Chapter 12
SIENNA
By the time I leave Viktor’s room, the house has settled into that strange, tense quiet that only comes after too much has happened in one day.
People are still moving around downstairs, doors are opening and closing, and I can hear staff talking in low voices. But everything feels more controlled now. More careful.
I should go back upstairs and sleep. Instead, I go looking for the woman from this morning.
The woman from the plane. The one who waited outside the cabin after I came out of the bathroom, looked me over once, and told me Viktor was dangerous. The one who pretended not to know me when I ran into her again with flowers in her arms.
I keep replaying both moments, trying to decide whether I’m making too much of it. Maybe she’s nothing. Maybe I’m tying random things together because the poisoned champagne has made me suspicious of everything.
But I know what I saw. I know what I heard. And I can’t shake the feeling that she matters.
At last I find Nadine in a breakfast room with two clipboards open in front of her and a pencil tucked behind one ear. She looks tired, but steady. One of those women who gets calmer the worse things get.
She glances up when I come in. “You should be resting.”
“I know.” I hesitate, then step farther inside. “Can I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
“There was a woman I saw this morning. Maybe with the floral team. Elegant, blonde, in her early to late forties.”
Nadine thinks for a second. “That doesn’t narrow it down nearly as much as you think it does.”
I almost smile. “She was carrying part of an arrangement. White flowers.”
“That narrows it down even less.”
“Fair.”
She studies my face for a moment. “Do you want me to find her?”
I think about it.
Maybe. But not yet. Not until I know what I’d even ask if I did.
“No,” I say. “I just thought maybe you’d noticed her.”
Nadine shakes her head. “Everything has been so busy today, I barely noticed my own hands. If she’s one of the florist’s extra people, she may already be gone.”
That doesn’t help, but it makes sense.
She taps the clipboard in front of her. “Since you’re here, and since you’re clearly not going to rest, you may as well help me make sure tomorrow still happens.”
I let out a quiet breath and pull out the chair beside her. “That sounds dangerously like an invitation.”
“It is.”
So we go through it together. The ceremony timing.
The transport schedule. The flowers. The backup indoor setup in case the weather turns.
The family photo order. The revised catering notes after breakfast. It’s practical and familiar, and for a while it helps.
The lists make sense, even if nothing else does.
Ceremony timing. Cars. Ushers. The chapel flowers. Candles. Bride’s suite. Groom’s suite. Breakfast trays for the bridal party. The photographer’s schedule. What gets moved where after the vows. What stays in the house. What gets reset on the lawn.
Then I start noticing things.
Not big things. Small ones. The flower choices. The favor tags. The way the champagne is meant to be brought out after the ceremony. The string quartet placement. The breakfast table setup this morning, even. Clean, pretty, a little formal in exactly the way I used to like.
I stop turning the page.
Nadine looks up. “What is it?”
“Nothing.” I look back down at the notes. “Just… give me a second.”
Because now I know why it feels familiar.
Ethan stole my ideas.
Not literally, not line for line, but enough.
Years ago, back when I still thought he might propose one day, I made a folder for myself.
Notes, screenshots, colors, flower combinations, table styles.
Little things I liked. Things I thought felt elegant without trying too hard.
Things I thought would make a wedding feel warm instead of cold.
I never showed it to many people, but Ethan saw it once. And now here it is, pieces of it everywhere, rearranged for Camille.
I stare at the page for another second, waiting for the old feelings to come. The humiliation. The anger. That hollow, sick kind of hurt.
They don’t.
Or not much of them anyway.
Nadine is still watching me. “You all right?”
I nod. “Yeah. Just tired.”
She studies me for a moment, then lets it go. “Understandable.”
I run my finger farther down the schedule. “The second aisle arrangement should be moved inside if the weather shifts.”
She makes a note. “Agreed.”
We keep going.
I can tell this should bother me more than it does. A year ago, even six months ago, I think it would have wrecked me. I would have sat there and picked it apart and wondered if he had ever listened to me at all, or if he only collected pieces of me to hand to someone else later.
Now I just feel… done. Not numb exactly. Just past it.
Ethan doesn’t live in that part of me anymore. That place belongs to someone else now, which is its own problem.
Because the truth is, every time my mind slips, it goes to Viktor.
To the sound of his voice, the way he looks at me when he knows I’m lying.
