CHAPTER 3

Victoria's POV

Isabella Moore did not walk into the ballroom. She arrived in it, the way weather arrives.

Every head turned to follow her. Three hundred guests who had spent the afternoon congratulating me suddenly forgot my name. Her white dress was cut simply enough to look innocent and expensive enough to cost a fortune, and she carried her tears the way other women carried handbags, held high where everyone could admire them.

Alexander stood frozen beside my chair. I watched his hand open and close once at his side.

In the novel, this was the scene where the original Victoria stood up and made a fool of herself. She called Isabella a snake. She threw a glass. Page 63 described her as shrieking in a wedding gown while the heroine sobbed in the arms of the groom, and I remembered thinking, even then, that no author would write a villainess so stupid unless she needed one.

I stayed in my chair. I folded my napkin into a neat square and set it beside my plate.

Isabella crossed the marble floor with her chin trembling. She stopped in front of our table and ignored Alexander completely. She reached for my hands instead.

"Victoria." Her voice cracked on my name like a plate. "I am so sorry. My flight landed early, and I could not stay away. I wanted to wish you happiness with my own eyes. Please say you can forgive me for coming."

Her fingers closed around mine. They were warm and soft and perfectly manicured, and she wore white satin gloves that stopped just above the wrist.

On the right glove, near the thumb, was a smear of yellow powder.

It was faint. A stranger would have called it a stain. But I had spent forty minutes that afternoon staring at the golden pollen of a single white lily, and I knew the exact color.

I kept my face smooth.

"Isabella," I said warmly. "How kind of you to come all this way. There is a seat for you at table nine. Lily will show you."

I lifted my eyes to the far side of the room, and Lily Sterling, who had been standing frozen near the garden doors, jerked to attention. She hurried over with a stiff smile and led Isabella away before Isabella could finish her next sentence.

The hush broke slowly. Forks resumed. A violin began to play something light and desperate. Somewhere behind me, a woman whispered, "That was it? That was all?"

Beside me, Alexander still had not sat. He was staring at me as though I had rearranged the furniture of his mind.

"You are not going to say anything," he said, very low.

"I just did."

"About her."

"What would you like me to say about a guest at my wedding?"

His jaw worked. For the first time all day, I could not tell what he wanted from me, and I suspected he could not tell either.

[SURVIVAL PROBABILITY: 23% to 29%.]

[MISSION ONE: 78% COMPLETE.]

It was after midnight when the last guest left.

The Sterling estate had gone silent in that heavy, echoing way of houses too large for the people living in them. A maid led me up a marble staircase, past portraits of stern men in dark suits, and down a corridor long enough to hold its own weather. She stopped before double doors carved with a family crest.

"The master suite, Mrs. Sterling."

I stepped inside. The bedroom was larger than my entire old apartment, with a fireplace, a balcony, and a bed that looked like it had been built for royalty. A man was already standing by the window with his back to me, his tie loosened, his jacket gone.

"I will not be sleeping here," Alexander said, without turning around. "There is a guest suite across the hall. My things are being moved. I trust this will not be a problem."

In the novel, this was the night the original Victoria had stood in the doorway and cried until he left. Page 71. Twelve paragraphs of begging.

"That sounds sensible," I said.

He turned.

The lamplight caught the sharp line of his cheekbone and the shadows beneath his eyes. He looked tired in a way the cameras had never seen. His gaze searched my face for something, a crack or a tremor or a tear, and found only a woman in a ruined wedding gown with her shoes in her hand.

"That's all?" he asked.

"I have one request."

Something close to relief flickered across his expression. Here it comes, I thought I saw him think. The demand. The bargain. At last, the Victoria he understood.

"I would like our arrangement in writing."

He blinked. "Our arrangement."

"The terms of this marriage. My finances, my privacy, my freedom to come and go. I would like it clear, and I would like it signed."

"We have a prenuptial agreement."

"We have your lawyer's prenuptial agreement. I mean ours."

He stared at me for a long moment, and then, to my astonishment, a corner of his mouth twitched. It was not a smile. It was the memory of one.

"Marcus," he said into his phone. "Paper and a pen. Bring both to the master suite."

Ten minutes later, I was sitting at a mahogany writing desk beneath a lamp, and Alexander Sterling was standing over my shoulder, reading as I wrote.

I did not use a laptop. I used a thick cream sheet of the Sterling family stationery and a black fountain pen, because a handwritten contract had a way of making powerful people remember they had agreed to something. I numbered each line.

One. Each party maintains full control of their own personal finances.

Two. Neither party will enter the other's private rooms without invitation.

Three. Neither party will interfere in the other's professional or personal ventures.

Four. Either party may end this arrangement with ninety days notice and without public accusation.

Five. Neither party will lie to the other about matters that affect the other's safety.

I paused over the last line, then added a sixth.

Six. Neither party will be required to love the other.

I set down the pen. The ink gleamed wet under the lamp.

Alexander read it twice. His hand was braced on the desk beside mine, large and scarred across the knuckles, and I noticed it was not quite steady.

"Number six," he said.

"Is there a problem?"

"No." He cleared his throat. "It is unusual."

"Then we are agreed it is also honest."

He reached past me, took the pen, and signed his name with a sharp downward slash that tore the paper at the final letter. I signed beneath it. He folded the page in half, then in half again, and slid it into his breast pocket as though it were a weapon he was not sure he wanted to hold.

At the door, he stopped.

"Why did you crush that lily?"

I did not answer right away. Isabella's glove drifted through my mind, pale and smeared with gold.

"Because your sister would have breathed it in," I said.

"That is not what I asked."

"I know."

He waited. When it became clear I would say nothing else, he nodded once, curt and unreadable, and closed the door behind him. His footsteps crossed the hall. Another door shut.

I sat alone beneath the lamp and finally let my hands shake.

I had been shaking for hours. I had only hidden it well.

[DING!]

The blue letters unfolded across the ink-stained desk, brighter than the lamp.

[MISSION ONE: COMPLETE.]

[REWARD UNLOCKED: ASHFORD HOLDINGS FINANCIAL ARCHIVE.]

[SURVIVAL PROBABILITY: 31%.]

A translucent window opened in the air in front of me, scrolling with rows of dates and account numbers. I leaned closer. The first folders were exactly what I expected, ledgers and wire transfers and a shell company with a bland name that carried the Ashford fingerprints.

Then my eyes caught on the very last folder in the list, and my blood stopped moving.

It was not labeled with a company. It was not labeled with a date.

It was labeled with a name.

EVELYN HART.

[WARNING: THIS FILE DOES NOT BELONG TO THE ORIGINAL STORY.]

[LAST MODIFIED: TWO DAYS AGO.]

Two days ago, before I had ever opened my eyes in this body.

Two days ago, when no one in this world had ever heard of Evelyn Hart.