Chapter 2: The Substitute

"No." Claire took a step back. "Absolutely not. That is insane."

"Claire, please."

"You want me to stand in front of hundreds of people and marry a man I've never met. Pretending to be my own sister." Her voice was rising now, sixteen years of buried feelings pushing their way up alongside the panic. "Do you understand how insane that sounds?"

"I understand exactly how it sounds." Richard's hands were still shaking. "I am asking anyway."

Claire turned to her mother. "Mom. Tell him this isn't possible. Tell him I can't do this."

Eleanor stood very still by the window. For a second, something in her face looked like it might actually agree.

Then she looked away.

"You have to do it," Eleanor said quietly. "I know it isn't fair. But you have to."

"Mom."

"I don't have a choice either," Eleanor said. "None of us do right now."

Claire stared at her mother, at the way Eleanor couldn't quite meet her eyes, and felt something in her chest go cold.

"Listen to me," Richard said. "The guests are already arriving. Cars are pulling up the drive right now. In a few hours, three hundred people will be standing in that garden expecting a wedding, including reporters invited specifically to cover the merger between our two companies."

"So call it off. Tell them there's an emergency."

"And say what? That the bride is missing?" Richard's voice cracked. "The moment that word leaves this house, it is everywhere. Every paper in this city will run it by tonight. Sophia Bennett, vanished the night before her wedding. People will ask why. They will ask what we knew and when we knew it. This family, and Sophia's name, will be dragged through every headline in the country before anyone even finds out if she is safe."

"That's still better than lying to everyone."

"Is it?" Richard's eyes were wet now. "Because the other thing that happens the moment this becomes public is that whoever has her knows immediately that we're looking. Right now, they don't know we're aware something is wrong. The second that changes, I don't know what they'll do."

Claire pressed her palms against her eyes, the weight of it pressing down on her from every side. She thought of Sophia at dinner the night before, laughing over wine, saying she never stopped wishing Claire would come home.

"I need a minute," she said.

************

Three miles away, in his father's study, Adrian Knight was having a different argument entirely.

"I don't want to do this," Adrian said. "I've told you that from the beginning."

Charles Knight sat behind his desk, tired in a way that had nothing to do with age. "I know."

"Then why are you still making me go through with it?"

"Because there are things tied to this marriage that go back further than you know." Charles's voice was careful, quiet. "I can't explain it today. I need you to trust me instead."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only one I have right now." Charles stood, crossing the room to stand in front of his son. "I know marriage was never something you wanted. Not after your mother. Not after everything since. I am asking you anyway. Marry her today. Ask your questions after, and I swear to you, I will answer them."

Adrian said nothing for a long moment.

"Fine," he said finally. "But you owe me the truth after this."

"You have my word."

Back at the Bennett estate, Claire lowered her hands from her face.

"If I do this," she said, "you call the police the second I walk back through that door. No more waiting."

"The second you're back. I swear it."

Claire closed her eyes. "Fine. Get the hair dye."

An hour later, her hair was dyed to match Sophia's. She stood in her sister's dress, staring at a stranger in the mirror, a woman with her own face and her sister's hair, about to marry a man she had never met, in front of hundreds of guests who had no idea anything was wrong at all.

The music started before Claire was ready for it.

Her hands were freezing inside the long gloves. She started walking.

Every face turned toward her. Three hundred strangers, watching a bride they thought they knew.

At the end of the aisle stood a man she had never met, tall and still, watching her come toward him.

She was ten steps away when he felt it. Something was wrong.

She looks different, he thought. She doesn't look like my bride. What is happening?

He stepped back.

Claire froze mid step, her heart slamming against her ribs.

He knew.