Scarlett
Morning on the island is obscene in its perfection.
Sunlight spills across the terrace in honeyed sheets, turning the ocean into hammered gold.
Linen tablecloths ripple softly in the breeze.
Crystal catches the light. Somewhere below us, waves break in a steady, indulgent rhythm, like the world has decided nothing bad is allowed to happen before noon.
The table is a masterpiece.
Platters of cut fruit arranged like art—dragonfruit, mango, papaya—colours too bright to be real.
Warm pastries dusted with sugar. Silver domes lifted by silent staff to reveal eggs folded with herbs I can’t name, bread still steaming, coffee so dark it looks like ink.
Everything smells rich and expensive and carefully controlled.
We look perfect.
Noah sits across from me in a white shirt with the sleeves rolled just enough to suggest ease, wealth, effortlessness. His watch glints when he lifts his cup. His posture is immaculate. Relaxed. Possessive. The kind of man magazines love to photograph beside women who stop smiling a year later.
I smile because that’s what I’m supposed to do.
I sip my juice. Sweet. Cold. Almost nauseating.
My eyes keep drifting—without permission—past the table, past the palms, past the open air of the terrace. Toward the paths that snake away from the resort. Toward shadow. Toward nothing I can name without my throat tightening.
I feel it again. That pressure. That awareness. Like the air itself is watching me breathe.
My gaze flicks left.
Then right.
Then back again.
The sound is violent.
Ceramic slams against glass. Coffee sloshes, dark liquid staining white linen like a bruise blooming in real time.
“Who the fuck are you looking for?”
The words crack across the table, sharp enough to make a nearby server flinch before vanishing entirely, as if summoned away by instinct.
I freeze with my fork halfway to my mouth.
Noah’s hand is flat on the table now, fingers spread, tendons standing out beneath his skin. His jaw is tight. His smile is gone—replaced by something cold and thin and irritated, like I’ve scratched an itch he can’t reach.
“I—” My voice comes out too soft. I clear my throat. Try again. “No one. I just—”
His eyes don’t leave my face.
They don’t blink.
I swallow.
“I thought,” I say carefully, because everything feels like it needs to be handled carefully now, “I might ask Vivian if she wanted to go shopping later. She mentioned the boutiques near the marina.”
The name barely leaves my mouth before he cuts me off.
“Vivian has gone.”
The sentence drops heavy and flat between us.
I stare at him. “Gone?” Something twists low in my stomach. “What do you mean, gone?”
He exhales through his nose, slow and deliberate, like I’ve inconvenienced him. Like I’ve asked about the weather instead of a woman who was here last night, smiling too sharply, saying too much.
“She left early this morning,” he says. “Unexpectedly.”
“Left?” My brows knit. “But she said she was staying through the weekend. She said—”
“I said she’s gone, Scarlett.”
The way he says my name makes it feel like a correction.
I push my chair back slightly without meaning to, the scrape of wood against stone too loud in the quiet that’s settled around us.
“That’s… sudden,” I say. “Did something happen?”
Noah lifts his coffee again. Takes a measured sip. Sets it down with surgical precision.
“You ask a lot of questions.”
There it is.
That tone. Smooth. Mild. Warning.
I force a small laugh, because this is breakfast, because the sun is shining, because this is what normal couples do—eat fruit and talk about nothing and pretend nothing is wrong.
“I’m just surprised,” I say. “She seemed… comfortable. Like she knew everyone.”
His eyes flick up, sharp.
“Is that what bothered you?”
“No,” I say quickly. Too quickly. “No, I just thought—”
“You thought what?” he interrupts, leaning back now, studying me openly. “That you’d make friends? That you’d wander off with someone you met last night and play tourist while I handle things?”
My cheeks heat.
“I didn’t mean—”
“No,” he says softly. “You didn’t think at all.”
Silence stretches.
The ocean keeps breathing.
Somewhere, cutlery clinks. A tray passes. Life continues, oblivious.
“You’re here because I want you here,” Noah continues, voice low enough that it feels like it’s meant only for me. “Not to socialise. Not to dig. And definitely not to start attaching yourself to people you don’t understand.”
