13. Carrie
— ? —
Carrie
The dress is white.
It was Tom’s idea. “Look innocent,” he said when we picked it out. “Look fragile. Let him be the monster.”
I study myself in the cabin’s bedroom mirror, smoothing the fabric over my hips. The dress is simple, elegant neckline, fitted bodice, skirt that falls just below my knees, but there’s a bridal quality to it. A purity.
The virgin sacrifice, I think darkly. Walking into the lion’s den.
“You look beautiful.” Tom appears behind me, his hands settling on my shoulders. He’s wearing a dark suit that makes him look older, sharper, less the gentle furniture-maker I’ve come to love and more a man who could hold his own against his brother.
“I look like I’m going to throw up.”
“You’re not going to throw up.”
“You don’t know that.” I turn to face him. “Tom, what if this doesn’t work? What if he refuses to accept the papers? What if he-”
“Then we deal with it.” His hands cup my face. “Together. Whatever happens tonight, you’re not facing it alone.”
I love you, I think. The words are right there, on the tip of my tongue, but I swallow them. Not tonight, not before we walk into battle. I don’t want to say it for the first time when we’re both terrified of what’s coming.
“Let’s go,” I say instead.
The Donnelly estate is everything my parents’ home isn’t: old money instead of new, understated instead of flashy, generations of wealth soaked into every brick and beam.
Crystal chandeliers cast warm light over guests in designer gowns and tailored suits.
Champagne towers glitter on white-clothed tables.
The string quartet in the corner plays a classical piece, forgettable.
I hate everything about it.
“Easy,” Tom says under his breath, his hand warm at the small of my back. “You don’t have to charm anyone. Just get through it.”
“Get through it. Got it.”
He laces his fingers through mine, a quiet anchor, and some of the tightness in my chest lets go.
“Good. Now go be tragically confused.”
We circulate through the crowd, playing our roles. I’m the confused wife, still recovering from her accident. Tom is the devoted brother-in-law, supporting me through my amnesia. We smile and nod and answer the same questions we’ve been answering for a month.
Yes, much better, thank you. No, still mostly a blank. Yes, Tom has been a saint.
I scan the room for Ulises. He’s not hard to find, he’s holding court by the fireplace, surrounded by admirers, laughing at a joke a silver-haired man just made.
He looks exactly the same as always: polished, charming, handsome in a way that used to make my heart race and now just makes my stomach turn.
He catches my eye across the room.
Smiles.
A cold dread slithers down my spine.
“He’s watching us,” I whisper to Tom.
“Let him watch. The papers are in Reyes’s briefcase. Once he gets the signal.”
“Carrie!”
The voice cuts through the crowd, and suddenly Diana Ashworth is in front of me. Blonde hair perfectly curled, red lips perfectly painted, eyes glittering with malice dressed up as concern.
“Sweetheart, I was so worried about you after your little... episode.” Diana air-kisses my cheek, her perfume cloying. “How are you feeling? Do you remember anything yet?”
“Some things are coming back,” I say carefully. “Slowly.”
“How wonderful.” Diana’s smile sharpens. “I was just telling Ulises how brave he’s been through all this. Standing by you, waiting for you to recover. Not every husband would be so patient.”
Patient, the patience you’d waste on a chore, on an inconvenience wedged into his schedule.
“Tom has been very supportive too,” I say mildly.
A calculation moves through Diana’s eyes. “Yes, I noticed. You two seem... close.”
Before I can respond, a hand closes around my wrist.
Ulises.
“Diana, would you excuse us?” His voice is smooth, charming, completely at odds with the bruising grip on my arm. “I need to speak with my wife.”
“Of course.” Diana melts away into the crowd, shooting me one last look of barely concealed triumph.
Tom steps forward. “Carrie.”
“It’s fine.” I meet his eyes, trying to communicate stay close without saying it. “I’ll just be a minute.”
Ulises steers me toward a quiet corner, away from the other guests, away from Tom’s protective presence. His hand doesn’t leave my wrist.
“Let go of me.”
“Drop the act, Carrie.” His voice is low, pleasant, the tone of two people discussing the weather. “I know you’re faking.”
“I don’t know what you.”
“Save it.” His grip tightens. “I’ve had you watched. I’ve seen you with my brother. Laughing. Touching. Fucking in his truck like a common whore.”
My blood turns to ice.
“Did you think I wouldn’t find out?” Ulises’s smile is sharp. “Did you think you could humiliate me, in front of my family, my friends, and I’d just let it go?”
“Let go of me.”
“Here’s what’s going to happen.” He leans closer, his breath hot on my ear. “You’re going to stop this pathetic charade. You’re going to come home with me tonight.”
