and the smile of a man who had never once been refused. He offered his arm. I took it, because refusing would have caused a scene I was not ready to survive.

"You look beautiful," he said, loud enough for the photographers. Then, lower, with his lips barely moving: "Smile, Victoria. You will keep that man happy, and you will remember exactly what you owe this family."

His fingers pressed into my elbow, hard.

I smiled. It was the calmest, kindest smile I had ever worn, and it did not reach my eyes at all.

"Of course, Father."

Two thousand heads turned as the doors opened. White roses lined every pew. Sunlight poured through stained glass and broke across the marble in colored shards. At the end of the aisle, Alexander stood with his hands folded in front of him, handsome and unreadable.

In the novel, the original Victoria had stared at him the entire walk. Every step was a silent plea. Every blink was a question: Will you look at me? Will you smile?

I kept my eyes on the altar.

I counted my steps. I held my bouquet at the right height. I let a single bead of sweat slide down my spine without twitching. Somewhere in the front row, a woman in emerald silk watched me with eyes like sharpened glass. Margaret Ashford. My adoptive mother. She did not smile when I passed.

When I reached the altar, Alexander finally looked at me. I felt it on the side of my face, as heavy as a hand. I stared at the priest.

[SURVIVAL PROBABILITY: 12% to 17%.]

The vows were a blur of expensive words. Alexander said his in a voice so flat it could have been a weather report. When my turn came, I said mine steadily, every syllable clean, and I did not look to him for approval when I finished. The ring slid onto my finger. His hand was cold. Mine was not.

The kiss was a brush of his lips against my forehead, brief enough to be a courtesy. Applause rolled through the church like surf.

On the way out, he leaned close and murmured, "You did not look at me."

"Was I supposed to?"

He had no answer. I felt him turn that over in his mind all the way to the car.

The ballroom of the Sterling estate was a cathedral of gold and glass. Crystal chandeliers glittered over three hundred round tables. Servers moved between guests with trays of champagne. And not a single lily in sight. Roses in cream and blush spilled from every centerpiece, and a quiet army of staff stood along the walls, watching Alexander with the pale, careful faces of people who had been shouted at in the last two hours.

I took my seat at the head table beside him and let a server fill my glass with water.

That was when I saw her.

Lily Sterling was twenty years old, small and bright, in a pale blue dress that made her look like something spun from sugar. She had Alexander's gray eyes but none of his armor. She was weaving between tables, laughing at something a cousin had said, and she was headed toward the far side of the room, where a lone centerpiece sat on a table near the garden doors.

I saw it from forty feet away. A single white lily, tucked deep between the roses like a mistake someone had hidden. Pale petals, golden pollen, curled open in the warm air.

Lily leaned toward it with a smile, lips parted to inhale the scent.

My chair scraped back before I had decided to move.

"Victoria," Alexander said sharply. "Where are you..."

I was already crossing the floor. The train of my gown whispered against the marble, and conversations broke off in pieces as I passed. I reached the table at the exact moment Lily's face drew within inches of the flower, and I did the only thing I could think of.

I tripped.

My elbow caught the crystal vase and sent it crashing across the table. Water, roses, and glass scattered over the linen, and the single white lily skidded across the cloth and landed at my feet.

I put my heel on it.

Gasps rippled across the ballroom. Lily jumped back, startled, her hand flying to her chest. Silence fell so completely that I could hear a champagne glass ring somewhere behind me.

"I am so sorry," I said, loud enough for the nearest tables. "My dress caught on the chair. How clumsy of me, on my wedding day."

A dozen guests exhaled at once. Someone laughed. A server hurried over with a cloth. And Lily looked from the wreckage, to the crushed lily beneath my shoe, to my face.

Her eyes widened. She understood.

Alexander had reached us. His hand closed around my waist, and for one startling second, I felt him shaking.

"It is cleaned up," he said to the staff, in a voice that cut through the room. "Everyone, please, continue."

He steered me back toward our table, but not before I caught a glimpse of Lily mouthing two silent words at me.

Thank you.

I sat. My hands, folded in my lap, trembled only where no one could see them. Alexander said nothing. He simply stared straight ahead, jaw locked, and slid a glass of water across the table toward me, the way you hand something to a person you are suddenly afraid of.

Across from us, a heavyset uncle in a navy suit raised his champagne with a smirk.

"Well, Victoria, aren't you lucky!" he called, with the loose cheer of a man three drinks in. "Marrying the most eligible man in the country. Even if his heart already belongs to someone else, eh?"

Laughter, thin and nervous, skittered around the table.

Alexander's hand went still on the tablecloth.

I turned my head and gave the uncle my warmest smile.

"I consider myself very lucky," I said. "I have entered a marriage where both people understand the terms. Most couples never get that far."

No one laughed. The uncle's glass sank slowly to the table. At the far end, Margaret Ashford set down her fork with great care.

Beside me, I felt Alexander turn to look at me, really look, as though I had spoken in a language he had never heard.

[DING!]

[MISSION ONE: 40% COMPLETE.]

[SURVIVAL PROBABILITY: 23%.]

I allowed myself a breath. Then another.

I thought it was over. I thought I had survived the worst of the day.

Then the great double doors at the end of the ballroom swung open.

A hush spread across three hundred tables like a stain. Heads turned. Forks stopped in midair. A woman stood in the doorway in a flawless white dress, honey blonde hair loose across her shoulders, blue eyes swimming with perfectly timed tears.

Beside me, Alexander's chair scraped backward. He rose slowly to his feet, and for the first time since I had met him, his face was completely unguarded.

"Isabella," he whispered.

The system screamed across my vision in blazing red.

[WARNING: ISABELLA MOORE HAS RETURNED.]

[THIS EVENT WAS SCHEDULED FOR 72 HOURS FROM NOW.]

[SOMEONE ELSE IS CHANGING THE STORY.]