Chapter 1

The Secret Marriage.

I didn’t wear white.

Not because it means anything deep, I just didn’t want the fuss. Bought a pale blue dress off a rack two days before, the kind you’d wear to a nice dinner, not a wedding. At the county clerk’s office the woman behind the counter asked if we wanted the deluxe certificate, gold seal and all. Dorian looked at me first. Like he was checking whether I actually wanted that.

“Just the regular one,” I said.

He didn’t push back. He never pushes back on the small stuff. That’s maybe the first thing that made me trust him, if I’m honest. Not the big gestures. The small ones.

Outside on the courthouse steps he just stood there a second, holding my hand, not saying anything. Like he was trying to catch up to what we’d done. Married. Nine months together and here we were, two strangers pulled in off the sidewalk as witnesses, a forty dollar piece of paper, nobody from either family in the room.

“You okay?” he asked.

“I’m married,” I said. “To you. Better than okay.”

He laughed at that, and it wasn’t his usual laugh, the smooth one he uses in boardrooms. It was messier. Real. I liked it more.

Okay, I should probably explain the lie. It’s not really a lie, not technically. I never told him my name was anything other than Seren Arlisse. I just let him believe the rest of it. I grew up outside the city, in a small house, two bedrooms. My parents ran a little accounting firm and that’s where I learned spreadsheets, helping out since I was sixteen. None of that is true. My father is Octavian Arlisse. If I wanted to I could buy the courthouse we just got married in and not feel it. I’ve spent most of my life learning how to disappear inside my own name because I watched what money does to people before it ever did anything good for me.

I didn’t tell Dorian any of that. Not because I don’t trust him. I wanted, just once, to be chosen for nothing. No name attached. No zeroes.

“What are you thinking about?” he asked in the car.

“That I like this. Just us. No fuss.”

“You say that like you expected fuss.”

Did. Couldn’t tell him why.

We didn’t have a real wedding night. Too much Thai food was eaten on the floor because the dining table hadn’t shown up yet, and somewhere between the noodles and a second beer he told me he loved me, voice cracking a little in the middle like the words got away from him before he meant to say them.

“I love you too,” I said. Meant it more than I’ve meant almost anything.

He fell asleep first, arm still over me. I don’t sleep well in new places. Never have. So I lay there a while, thinking about how easy all of it had been. How he never once asked why my last name didn’t show up when he googled it. Why did I pay cash when I could. Why I flinched, once, when a maître d’ recognized me and started to say something before I shut him down with a look.

Didn’t mean I wasn’t scared, lying there. Dorian notices things. Built a company on noticing things other people miss. Sooner or later that was going to include me.

I didn’t let myself think too hard about it that night, though. That night I just let myself be a woman who married the man she loved. Nothing else attached to it.

Morning came in slow. I was still opening cabinets trying to find the coffee mugs, felt like a stranger in my own kitchen, when his phone buzzed against the counter, loud in a way that felt too loud for the hour. He looked at the screen like he already knew it was going to ruin his morning.

“Who is it?”

“My mother.”

“You don’t have to answer.”

“I do, actually.” He walked toward the window before he picked up, and I watched his shoulders change the second he said hello. Straighter. Braced for something.

Couldn’t hear her, not the words. Just the shape of her voice under his, fast and clipped, not leaving much room for him to get a word in. He said “Mother” twice. Said “I did,” once, sharp, like he was cutting her off mid sentence.

When he hung up he didn’t turn around right away. Just stood there with the phone still in his hand.

“That was my mother,” he said, which, yeah, I knew. But he needed the extra second to get there, so I let him have it.

“I gathered.”

“She wants to meet you.” Careful, the way you hand someone something breakable. “This weekend. Dinner. The whole family.”

“Okay.”

“It’s already arranged.” A pause. “She’s had Marcus draw up a guest list. Apparently.”

I put my mug down slower than I meant to.

“Already arranged,” I said. “Meaning she started planning this before you even told her we got married.”

“Meaning my mother finds things out.” Tight voice. The tight voice he gets when he’s more worried than he wants me to see. “She’s had someone asking around since Tuesday. Didn’t say a word to me about it until she had a date locked in.”

Tuesday. Three days before either of us told anyone.

Something cold dropped through me, steady, familiar. Same feeling I used to get as a kid when a teacher called my name right after I’d done something I didn’t want to find out. Marcella Valcrest had already been circling my name for three days. Asking. Pulling at threads. And I had no idea yet how close any of those threads ran to what I was actually hiding.

“Hey.” He crossed the kitchen, tipped my chin up with one finger, the way he does when he wants my full attention. “Don’t worry about her. I’ll handle my family.”

“I’m not worried,” I said, and smiled like it was nothing. Like my head wasn’t already running through every version of what she might dig up, how deep she’d go, how much time I actually had left before something surfaced I couldn’t explain away with a made up accounting firm and a two bedroom house that never existed.

He kissed my forehead and went to shower, humming something under his breath. Easy. Unbothered. A man who had no idea he’d just told me the clock had already started running.

I stood there with my coffee going cold and thought, for the first time since I said I do, that I might have made a promise I wasn’t going to be able to keep for very long.