His hand on my back. His mouth on mine. The fact that even now, after everything, some part of me still feels calmer just knowing he’s somewhere in the house.
That’s what unsettles me.
Nadine taps the page. “Do you want the family portraits before or after the chapel exit?”
I blink and drag myself back. “Before,” I say. “If they wait until after, someone important will wander off.”
“That was my thought too.” She writes it down.
We go through the rest of the list the same way.
Finally Nadine flips to the last page, but neither of us says anything for a moment.
The room is quiet except for the rustle of paper and the faint noise of people still moving somewhere deeper in the house. It’s late now. Late enough that everyone should have stopped pretending this day can be salvaged.
Nadine looks down at the schedule again and says, “I think proceeding with the ceremony is in poor taste.”
I don’t answer right away.
Because she’s right.
A girl nearly died at breakfast. She’s still in the hospital. No one knows what happened for sure, and yet the whole machine is still trying to grind forward because there are flowers and guests and deposits and a bride who cannot imagine the world not arranging itself around her.
Nadine sets her pen down. “Maybe that’s unfair. Maybe they’re in shock. But I can’t imagine standing at an altar tomorrow as if none of this happened.”
“It’s not unfair,” I say.
She glances at me.
I keep my eyes on the notes in front of me. “It’s exactly what they’re doing.”
Nadine is quiet for a second. “You really don’t like them.”
I let out a breath through my nose. “That obvious?”
“Yes.” She studies me, then leans back a little in her chair. “I’ve worked for enough families to know when something is off. This one is off.”
I almost smile at that. “Understatement.”
She gives a tired huff of laughter. “I’m trying to be diplomatic.” She shakes her head once. “I don’t understand people like that.”
I do, unfortunately.
Or at least I understand enough now to know that this family lives by rules other people don’t. That’s why Viktor can never know that I’m pregnant with his kid.
Nadine straightens and gathers the papers into one stack. “Well,” she says, sounding exhausted now, “whether they deserve a wedding tomorrow or not, it looks like they’re having one.”
“Yes.”
She rubs at one eye, then yawns and doesn’t bother hiding it. “I think we’re done for tonight.”
I glance at the clock and realize how late it’s gotten.
“We have to be up early,” she adds.
“Very early.”
She gives me a tired look. “Try to sleep.”
I almost laugh. Instead I say, “You too.”
She stands, takes the top clipboard, and leaves the other for me. At the door, she pauses. “For what it’s worth,” she says, “you handled yourself well today.”
I look at her. After everything, the words land harder than they should.
“Thanks.”
She nods once and heads out into the hallway.
I step into the hallway with the clipboard tucked against my side and stop short.
Ethan is there.
Of course he is.
He’s leaning against the wall outside the sitting room like he’s been waiting for me, jacket off, tie gone, shirt sleeves rolled up. He looks tired in the expensive, polished way he does everything else. Not wrecked. Just inconvenienced.
I keep walking.
“Sienna.”
I don’t stop.
Then he moves in front of me, not touching me this time, but close enough that I have to pull up short or walk straight into him.
I look at him. “Move.”
He doesn’t.
“I wanted to say I’m sorry.”
That almost makes me laugh.
“For what?” I ask. “You’re going to have to narrow it down.”
His mouth tightens. “About earlier.”
“Which part? The rehearsal dinner or your fiancée shoving me in the hallway?”
His jaw shifts. “Camille lost her temper.”
I almost laugh. Not because it’s funny, but because he still sounds exactly like himself. Even trying to apologize, he manages to make it sound like the problem is the general weather of the day, not what he actually said and did.
“You’re not sorry,” I say.
His mouth tightens. “You don’t know that.”
“I do.”
He looks away for a second, jaw working, then back at me. “I didn’t come here to fight.”
“Right,” I say.
He exhales through his nose and lowers his voice. “Fine. Believe whatever you want.”
“I do.”
I shift to go around him, but he stops me again.
This time when I look at him, I’m not annoyed anymore. I’m done.
Then he says, “I know you’re pregnant.”
Everything in me goes still.
For one second, the hallway narrows. The lights. The carpet. The sound of distant movement from downstairs. It all drops back under that single sentence.
I hold his gaze. “And?” I say.
His expression changes, just slightly. He wasn’t expecting that. Panic maybe. Something that would let him feel in control of the conversation. Instead he gets me standing there looking at him like I have no reason to lie anymore.