My fingers curl into the napkin in my lap.
“She asked about you,” I say before I can stop myself.
His expression changes.
Just a flicker. So fast I almost miss it. Something tight. Something dark.
“What did she ask?”
I hesitate.
It feels dangerous to answer. It feels worse not to.
“She said,” I begin slowly, “that she didn’t think you’d marry again. Not after the last time.”
The air between us goes cold.
Noah’s chair scrapes back as he stands.
The sound is controlled. Precise. But the movement is sudden enough to make my heart kick against my ribs.
“That’s enough,” he says.
I look up at him, my mouth dry. “Noah—”
He leans down, hands braced on the table on either side of my plate, boxing me in. His face is close now. Too close. His voice drops.
“You don’t need to concern yourself with my past,” he says. “Or with women who like to talk too much before they disappear.”
Disappear.
The word lands wrong.
My pulse starts to race.
“She’s nobody,” he continues, straightening. “And she’s gone. End of conversation.”
He turns, already signalling for staff, the moment dismissed like it never mattered.
I sit there, staring at the ruined tablecloth, at the untouched food, at the perfect morning that suddenly feels like a staged photograph—beautiful, lifeless, lying.
Vivian has gone.
No goodbye. No explanation. No trace.
And the longer I sit there, the more certain I am of one thing—People don’t just leave this island.
They’re removed.
I nod.
I don’t know why—reflex, survival, habit—but my head dips once, small and obedient, like I’ve been trained to agree before the punishment escalates.
“Okay,” I say.
The word tastes like chalk.
Noah’s shoulders ease a fraction, satisfaction flickering through him at the compliance. He straightens his cuffs, smooths invisible wrinkles from his shirt, the moment already filed away as handled.
“Good,” he says, as if I’ve passed some invisible test. “Eat your breakfast. We have a full day.”
He steps away from the table and the staff return instantly, replacing the stained linen with a fresh one so fast it’s almost funny. The coffee cup disappears. The bruise is erased. The morning resets.
Perfect again.
I pick up my fork and force myself to eat a slice of mango. It’s sweet. It burns my tongue. I chew anyway.
Vivian is gone.
Not left. Gone.
I replay every detail from last night while Noah speaks to someone just out of earshot—her smile that didn’t reach her eyes, the way she watched him instead of me when she spoke, the casual cruelty dressed up as wit.
I didn’t think Noah would marry again. Not after the last time.
She hadn’t been curious.
She’d been warning me.
My stomach tightens.
I glance once—only once—toward the paths again. Toward the marina. Toward the open water that isn’t actually open at all. Nothing has changed. No signs of struggle. No whispers. No chaos.
Just absence.
A clean cut.
I realise then that Vivian was never meant to stay in my story. She existed only long enough to remind me where I am—and what happens to women who know too much, say too much, or linger too long around men like Noah.
She was a ghost with good posture.
A message.
Noah returns to the table and sits, already back in performance mode. He reaches for my hand across the table, fingers cool, grip deliberate.
“You look pale,” he says lightly. “Too much sun yesterday.”
I let him hold my hand.
“I’m fine,” I lie.
He squeezes once—just enough pressure to be felt, not enough to be seen.
“Good,” he says again. “Because I don’t like repeating myself.”
Neither do I.
I finish my breakfast. I smile when expected. I let him talk about plans, about shopping, about the island like it belongs to him.
Vivian doesn’t come up again.
She won’t.
And I understand, with a clarity that settles cold and permanent in my chest, that this is how it works:
Questions disappear first.
Then people.
I don’t ask where Vivian went.
I don’t ask why.
I don’t ask what happened to the last wife.
I file her away where Noah clearly intends her to stay—nowhere.
But as we stand to leave the terrace, his hand tight on my lower back, guiding me forward like a possession he’s already priced and paid for, one thought keeps looping in my head, relentless and sharp:
If Vivian could vanish this easily…
So could I.
And this time, no one would even mention my name at breakfast.