“You’re my wife, Carrie.” His eyes are cold. Empty. “You belong to me. You’ve always belonged to me. And no amount of fucking my brother is going to change that.”
“I’m not.”
“Mrs. Donnelly!”
Diana’s voice rings out across the room, bright and cheerful. I turn just in time to see her approaching with a full glass of red wine, and then she trips.
Trips.
The wine arcs through the air in slow motion. I try to step back, but Ulises’s grip holds me in place, and the entire contents of the glass splash down the front of my white dress.
Red everywhere. Soaking through the fabric, dripping onto the floor, staining my skin.
“Oh no!” Diana’s hand flies to her mouth, her eyes wide with mock horror. “I’m so sorry! How clumsy of me!”
The room goes quiet. Everyone is staring. I can feel their eyes on me, the ruined dress, the wine dripping from my fingers, the humiliation burning across my face.
Someone laughs. Then someone else.
Ulises’s hand is still on my wrist. His smile is satisfied, triumphant.
“Perhaps you should go clean up,” he says pleasantly. “You’re making a scene.”
I can’t break character. Not yet, not until the papers are served. But standing here, dripping with wine, surrounded by people who are laughing at me.
Hold it together. Just a few more minutes. You can do this.
“Let me help you, dear.” Diana reaches for my arm, her touch acid on my skin. “You look absolutely.”
“Get your hands off her.”
Tom’s voice cuts through the murmuring crowd, cold and even.
He’s there suddenly, placing himself between me and Diana, between me and Ulises, his body a wall of protection. I can see the fury in every line of him, the tight set of his jaw, the tension in his shoulders, the white-knuckled fists at his sides.
“This is a family matter,” Ulises says coldly. “It doesn’t concern you.”
“She is my concern.” Tom turns to face his brother, and his expression turns dangerous, a look I’ve never seen on him before. “She became my concern the moment you stopped deserving her.”
“She’s my wife.”
“Is she?” Tom’s voice rises, carrying across the silent room. “Because from where I’m standing, she looks like a woman you’ve abused and humiliated and trapped in a marriage she never wanted.”
“Tom.” I try to intervene, but he’s not finished.
“You want to know who she thinks her husband is? Me. She chose me. In that hospital room, with her memories scrambled and her instincts intact, she chose the brother who wasn’t cruel. The brother who didn’t cheat. The brother who actually knows how to love someone.”
Gasps from the crowd. Ulises’s face has gone white with rage.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I know enough.” Tom steps forward, putting himself nose-to-nose with his brother. “I know about the affairs. Seven of them, over six years. I know about the hotels and the texts and the women you paraded behind her back while she blamed herself for not being enough.”
More gasps. Whispers spreading through the crowd, fast and unstoppable.
“I know about her sister.” Tom’s voice is ice. “I know what you said to her the day she fell. ‘You’re old. You’re barren. You belong to me.’ Those words. I know every single one.”
Ulises’s hand shoots out, grabbing Tom’s lapel. “You have no right.”
“I have every right.” Tom doesn’t flinch. “Because she’s under my protection now. And if you touch her again, if you threaten her, intimidate her, so much as look at her wrong, I will burn your entire life to the ground.”
“She’s my wife.”
“She’s mine.” Tom’s voice rings out across the silent room. “In her mind, in this room, in front of everyone who matters, she’s mine.”
His hand closes over Ulises’s wrist, the same wrist that was bruising my arm moments ago.
“Now take your hand off her,” Tom says quietly, “before I break every finger.”
For a long, terrible moment, no one moves.
Then, slowly, Ulises releases me.
He steps back, his face a mask of barely controlled rage. His eyes never leave mine.
“This isn’t over,” he says softly. “Not even close.”
He turns and walks away, disappearing into the crowd.
Tom pulls me close, his arm around my shoulders. I’m shaking, from the confrontation, from the wine still dripping down my dress, from the adrenaline crashing through my system.
“Breathe,” he murmurs against my hair. “It’s okay. I’ve got you.”
“The papers.”
“Reyes is serving them now. While Ulises is distracted.” Tom’s voice is grim. “By tomorrow morning, he’ll have the full evidence packet and divorce filing in his hands.”
I look up at him, this man who just defended me in front of a room full of people who have known his family for decades. This man who chose me over blood. Over loyalty. Over everything.
“Thank you,” I whisper.
“Don’t thank me yet.” His eyes are still tracking his brother’s path through the crowd. “He’s not going to take this well.”
Across the room, Ulises has stopped. He’s watching us, his expression unreadable.
But his eyes say everything.
He is nowhere near done with me.