Chapter Two: The Wrong Name

Nobody warned me that a wedding could feel like a business meeting.

There was no music when we walked in. Damien had decided against it. It was too performative he said, for something that was already a performance. So we walked down the aisle of a room that had been arranged for a hundred and twelve guests, with only seven people in attendance: his lawyer, two board members from the Zhao family, Marcus, Vivienne's mother who still hadn't fully processed what was happening, and a registrar who kept looking between us like he was trying to solve a puzzle.

I kept my eyes forward.

The dress was Vivienne's. Of course it was. There hadn't been time for anything else. It fit everywhere except the chest, where it was a little too generous, and I'd had to use a safety pin borrowed from the wedding planner who handed it to me with the expression of someone watching a traffic accident in slow motion. The bouquet was mine, at least. The one I'd made with my own hands at four in the morning.

I held it like it was the only thing keeping me upright.

Damien was already at the front when I got there. He didn't turn to watch me walk in. He was speaking quietly to his lawyer, head tilted slightly, and only looked up when I stopped beside him. His gaze moved over me once but not unkindly, not warmly. The same way someone checks that their luggage has arrived at the carousel.

Present. Accounted for. Good.

"You did your hair," he said.

I blinked. "Is that a problem?"

"No." He faced forward again. "It suits you."

I didn't know what to do with that so I filed it somewhere small and turned to face the registrar.

The ceremony took eleven minutes. I know because I counted. The registrar spoke about commitment and partnership and the sacred nature of marriage and I stood very still and thought about absolutely nothing, which is a skill I'd learned young and had never been more grateful for.

Then he asked Damien to repeat the vows.

Damien's voice was even. Unhurried. He said the words the way you sign your name on a document you've read a hundred times, practiced, present, giving nothing away. I take you. To have and to hold. Until death do us part.

Then it was my turn.

I opened my mouth.

And for one terrible, stretched-out second, my mind went completely blank.

Not because I was nervous. Not because I'd forgotten the words. But because standing there in Vivienne's dress, holding Vivienne's flowers, I suddenly became acutely aware that this entire morning had been designed for someone else. The chair arrangements, the registrar, the seven witnesses, the man beside me, none of it had ever been meant for me. I was a substitute. A stand-in. A clause in a contract.

You'll do.

"Miss Chen," the registrar said gently.

I said the words. Every one of them. My voice didn't shake.

Then came the rings.

I hadn't thought about the rings. I don't know why they had simply not occurred to me in the ten minutes I'd had to decide to do this. But of course there were rings. Damien's lawyer produced them from a small velvet box with the efficiency of someone who had planned for every contingency. Which, I was beginning to understand, was just how Damien operated.

He took my hand.

I hadn't expected that either that he would actually take my hand. I'd assumed he would hold it the minimum amount required. But his fingers wrapped around mine properly, the way you hold something you don't want to drop, and he turned my hand over with a kind of quiet focus that made the room go very still.

The ring was cold when it touched my finger. Then it was warm.

He didn't rush. He didn't fumble. He slid it on with the same careful precision he seemed to apply to everything and then just for a moment his thumb pressed gently against the back of my hand.

Once. Like punctuation.

I don't think he knew he did it.

I looked up and found him already looking at me. Not through me, not past me. At me. And something moved across his face  too fast to name, too real to be nothing before it was gone and he was composed again and the registrar was saying you may kiss the bride and the room was very quiet.

Damien looked at me.

I looked at him.

"Not necessary," he said pleasantly to the registrar. "We're good."

A ripple of something went around the room. His lawyer coughed. Marcus, standing to the side, made a sound that might have been a laugh badly disguised as a cough.

I smiled. I couldn't help it. It surprised me and the smile, the genuine quality of it and I looked down at the bouquet before he could see it properly.

We signed the certificate.

His signature was sharp and decisive, mine slightly unsteady on the second letter. We didn't look at each other while we signed. The registrar shook our hands and offered congratulations with the careful sincerity of a man who had no idea what he'd just officiated.

And then it was done.

Eleven minutes. One safety pin. A ring I hadn't tried on.

Mrs. Damien Cole.

I stood in the emptying room while everyone filed out to take photographs for the board presentation not for memories, there were no memories to preserve, just documentation and I looked down at my hand.

The ring caught the light.

Behind me, I heard Marcus say softly to someone: "He didn't let go of her hand, did you notice? During the ring. He didn't let go."

I pretended I hadn't heard.

I was already in enough trouble.