Chapter Two #2
A photograph can lie. Not obviously, not in ways most people would notice, but in small, subtle ways that change everything. A shadow removed. A color corrected. A person edited out and the background filled in so seamlessly you'd never know they were there.
The finished image looks right. It looks real. But if you know what to look for, you can tell. There's something off about the lighting. Something wrong with the way the edges blend. The picture is lying to you, and once you see it, you can't unsee it.
That's what this feels like.
My life is here. My apartment, my job, my phone full of messages from people I know. Everything is in place. Everything looks right.
But something has been edited.
Time has been moved. Events have been shifted. And I'm standing in the middle of it, like someone Photoshopped me into a picture I was never supposed to be in.
The book.
It has to be the book.
Hewhay's gave me a book that had my name in it. My face. My mannerisms, described in ink that looked centuries old. And I read it, fell asleep in that too-comfortable armchair, and woke up here.
In a world where my life exists but the timeline has shifted.
In a world where four mafia kings rule from the shadows.
In a world where I'm apparently going to marry one of them in three days, whether I like it or not.
I laugh.
It's not a good laugh. It's the kind of laugh that comes right before crying, or screaming, or possibly both. The kind of laugh that tastes like burnt sugar at the back of your throat—something that should be sweet but went wrong somewhere.
I press my hands over my face and try to breathe.
In. Out. In. Out.
I am not going to have a panic attack in a silk-draped room in a fictional mafia king's mansion. I am not.
"It's not going to work," I inform the ceiling with as much dignity as I can muster. "I refuse to panic. I'm going to stay calm and rational and—"
"The door wasn't locked."
I scream.
Not a dignified scream. Not even a movie-heroine scream. Just a strangled yelp of pure shock that has me jerking upright so fast I lose my balance, and then I'm—
Oh no.
I'm falling off the bed.
My hand shoots out to grab the bedpost, but the silk sheets have tangled around my legs, and for one horrible, endless moment I'm just hanging there—half on the mattress, half off, one leg trapped in expensive fabric, arm wrapped around carved mahogany like it's a life raft.
Devyn is standing in the doorway.
Watching.
His expression gives absolutely nothing away. Not amusement. Not concern. Not even mild curiosity about why his future bride is currently attempting to strangle herself with bedsheets.
One eyebrow lifts. Maybe a millimeter. Maybe less.
I scramble upright with as much dignity as I can muster.
Which is none. Zero dignity. Negative dignity.
"I wasn't—" I gesture vaguely at the bed, the sheets, my own treasonous limbs. "That wasn't—"
He says nothing.
"Gravity," I inform him. "It was a gravity issue."
Still nothing. Just those golden eyes, watching me like I'm a particularly confusing math problem he's been asked to solve.
"Also you should knock," I add, because apparently my mouth has decided to keep going without permission from my brain. "That's a thing people do. Knocking. Before entering rooms. Especially bedrooms. Especially the bedrooms of people they've kidnapped."
His lips twitch.
It's barely there. The ghost of almost-amusement, gone so fast I might have imagined it. But I didn't imagine it. I saw it. I saw it.
Devyn Chaleur, mafia king, legendary temper, banked-coals anger—almost smiled.
At me.
Because I was being ridiculous.
Oh no. Oh no no no.
"The wedding will take place in three days." His tone is clipped now, all business, like the almost-smile never happened. "There's paperwork to complete. Legal formalities."
He's changed out of his wedding suit. Now he's in something simpler: dark trousers, a white shirt with the sleeves rolled to his forearms, the collar open at the throat. The late afternoon light catches the hard line of his jaw, the sharp angles of his face.
He fills the doorframe the way he fills every space he enters.
Not just physically, though he is tall, broad-shouldered, built like someone who knows exactly what his body can do.
It's more than that. It's presence. It's the absolute certainty that everything around him exists because he allows it to.
Those golden eyes find mine.
My pulse jumps. My breath catches. My whole body goes tight in a way I don't want to examine too closely.
No. Absolutely not.
I am not going to be attracted to the man who literally picked me up and carried me out of a building because I wasn't walking fast enough. The man who just watched me nearly strangle myself with bedsheets and didn't even offer to help. That would be insane. That would be—
He takes a step into the room, and my thoughts scatter like startled birds.
