CHAPTER 2 — NO-SEE RULE
The superstition said the groom couldn’t see the bride for three days before the ceremony.
Ethan had agreed like a man signing an NDA.
Then he climbed through my window at two in the morning like a criminal with good hair.
He was on his knees in front of me, sleeves rolled up, grinning like he’d broken into my life on purpose.
“You’re making a face,” he said, already reaching for the basin at my feet. “Who hurt you?”
He started washing my feet as if it were the most normal thing in the world—a CEO in a penthouse, kneeling like devotion was his favorite hobby.
I dropped my heel harder than necessary into the water.
It splashed the hardwood. It splashed his shirt.
Ethan blinked, startled.
Then his eyes narrowed with the kind of focus he usually saved for hostile boardrooms.
“Okay,” he said quietly. “That’s not just ‘wedding stress.’”
I held out my phone.
“Read.”
He took it, wet hands and all.
His face changed in stages.
First confusion.
Then offense.
Then a kind of furious disbelief that made his jaw set hard.
“Babe,” he said, voice clipped, “that is not me.”
He shoved the phone closer, as if the pixels could testify.
“I get it—the side profile is close. But I have—” he cut himself off, then pointed anyway. “I have a scar there. And my shoulder isn’t shaped like that.”
He looked up, eyes wide, pleading and angry at the same time.
“Tell me you didn’t believe this for even one second.”
I didn’t answer right away.
Not because I believed Stella.
Because I wanted to see what Ethan did when someone tried to light a match under our bed.
He grabbed my phone again and opened Stella’s chat.
His thumbs flew.
Are you out of your mind?
I’m with my wife right now.
Whatever cheap Photoshop game you’re playing, your skills are terrible.
Also: our mattress cost $200K. Pay for the replacement or I’m filing a report.
He hit send with the satisfaction of a man throwing a punch.
Then he called home.
Not Stella.
Not her parents.
Home—his mother.
Vivian Cheng answered on the first ring.
I didn’t hear her voice clearly, but I heard Ethan’s.
Low. Sharp. Controlled.
“No,” he said. “Check the suite. Check who was there. Pull the staff log and the cameras.”
He listened.
His face darkened.
Then he said, “Keep her there. I’ll deal with it after the ceremony.”
He ended the call and looked at me like he needed to confirm I was still here.
“Stella got into the house,” he said. “She was in the bedroom.”
He paused, disgust curling his lip.
“Alone,” he added, like the detail mattered. “She’s claiming I told her to ‘rest.’”
I thought about the photo again.
The stranger’s body. The careful angle. The suggestion without proof.
A weapon designed to make me ask questions first—then doubt.
Ethan’s phone buzzed.
He looked at it once and snorted.
“No reply,” he said. “Of course.”
Then he looked down at the water and the mess we’d made.
“You didn’t believe her,” he said, softer now. “But you were about to.”
I lifted my eyebrow.
“I was about to what?”
He leaned in and kissed my forehead like he was sealing an oath.
“You were about to be hurt,” he said.
He stood, dripping water onto my floor like he owned the consequences.
“I’ll replace the bed. I’ll replace the lock. I’ll replace anyone in my life who thinks they can touch you.”
Then he added, very casually, as if it were obvious:
“And we’re hiring a videographer for the wedding. Full raw footage. No gaps.”
I watched him say it.
Not romantic.
Strategic.
A man who understood that stories were fought with documentation.