LOGINSophia’s POV Mrs. Adeyemi was talking about the Maldives and Sophia was nodding and smiling and saying the right things and watching Marcus from the corner of her eye. He’d come back to the table and sat down and put his arm around her chair and laughed at the right moments and picked up his wine at the right times and everything about him looked exactly right except for the thing underneath it that she couldn’t name precisely but had been feeling since he sat down, a quality of stillness in him that wasn’t his usual stillness, something held rather than something natural. She’d watched Kira cross the room toward him twenty minutes ago. She’d watched them stand together near the pillar by the entrance and she’d watched the way Kira’s body was angled, slightly toward him, slightly away from the room, the positioning of someone having a conversation they didn’t want to read from a distance. She’d watched Marcus’s face do something she couldn’t make out clearly from across the room an
Marcus’s POV“I need you to trust me for just one hour,” Kira said.Marcus looked at his sister and said nothing for a moment. Around them the room moved, glasses clicking with conversation and the low current of two hundred people who had no idea what was happening in this corner of the room.“Kira.”“One hour, Marcus.”“You’re standing here telling me you have proof that my fiancée is not who she says she is and you want me to go back and stand beside her for an hour and act like everything is fine.”“Yes.”“That’s what you’re asking me.”“Yes.”He looked at her. At the steadiness of her eyes and the set of her jaw and the fact that she hadn’t looked away once since she started talking. He’d known this face his whole life, had watched it across breakfast tables and boardroom tables and hospital waiting rooms, and he knew the difference between the face she wore when she was guessing and the face she wore when she was certain.This was the second one.“How long have you known,” he s
Kira’s POVThe Ashford International annual dinner looked the way it always looked, two hundred people in black tie filling the grand ballroom of the Langham, the kind of room that made everyone inside it feel like they’d earned the right to be there, chandeliers running the length of the ceiling, round tables dressed in white linen, the low hum of important conversations happening at a volume designed to sound casual.Kira took a glass of water from a passing tray and moved through the room.She’d been doing this for forty minutes, a slow calculated circuit, pausing at the right tables, saying the right things to the right people, laughing at the right moments, and always, always keeping the main entrance in her peripheral vision.“Kira.” James Obi, their longest standing hospitality partner, caught her arm near the center of the room. “You look wonderful. How is the Phoenix expansion going?”“Ahead of schedule. The Brooklyn location is fully operational and the second site has brok
Kira’s POV“Lily, give me back my clutch.”“I’m just looking at it ma.”“You’ve been looking at it for ten minutes, give it back.”Lily held it out with the reluctant energy of someone surrendering something they hadn’t finished appreciating and Kira took it and checked inside and added her phone and lipstick and set it on the vanity.“You look really pretty, Mummy.”“Thank you, baby.”“Are you going to dance tonight?”“It’s a dinner baby, not a party.”“But are you going to dance?”“Lily.”“I’m asking a question.” Lily sat on the edge of the bed folded both arms and watched Kira finish her earrings with the focused attention she gave things she found genuinely interesting. “Sophia said she’s going to get Uncle Marcus to dance with her even if he doesn’t want to.”“That sounds about right.”“Do you like Sophia now? You seem like you like her more.”Kira looked at her daughter in the mirror. “Why do you ask that?”Lily shrugged. “You used to get a face when someone said her name. You d
Sophia’s POVNine days!!She wrote it on a Post-it note in the morning and stuck it to the inside of her wardrobe door where Marcus wouldn’t see it. She stood there looking at it for a moment before she finally got dressed.Nine days and the Hartwell account signatory update was sitting in Marcus’s to-do folder waiting for his signature, which he would give her without reading it properly because he never read routine CFO correspondence properly, she knew this because she’d been watching his email habits for three months. The moment he signed it she had spousal standing on the account structure and the transfer pathway was clean and documented and Victor could move within forty-eight hours of the wedding.She closed the wardrobe and went downstairs and made coffee and sat at Marcus’s kitchen table with her laptop and worked through the transfer map for the fourth time, not because it needed checking again but because going through it settled something in her chest that nothing else se
Marcus’s POVThe florist called three times before Marcus picked up, not like he was ignoring her, he just kept getting pulled into other things, the caterer’s revised menu sitting open on his laptop, a text thread with his best man about suit fittings that had somehow turned into a twenty-message debate about pocket squares, and Sophia sitting across the living room with her legs tucked under her on the couch going through arrangements with undivided attention.He picked up on the fourth call.“Mr. Ashford, I just need to confirm the centerpiece decision before I place the order Monday. We discussed the white garden roses with the eucalyptus but your fiancée mentioned she was considering switching to peonies and I want to make sure we’re aligned before I commit to the supplier.”Marcus looked across the room at Sophia. “Babe. Roses or peonies.”She looked up. “What do you want.”“I want whatever makes you happy.”“That’s not an answer.”“Peonies then.”She smiled and went back to wha
ADRIAN POV“Where is she?”The man behind the desk looked up. Mid-forties. Balding. Nervous eyes.“I’m sorry, sir. Who are you looking for?”“Kira. Where is she?”The man’s expression changed. He kind of recognized Adrian, but still wanted to ask just to be sure. “And you are?”“I’m her husband.”“
KIRA Pov The hotel lobby was chaos when Kira arrived. Guests were arguing with staff at the front desk. A manager was on the phone, speaking quickly in Mandarin. Two housekeepers stood near the elevators, whispering. Kira walked past all of them without stopping. Mr. Harrison met her at the entr
Vanessa Pov When she returned to the table, Adrian was on his phone. She sat down. “Everything okay?” “Fine.” But he didn’t look fine. He looked tense. Vanessa picked up her fork and kept eating. Dessert came. Chocolate cake. She took a bite and offered him some. He tried it but barely seem
ADRIAN POV Adrian was still staring at the photo on his phone when he heard the front door open. Voices. His mother. And Ethan. He quickly closed the app and set his phone down. “Adrian?” Catherine’s voice echoed through the house. “In the kitchen.” Footsteps. Then his mother appeared







