All Chapters of Faking his wife, carrying his child.: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

The dress didn't fit right across the shoulders.Lyra's shoulders were narrower than mine and I'd known that since we were sixteen, sharing clothes out of necessity and pretending we didn't notice the difference. I'd spent forty minutes that morning with a safety pin hidden at the back seam, praying nobody stood behind me too long.Nobody did. Because nobody was really looking at the bride.Damien Cross stood at the altar with his hands loose at his sides and his eyes forward, and the entire room organised itself around him the way rooms do when the most powerful person in it hasn't moved yet. Dark suit. Bronze skin. Dark hair, not quite neat, like he'd decided effort in that direction wasn't worth his time.He didn't turn when the doors opened.He waited until I reached him. Then he looked.Not at my face. At a point just past my ear. Assessment, not interest. The way you look at a contract clause you've already read twice and don't expect to surprise you."You look different," he sa

He was already at the table.I stopped in the dining room doorway and took that in for a second. Damien Cross, the morning after his own wedding, sitting at the head of a table built for twenty, with a newspaper open and a cup of black coffee beside him like this was any other Tuesday. No celebration. No acknowledgement of yesterday. Just a man and his newspaper and the quiet efficiency of a house that ran itself around him.He looked up when I walked in."Sit," he said.I sat.Mrs. Aldren appeared from a side door, poured my coffee without asking, set a plate in front of me, and disappeared again. All of it in under thirty seconds. I was starting to understand that Mrs. Aldren operated on a frequency nobody else in the house could hear.Damien turned a page of his newspaper.I picked up my fork and told myself this was fine. Eat. Look normal. Get through breakfast."Milk," he said.I looked up. "Sorry?""In your coffee. Do you take milk.""No. Black is fine."He turned another page.

I put the photograph back exactly where I found it.Slid it between the same pages. Pushed the book back into its gap on the shelf. Stood back and made sure nothing looked disturbed.Then I sat in one of the chairs by the window and pressed both hands flat against my stomach and did the arithmetic I'd been avoiding since I walked through the front doors of this house.Thirteen weeks.Not a rough estimate. Not a maybe. Thirteen weeks confirmed by a clinic on a Tuesday morning I'd rescheduled twice because scheduling it made it real, and real was something I hadn't been ready for.I'd taken the test alone in my apartment bathroom at six in the morning with the door locked even though I lived by myself. I'd sat on the cold tile floor after and looked at the result for a long time without moving. Then I'd gotten up, washed my face, made coffee, and gone to work because there was a deadline and the deadline didn't care what the test said.That was three weeks ago.I hadn't told anyone. Not

I was still thinking about Quill's warning when the doorbell rang.This house has a long memory.I'd been turning those words over since I came back inside from the garden, sitting at my desk pretending to work while my mind stayed out there on the cliff path. And now Mrs. Aldren's footsteps moved through the corridor faster than usual and I understood that whatever small amount of composure I'd rebuilt in the last two hours was about to be tested again.I came downstairs to find Rowenna Cross already inside.She stood in the entrance hall removing her gloves one finger at a time, silver-blonde hair pinned without a single strand considering escape, wearing a cream dress that probably cost more than three months of my old rent. She was striking in the way certain women are striking — not warm, not approachable, but impossible to look away from.Her eyes found me the moment my foot hit the bottom stair.Pale grey. Same as Damien's. But where his were still water, hers were something th

I answered it."Hello, Nova."My sister's voice. Bright. Warm. Completely unbothered — the way Lyra sounded when she'd done something she'd already made peace with and was waiting for everyone else to catch up.I sat down on the edge of the bed."Lyra.""I've been thinking about you so much. How are you holding up? Is the house terrible? I always imagined it would be quite cold. All that stone."She said it like we were catching up over coffee. Like I was house-sitting for a friend and she was checking in out of mild curiosity."How are you calling me on this number," I said."I sent the phone, Nova. Obviously.""You sent it." I looked at the prepaid handset in my other hand. "You had someone knock on my door and vanish and leave an unmarked parcel on the floor of the Cross estate.""I needed a clean line. You understand.""Who delivered it.""Someone Pax trusts. Don't worry about that."Don't worry about that.Someone connected to a man Vesna had described with careful words and a de