Chapter 2
Damien
The world comes back to me in pieces.
Muted voices. The rustle of tulle. The faint sting of ammonia under my nose.
When I blink, light floods in—too bright, too sharp—and I realize I’m lying on the velvet couch in the church’s dressing room.
My sister, Sarah, clutches my hand like I might slip away again. Her eyes are wide and doe-like, staring down at me like she’s mortified.
Mom and Dad stand somewhere behind me, their voices low. I catch my name once, George’s twice. The words press and photo op make an appearance, then reputation, then scandal.
Then it hits me.
The aisle.
The missing groom.
Him.
The air leaves my lungs as I push myself upright.
“Where’s George?” I rasp.
The door creaks.
It’s not gentle, not like someone politely stepping in with a clipboard to announce something about the floral arrangements. It opens like someone’s unaware just how heavy these old cathedral doors are, but they’re concerned.
I twist, nearly ripping a pin out of my hair.
The air leaves the room as Harald Highcourt steps in.
He's tall and built enough to command a room with his stance alone, broad shoulders beneath his night-black, perfectly tailored suit.
His hair is now disheveled like he hasn’t stopped touching it all morning. And his green eyes scan the room fast, sharp as broken glass, until they land on me.
Within half a second, the room explodes into panic.
“What do you mean George isn't coming?” my father snaps, stepping forward like he’s about to body someone. My mother follows him. Sarah actually looks up. “He has to be coming, the guests are waiting—”
“Do you think I wouldn’t have dragged him here myself if I could?” Harry snaps back, the raw edge in his voice cutting through the room. “He’s gone. Vanished into thin air. His passport’s missing and his car’s at JFK.”
Mom’s eyes go wide as saucers before cutting to me. “What did you do?” she seethes.
I don’t bother to give her a response. Of course she’d think this was my fault.
“He can’t have just vanished—”
“I’ve had people looking for him all morning,” Harry says, cutting my father off. “One of my drivers saw him get into his car at five this morning with a duffel bag. We just found his car about twenty minutes ago. He’s gone.”
I blink.
My ears ring.
Gone.
For a second, everything in me stills, like the eye of the hurricane is hitting — quiet, calm, clear skies.
Then I feel it.
Relief.
Sharp and overwhelming.
It floods me like alcohol on an empty stomach.
I don’t have to do it.
I don’t have to go through with this.
He’s saving me.
“We can delay,” Harry offers. “I’ve already called my attorney. He’s happy to handle the change in paperwork for the deal.”
“What, so you can give more time for your son to run somewhere no one can follow?” Mom barks, a hint of incredulous laughter underneath.
“You realize this sounds like you’re trying to pull the plug on the deal, right?” Dad adds, stepping a little too close to Harry for comfort, forcing him to step back.
“I’m not, Ralph.”
“Then we don’t delay,” Dad says. “A delay looks embarrassing to the press. She’s getting married today, no questions about it.”
I swallow uncomfortably, my palms growing damp again. “Dad—”
“You want her to marry a ghost?” Sarah balks, standing up from her seat. It’s the first real sentence I’ve heard from her all morning.
Dad ignores her, his attention focused wholly on Harry. “If you’d just kept a closer leash on your son—”
“I didn’t come here to be insulted,” Harry interrupts, his jaw flexing in agitation I’ve rarely seen displayed so evidently on him. “I don’t have anything else to offer you.”
“We built this alliance together,” Dad says, jabbing a finger into Harry’s chest. “Your son and my daughter. Our businesses. If you still want it, then you step up.”
Silence descends for all of two seconds, the dead quiet of the room ringing in my ears like a gunshot.
My heart skips a beat.
My breath dies in my lungs.
I force myself to stand. “What?”
“You’re single,” Dad continues, staring directly up at Harry. “You care about both of our families’ reputations, correct? Am I wrong?”
Harry blinks, slow and long, like maybe he didn’t hear him correctly.
Dad just doubles down. “You marry her.”
Mom freezes with her phone halfway to her ear, the tinny voice of our family’s attorney barely audible through the little speaker.
Sarah makes a noise that sounds like she’s choking.
Dad stares at Harry with his jaw jutting out, goading a response.
And I feel like the floor is disappearing out from under me again.
“I’m—” Harry starts, swallowing as he takes a step back. “I’m married, Ralph—”
“Don’t give me that,” Dad snaps. “Geraldine’s been gone twelve years, Harry. Twelve. Don’t stand there pretending like you’ve never once considered remarrying.”
Harry’s face doesn’t change. But something sharp flickers across it, so quick I almost miss it. “That was a low fucking shot,” he says quietly.
“And this is a high-stakes deal,” Dad counters.
“You think you’ll come out fine if this falls through?
Maybe you will. But I won’t. My company won’t.
My family won’t. This deal anchors everything, Harry, you know that.
So if you want to keep the alliance from going up in flames and want to keep some semblance of good graces in the public’s eye, then you’ll marry my daughter. Here. Today.”
I feel like I’m floating somewhere above my body, looking down at all of this in horror. The dress, the boning, the sweat collecting on the back of my neck — it all disappears under the weight of Dad’s words.
“No,” I say, but it’s too quiet, barely loud enough to be heard. I try again. “No.”
Dad turns. The look he gives me is hard enough to strike a match of fear inside me. “You agreed to marry into this family,” he says. “You agreed to all of this. If you’re too spoiled to handle a single change, I’ll give them Sarah instead.”
Sarah makes a sound like a wounded animal. “Dad.”
“You’d seriously put her through this?” I rasp, blinking, the rage slowly starting to catch up to the shock.
When I speak again, the words are stronger, angrier, scared.
I’ve shielded Sarah for almost all of my thirty years, and he knows exactly how far I would go to do so.
“She wants nothing to do with this deal. She didn’t ask for this. You can’t just—”
“The contract allows for a substitution,” he says, his jaw steeling again. “From both sides, might I add. She’s not married, and that’s all that matters.”
“You wouldn’t,” I whisper.
He doesn’t even blink, just stares me down with that hollow expression I’ve known my whole life. “Try me, Elena.”
As if someone reached out and grabbed me by the throat, I’m yanked back into my body instead of hovering somewhere above.
The dress is suffocating again.
My ribs ache.
My hands are trembling, but I ball them into fists to hide it.
And my father is serious.
Harry hasn’t moved. He’s watching me, silent, unreadable, his arms crossed loosely like he’s waiting to see how this plays out — like he doesn’t want to be here, like he’s trying to work his way out of this.
But Harry doesn’t know the lengths my father will go to if this doesn’t happen.
There's only one thing I can do.
Something shocking.
Something unthinkable.
I meet his eyes and swallow every bit of pride I have.
“Marry me,” I say.
His brow twitches.
His eyes squint.
His jaw clenches.
I hate that the genuine look of surprise on his face softens it, makes him look far more attractive than he already is.
“What?”
I take a deep breath, trying to work out the best way to say this without directly begging him for the sake of my sister.
Dad would only see it as weak. “If you care at all about your son’s mistakes not ruining my family, if you care about yours and your son’s name and reputations, if you care about not turning this entire day into a scandal, then marry me. ”
Harry looks at me for a long moment.
The silence in the room hangs like a bomb seconds from detonating.
He exhales through his nose like he’s about to walk into war.
And I fight back the tears.
I just begged a man, nearly twenty years older than me, to marry me.