All Chapters of THE WRONG BRIDE : Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

The reception blurred past her in pieces, champagne flutes pressed into her hand. They left untouched, a hundred congratulations from people who thought they were speaking to Olivia, the photographer’s flash catching her mid-flinch in what would later become the official wedding portrait. Amelia smiled until her face ached. She left herself be kissed on both cheeks by men she’d never met and women who called her “darling” with the easy familiarity of people who’d known her sister since childhood. Every second felt like standing on ice thin enough to hear it cracking beneath her heels.Adrain stayed close, one hand at the small of her back, steering her through the crowd within the practiced ease of a man who’d spent his whole life performing for rooms like this one. He never once looked at her the way a groom looks at his bride.It wasn't until the last guest had been ushered out, the string quartet packed away, and the garden emptied of everyone but caterers stripping tablecloths in

The note was waiting on her pillow three days later, folded once, no envelope, no name. Amelia almost didn't notice it at first, the east suite was full of things that weren't hers, and a stray piece of paper barely registered against the unfamiliar furniture, the borrowed perfume bottles on the vanity, the closet of clothes she still hadn't grown used to wearing. It was only when she sat down on the bed, exhausted after another dinner spent performing Olivia’s laugh for people who’d known her sister since childhood, that she saw the handwriting and went completely still. Stop looking for Olivia if you want to stay alive. No signature. No explanation. Just seven words, typed rather than handwritten, the paper crisp and new, as though it had been printed somewhere in this very house within the last few hours.Her hands went cold. Amelia checked the door, locked exactly as she’d left it. The window latched. Nothing disturbed except the note itself, placed with deliberate precision

Amelia didn't sleep. She sat curled in the window seat of the study, exactly where Adrian had left her, watching the empty driveway long after the headlights had gone still and the front doors had swallowed both men whole. An hour had already passed. The house held its breath around her, servants nowhere in sight, as though the entire Villa had been trained to disappear the moment a Kingston conversation required privacy. It was well past midnight when Adrian finally returned, his tie loosened, his composure fraying at the edges in a way she hadn't seen from him before, not even the night of the wedding. “What did he want?” Amelia asked, rising from the window seat. Adrian didn't answer right away. He crossed to the drink cart in the corner, poured two fingers of something amber, and drank half of it before he spoke. “He knows.”“Know what?” She asked. “About my mother and the questions I've been asking. “My father doesn't guess, Amelia. He confirms.”“What did he say?”“He offe

Amelia didn't look back as she walked through the front doors of the Carter house. Behind her stood the house she'd grown up in, the place that had once felt like home. Today, it felt like a place she couldn't wait to escape. “Mrs Kingston.” the driver said as she entered. They left the Carter estate. “Turn here,” Amelia said. “Faster.”The driver didn't turn fast enough. Headlights filled the back window. Too close and too fast. “Someone’s behind us,” Amelia said.“I see them,” the driver said, his knuckles already white on the wheel. The car slammed into the back bumper. Amelia’s head hit the seat. “Hold on!”Another hit. The car spun, the engine dead and smoke curling from the hood. Her phone had flown from her lap somewhere into the footwell. Then she saw him. A figure stepped out of the car that had rammed them, unhurried, black jacket, a ski mask pulled low over his face, closing the distance toward her window with the calm of someone who had done this before and expect

“We can't go to the mill,” Adrian said. “It's a trap.”“It's my sister's life.”“It's both.” He crossed into the study, close enough now that Amelia could see the exhaustion carved into every line of his face. “If we walk in blind, we lose everything. The folder, Olivia, you. Whoever sent that message doesn't want a negotiation, Amelia. They want everyone who knows the truth in one place.”“So what do we do? Nothing? Just let the deadline pass and hope for the best?”“No.” His voice dropped, low and certain. “We go in smart. We go in together.”Amelia looked at him for a long moment, searching his face for the cold, careful stranger who'd married her in her sister’s place three weeks ago. She couldn't find him anymore. Something had shifted since the car, since the hallway, since the message glowing accusingly on her phone screen. “Why does this matter so much to you?” she asked quietly. “Olivia isn't your wife. I am. This isn't your family blood on the line.”Adrian was quiet for a