2. Amanda
— ? —
Amanda
I should keep walking.
The wind cuts through my dress like it’s made of paper. My teeth are chattering. My feet have gone numb in these ridiculous heels - blisters, definitely blisters, possibly blood.
And Roman Vance is watching me from his truck like he already knows I’m going to say yes.
“I’m fine,” I manage.
“You’re not fine. You’re a mile from the house in a dress that costs more than most people’s rent, and it’s thirty-eight degrees.” He pushes the passenger door open. “Get in.”
“How do you know what my dress costs?”
“Amanda.” His voice drops. Patient. Exhausted. “Get in the goddamn truck.”
I get in the goddamn truck.
The heat hits me immediately. He’s got it cranked up high, and I press my frozen fingers against the vent like I’m praying to it.
Roman doesn’t say anything. He just pulls away from the curb, and the mansion disappears in the rearview mirror.
I study him because I can’t help it. Julian’s older brother. Thirty-six. The family disgrace.
The official count is four meetings in three years - holidays where Julian tolerated his presence, funerals where he couldn’t avoid it. But that’s not the whole truth.
There were the phone calls when Julian’s schedule conflicted and Roman was the emergency contact.
The time he showed up at the office to sign documents and we spent an hour waiting for the notary, talking about nothing - books, coffee, the absurdity of corporate jargon.
The emails he’d send after family events, dry observations about his mother’s passive-aggression that made me laugh at my desk.
Julian never knew about any of it. I never told him. I’m not sure why.
Roman was the only Vance who ever asked me questions about myself and actually listened to the answers. The only one who looked at me like I was a person, not a function.
He looks nothing like Julian.
Where Julian is polished, Roman is rough.
Dark hair that’s too long. A jaw shadowed with stubble.
Tattoos peeking out from under his rolled sleeves - I can see the edge of something on his forearm, black ink against tan skin.
He smells like cigarettes and cold air and something else.
Something I shouldn’t be noticing right now.
Stop it, I tell myself. Your husband’s skin is probably still warm from your sister.
“Where am I taking you?” he asks.
“I don’t know.”
“Family?”
I almost laugh. “My family is back at that house.”
His jaw tightens. He knows. Of course he knows. He has to know about Julian - about all of Julian’s secrets. They grew up in the same glass cage.
“Is there anywhere you want to go?”
I close my eyes. Think of the only place that’s ever felt safe.
“Greenwood Cemetery,” I say.
Roman doesn’t ask questions. He just drives.
The gates are locked this time of night, but there’s a gap in the fence on the east side. I’ve been sneaking in since I was sixteen. Since my grandmother’s funeral.
Roman parks on the street. Kills the engine.
“You don’t have to-” I start.
He’s already out of the truck.
We walk between headstones in the dark. My heels sink into the soft ground. Roman steadies my elbow when I stumble.
“Sorry,” I mutter. “These shoes.”
“Take them off.”
“It’s November.”
“Your feet are already bleeding through the straps. Take them off.”
He says it like a fact, not a criticism. I look down. He’s right. Thin lines of red streak across my ankles where the straps have rubbed through.
I unbuckle them and carry them in one hand. The cold ground shocks through my bare soles, but it’s better than the pain.
Roman shrugs off his jacket - black leather, worn soft at the elbows - and drapes it over my shoulders without asking. It smells like him.
“Here,” I say when we reach the small headstone in the corner. “Maria Reyes. 1940–2008. My grandmother.”
He reads the dates. Doesn’t say sorry for your loss or any of the other meaningless things people say.
“She raised us when our mom was working,” I explain.
“Double shifts, sometimes triple. Grandma was the one who made sure we ate, did our homework, stayed out of trouble.” I sink onto the cold ground.
My silk dress is ruined anyway. “She’s the only person who ever made me feel like I was enough. Just as I was.”
Roman sits beside me. The cemetery is dark and still.
“My mother has cancer,” I say, and the words surprise me - I haven’t said them out loud to anyone. “Stage three. Julian’s been paying for her treatment at the best facility in the state. It’s the only good thing he’s ever done.”
“Amanda-”
“If I lose him, I lose her treatment. If I fight back, he’ll cut her off.” I laugh, and it sounds broken. “He’s thought of everything. He always thinks of everything.”
“He was with my sister,” I say after a long moment. The words come out flat. Dead. “I walked in on them. In our bed.”
“I suspected.”
I turn to look at him. “You suspected?”
“I know my brother.” His voice is bitter. “I know how he operates. The way he looked at her at Christmas last year - I recognized it. It’s the same way he looks at anything he wants to possess.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Would you have believed me?” Roman’s eyes meet mine. “The family disgrace, making accusations against your husband? You would have thought I was trying to cause problems.”
He’s right. I would have.
“There have been others,” he says quietly. “For years. He just got better at hiding them. Until he didn’t want to anymore.”
Others. For years.
