35

Sierra’s POV

The gala was a symphony of light and lies. A thousand crystals in the chandeliers threw rainbows over the sea of black ties and gowns worth more than my old bakery made in a year. I moved through it on Louis’s arm, a smile fixed on my face, my hand resting lightly over his, a portrait of serene, conquered joy.

Inside, I was a live wire. Every flash of a camera felt like a sniper’s scope. Every unfamiliar face in the crowd was a potential Finch, or worse, another ghost from Monaco. I performed my role with a precision that would have made Nia weep with pride. I laughed at the right moments, listened with apparent fascination to tedious stories about yacht lengths and art auctions, and deflected subtle probes about “adjusting to the spotlight” with graceful, bland humility.

Louis was my anchor and my mirror. His hand on the small of my back was a constant, grounding pressure. His smiles were brief but genuine when they touched me, though his eyes constantly scanned the room, missing nothing. We were two warriors back to back in a glittering arena.

The speech was the centerpiece. When I stepped onto the small, spotlighted podium, the room hushed. I could see the faces, a blur of expectation and envy. My mouth was dry. My notecards were a lie—a script about hope and second chances that felt like ash on my tongue.

Then my eyes found Louis, standing at the base of the stage. He gave me a single, almost imperceptible nod. *You are a Trevane. You are unbreakable.*

I began to speak. The words flowed, the story of the struggling single mother, the unexpected love, the desire to pay it forward. It was our narrative, polished to a high shine. I believed it, even as I knew it was built on a foundation of threats and buried bodies. The applause that followed was thunderous, a wave of approval that should have felt like victory. It felt like a sentence.

After the speech, we danced. His arms around me were the only real thing in the room. “You were magnificent,” he murmured into my hair, his lips brushing my temple.

“It’s just another performance,” I whispered back, my cheek against his lapel.

“This isn’t a performance,” he said, his voice low and fierce. “This is us. The love is real. The family is real. The rest is just… scaffolding.”

I wanted to believe him. But the scaffolding was made of bones, and I could hear them rattling.

It was during the third dance, a slow, haunting melody, that I saw her.

A woman, standing at the edge of the dance floor near a potted palm. She was not dressed for the gala. She wore a simple, outdated navy dress, her blonde hair pulled into a severe bun. She was pale, her face holding a stillness that seemed disconnected from the revelry around her. And she was staring directly at Louis.

Not with admiration. Not with curiosity. With a hollow, chilling recognition.

My steps faltered. Louis felt it. “What’s wrong?”

“Three o’clock. By the palm. The woman in blue.”

His head turned, just slightly. I felt the instant his body went rigid against mine. The breath left his lungs in a silent, punched-out gasp. The color drained from his face, leaving him ashen under the golden light.

He knew her.

“Who is she?” I asked, dread a cold stone in my stomach.

Before he could answer, the song ended. The spell of motion broke. And the woman began to walk, with a deliberate, unsettling calm, straight toward us.

She moved through the crowd like a ghost, people instinctively parting without knowing why. She stopped a few feet away. Up close, she was older than I’d thought, lines of deep weariness etching her face. But her eyes, a faded blue, were clear and sharp.

“Louis,” she said. Her voice was soft, accented. Italian. It carried no anger. Just a profound, weary sadness that was worse than any shout.

Louis recovered with a speed that was terrifying. His mask of the gracious host slipped back into place, but it was brittle. “Signora. This is a surprise. I didn’t know you were in the country.”

“I came to see,” she said, her gaze flicking to me, then back to him. “The happy ending. The new family. The charity.” She pronounced the last word with a soft, bitter twist. “My sister sends her regards.”

*Sister.*

The word detonated in my brain. *Mariella.* The girl from the forum. The girl who never recovered. This was her sister.

The world narrowed to the three of us in the middle of the swirling, oblivious crowd. The noise became a distant roar. I could smell the woman’s scent—laundry soap and a faint, medicinal tang.

“This is neither the time nor the place,” Louis said, his voice a low, controlled warning.