I find my voice somewhere in the wreckage of my composure. "You can't just marry someone. There are laws. You need consent—"
"I need to understand what you are."
The interruption is sharp, efficient. He cuts through my protests like they're inconveniences.
"What I am?"
"You appeared in my chapel." Another step closer. I can smell him now—cedar and smoke and that warmth underneath—and my knees feel suddenly unreliable. "At the exact moment my bride vanished. You refused to tell me where she went. You gave me nothing but silence and defiance."
I want to back away, but I'm standing by the bed. There's nowhere to go. "That doesn't mean—"
"I don't believe in coincidence."
His gaze drops to my mouth.
Again.
Second time. I'm counting now.
Just for a second. Just like before, in the car. And just like before, my breath catches, and my heart does something complicated, and I hate—I hate—that he can see what he does to me.
When his eyes meet mine again, there's something sharp in them. Searching.
"You will stay where I can see you until I understand what you are. Coincidence or conspiracy. I don't yet know which."
"I'm not a conspiracy." My voice comes out steadier than I feel. Small miracle. "I'm a photography assistant from Providence. I don't know how I got here. I don't know why the date on my phone is wrong. I don't know anything."
He tilts his head slightly. Studying me. Like I'm a puzzle he can't solve, and it's making him impatient.
"The date on your phone," he repeats.
I shouldn't have said that. I should have kept my mouth shut, given him nothing, the way I did in the chapel.
But I'm tired. I'm confused. And some reckless part of me wants him to know that I'm just as lost as he thinks I am.
"It says it's three weeks ago," I tell him. "Except I remember those three weeks. I lived them. And now they haven't happened yet."
Something happens to his face.
It's not much. A flicker in those golden eyes. A tightening at the corner of his jaw. If I weren't trained to notice micro-expressions, I might have missed it entirely.
But I am trained. And I don't miss it.
He recognizes what I'm describing. I don't know how, I don't know why, but something in my words has landed. Something has struck a nerve.
For a long moment, he just looks at me. The impatience is gone. In its place is something I can't name—something almost like uncertainty, though that doesn't seem like a word that belongs anywhere near this man.
"Intéressant," he murmurs finally. The word is soft. Almost to himself.
And then, without another word, he turns and walks out.
Not a goodbye. Not an explanation. Just—gone. Like he got more than he came for, and he needs to think.
The door closes behind him with a soft click.
I sink onto the bed, breathing hard, heart pounding against my ribs.
What was that?
What does he know?
And then I do what any rational person would do.
I try the window.
It opens easily. No locks, no bars. Just a three-story drop to the gardens below, with nothing but perfectly manicured hedges to break my fall.
I close the window.
I try the door again.
The guards are still there. One of them glances at me, his expression professionally blank.
"Is there something you need, miss?"
"I'm a prisoner."
The words come out before I can stop them. Too loud. Too blunt. The kind of thing I never say, because I learned a long time ago that saying hard things out loud doesn't change them.
The guard doesn't even blink. "Is there something you need, miss?" he repeats, in exactly the same tone.
My face goes hot. I want to apologize—for what, I don't even know. For making this awkward. For putting him in a position where he has to pretend he didn't hear me. For being the kind of person who blurts out uncomfortable truths and then feels guilty about it.
"No," I manage. "I'm...no. Thank you."
I close the door gently. Carefully. Like that somehow makes up for what I just said.
I sink down against it, my back against the wood, and pull my knees up to my chest.
The room is beautiful. The bed is soft. The guards are polite.
But I'm not a guest.
I'm not a bride.
I'm a prisoner they're calling a bride, in a world that shouldn't exist, with a wedding in three days and no idea how to stop it.
Coincidence or conspiracy, he said. I don't yet know which.
Neither do I.
But there's something he's not telling me. Something he recognized when I told him about the time shift. Something that made even Devyn Chaleur—impatient, certain, in control of everything—pause.
I'm going to find out what it is.
SLEEP DOESN'T COME.
I lie in the impossibly soft bed, staring at the silk canopy, and my brain won't stop spinning. The guards change shifts outside my door—I hear the quiet exchange of words, the soft footsteps. Moonlight spills through the windows, making everything look like a black and white photograph.
Abigail.
The name floats up from wherever I've been pushing it down. The terrified bride in the black gown. He's gone insane—you should hide too.
Why did she run?