The humiliation burns through me like acid.
“Why are you telling me this now?”
“Because you need to understand what you’re up against.” Roman shifts to face me fully. “If you try to divorce him - and you should - he will destroy you. He’ll take everything. Your reputation. Your money. Your sanity. He’ll make sure you leave with nothing but the clothes on your back.”
“Then what am I supposed to do?”
“Find someone who knows where the bodies are buried.”
The words hang in the cold air between us. I stare at him.
“You,” I say.
“I grew up in that house. I know every secret he’s ever tried to hide. Every bribe, every cover-up, every person he’s stepped on to get where he is.” Roman leans closer. “I can help you. If you let me.”
“Why would you help me?”
His eyes hold mine for a long moment. Something passes between us - something I’m not ready to name.
“Do you remember the night before your wedding?” he asks.
The question catches me off guard. “What about it?”
“Two in the morning. You were barefoot in the kitchen, redoing the seating chart because my mother wanted it changed at the last minute.”
I remember that night. I remember being exhausted and stressed and wondering if I was making a mistake.
“You saw me?”
“I couldn’t sleep. Came down for a drink.” His voice is quiet. “You were talking to yourself. Going through the names. And you laughed at something - I don’t know what - and I thought...” He shakes his head.
“What?”
“I thought: she’s the only real person in this entire house.”
The space between us feels smaller than it should. I’m aware of him - his presence, the way he’s looking at me like I matter.
For one disorienting moment, I think about what it would be like to lean into him. To let someone hold me who actually wants to.
The thought shocks me. My husband’s skin is probably still warm from my sister, and I’m sitting in a cemetery thinking about his brother.
What is wrong with me?
I pull back. Create distance. Roman notices - I see it in the way his expression shifts, careful and controlled.
“We should go,” I say. “It’s cold.”
“Amanda-”
“I just found out my husband is sleeping with my sister.” My voice comes out harder than I intend. “I’m not - I can’t think about anything else right now.”
“I know.” He stands. Offers me a hand up, purely practical. “I wasn’t suggesting-”
“I know you weren’t.”
But something passed between us. Something I’ll have to examine later, when my world isn’t actively ending.
Roman’s phone lights up in his pocket. He glances at it. Frowns. Pulls it out.
“What?” I ask.
“News alert. Hit and run-” He stops.
His expression shifts - shock, then a rapid calculation I don’t understand. He angles the phone toward himself, thumbs flying across the screen.
“Roman, what are you-”
“Hold on. I’m screenshotting something before it-” He curses under his breath. “Damn it. It’s gone.”
“What’s gone?”
He looks at me, and there’s something urgent in his expression. “A text came through on a group chat Julian added me to years ago. I never left it - I use it to monitor what he’s doing. Vivienne just sent a message - panicked, probably meant for Julian alone.”
“What did it say?”
“‘I think I hit someone, what do I do.’” He holds up his phone, shows me the empty thread. “Someone deleted it remotely. I tried to screenshot it but I was too slow. But I saw it, Amanda. I saw her name, I saw the timestamp.”
“That was my sister,” I breathe.
“And now it’s gone.” His jaw tightens. “Julian has remote access to that thread. He must have wiped it the second he saw what she sent.”
“Can you recover it?”
“Maybe. I know someone who might be able to pull deleted messages from the server.” He meets my eyes. “But Amanda - if Vivienne hit someone, and Julian’s already covering it up, this is going to move fast. We need to be careful about what we say to the police.”
“Careful? Why would we be careful? We just tell them what you saw-”
“And Julian’s lawyers will argue I fabricated it.
That I’m a disgraced family member with a grudge, making accusations I can’t prove.
” He grips my shoulders. “I believe you. I know you didn’t do whatever they’re about to say you did.
But if I play my hand too early, before I can recover that text or find other evidence, we lose our only advantage. ”
I stare at him. The logic is cold. Calculated.
But it makes a horrible kind of sense.
Another notification slides down his screen. This one from a local news account.
brEAKING: FATAL HIT-AND-RUN OUTSIDE VANCE MANSION
There’s a photo. A crumpled figure on the street. Emergency lights.
And a car.
My car.
“That’s my-” I can’t finish.
“I see it.”
“Roman, that’s my car. I didn’t - I walked. You saw me walk. I didn’t take my-”
Another notification:
Police seeking Amanda Vance for questioning in fatal hit-and-run. Witnesses say she fled the party “visibly distressed” shortly before the incident.
My name.
Not Vivienne’s.
Mine.
“She took my keys,” I whisper. “She must have - after I left - she grabbed my keys and-”
“Amanda.” Roman’s voice is sharp. Urgent. “Listen to me. We need to-”
Sirens.
Distant but getting closer.
I look at Roman. He looks at me.
“They’re framing me,” I say, and my voice doesn’t sound like mine anymore. “My husband and my sister are framing me for murder.”
The sirens grow louder.