“When is the time, Louis?” she asked, her voice still soft. “Where is the place? You made sure there was never a time or a place for us. Only silence. And money.” Her eyes filled with tears that did not fall. “Mariella saw your picture. In a magazine. With your new wife, your new child. She started crying. She does not know why she was crying. She does not remember you. But her body remembers. Her broken mind remembers.”

Each word was a lash. I saw Louis flinch as if struck physically.

“What do you want?” The question was ripped from me. I stepped slightly in front of Louis, a protective move that felt absurd. What was I protecting him from? The truth?

The woman’s sad eyes settled on me. “I want nothing from you. From him, I wanted nothing but a shred of conscience. I see now he has none left. It has all been spent on this.” She gestured vaguely at the opulence around us. “I came only to look into his eyes and let him see what his ‘youthful indiscretion’ looks like twenty years later. It looks like a woman who will never be a sister, a wife, a mother. It looks like my life, spent changing bedpans and listening to wordless screams.”

She turned to go, then paused, looking back at me. “He will tell you it was an accident. That is the lie he tells himself. The truth is, he gave her the drugs. He dared her to walk the railing. He laughed. Be careful, Mrs. Trevane. Men like him… their carelessness is a disease. And everyone around them gets sick.”

Then she was gone, melting back into the crowd, leaving a vacuum of horror in her wake.

Louis was statue-still beside me, his face a carved mask of shock and guilt so profound it was unmistakable. The lie of the Contessa was a flimsy curtain, and this woman had just torn it down, exposing the rotting truth beneath.

“Louis,” I breathed.

He didn’t look at me. His gaze was locked on the spot where she’d vanished. “I need air.”

He took my elbow, his grip vise-tight, and propelled me off the dance floor, through a side door, and onto a deserted terrace overlooking the city. The cold night air hit like a slap. He released me and braced his hands on the stone balustrade, his head bowed.

“She’s Mariella’s sister,” I said, the words hanging between us in the chill.

“Yes.” The admission was a raw scrape of sound.

“What she said… about the drugs… the dare…”

He pushed off the railing and turned to face me. In the moonlight, his face was a landscape of torment. “It’s true.” The two words cost him everything. “All of it. I was worse than careless. I was cruel. I was a monster.”

The confirmation should have shattered me. Instead, a strange calm descended. This was the bedrock. This was the real sin, the one all the other lies were built to conceal.

“Why?” was all I could ask.

“Because I could,” he said, his voice hollow. “Because nothing mattered. Because I was empty and filling that emptiness with other people’s pain seemed like a game.” He looked at me, his eyes begging for a condemnation I couldn’t yet form. “That man is dead, Sierra. I killed him. I built this,” he gestured back toward the glittering party, “over his grave.”

“But the grave is still there,” I whispered. “And the sister is still tending it.”

He flinched. “What do you want me to do? Turn myself in? Destroy everything we have? Destroy Katie’s future? Would that make it right?”

There was no answer. There was only the unthinkable choice between justice for a ruined girl and survival for our own.

The terrace door opened. Nia slipped out, her expression serene but her eyes alert. “You’ve been missed. The Italian consul is asking for you.” Her gaze darted between our ravaged faces. “What happened?”

“An unwelcome ghost,” Louis said, his voice regaining some of its steel. “It’s handled.”

“See that it is,” Nia said, her tone leaving no room for discussion. “The performance is not over. Finish it.”

She went back inside, leaving us in the cold.

Louis reached for me. “Sierra…”

I stepped back, out of his reach. I needed the space to breathe, to think. The love was there, a tangled, unbreakable vine around my heart. But it was wrapped around something putrid now. I had seen the original sin.

“We go back in,” I said, my voice surprisingly steady. “We smile. We finish the gala. We protect what we have.”

Because what other choice was there? We were in the labyrinth now, and the only way out was deeper in.

He nodded, a bleak understanding in his eyes. He offered his arm.

I took it.

Together, we turned our backs on the cold truth of the night and walked back into the warm, beautiful lie.