POV Emilia
Melanie barrels through my door like she’s fleeing a crime scene, clutching an expensive bottle like it’s life support.
“Was it that bad?” I ask, though her face already screams *disaster*.
“He clocked me in five minutes.” She collapses on my couch like a deflated balloon. “Attractive and smart. Is that even legal?”
Heat crawls up my neck—anger at myself more than him. What the fuck did I think would happen? That I could outfox Adrian Marlowe with a designed dress and a Wikipedia crash course?
“I’m an idiot,” I mutter.
“You’re strategic. There’s a difference.” Mel’s already uncorking the wine with surgical precision. “Look, there’s still time. We dig deeper. Find something that’ll make daddy dearest abandon his fairytale merger.”
“Like what? A secret gambling addiction? Hidden bastard children?”
“Something that makes Adrian the wrong husband and wrong business partner.” She pours two glasses that are definitely not regulation size. “Every golden boy has dirt somewhere.”
The idea lands sharp and useful. I grab my laptop and we go full CIA—social media, business journals, gossip blogs, the works.
Twenty minutes later, the chorus is monotonously perfect: young, successful, eligible bachelor. Charity boards, strategic acquisitions, not even a decent parking ticket.
“Only an idiot wouldn’t marry him,” Mel deadpans, then winces when I glare at her. “Kidding. Blame the alcohol.”
I press a throw pillow to my face and let out a muffled scream that’s been building since yesterday. When I surface, my vision’s clear for the first time in hours.
“Remember that dress we obsessed over after Mom’s last gala? The one she wore in all those magazine spreads?”
Mel’s smile blooms like sunrise. “Oh, I remember. She was absolutely incandescent.”
“I’m wearing it on Friday.” The decision crystallizes like ice. “Let them talk about the dress—and me in it—more than the engagement.”
“Em—”
“This ends at the gala, Mel. Either as the start of a life I actually choose, or the end of my freedom.” I drain my wine in one defiant gulp. “Either way, it fucking ends.”
POV Adrian
“Home,” I tell the driver, because nowhere else makes sense right now.
My penthouse feels like a mausoleum when I walk in—all marble and expensive silence. I pour whiskey I can’t taste, still processing the audacity of tonight’s performance.
The decoy wasn’t the insult. Being played like some amateur was.
The real Emilia had me pegged as an enemy instead of a potential ally. We could’ve been strategizing together instead of playing these ridiculous games. But no, she chose warfare over diplomacy, and honestly? I can respect that even if it pisses me off.
I crack open my laptop and start digging because information is the only currency that matters in situations like this. Time to find out exactly who I’m dealing with.
“Emilia Hart,” I type into Google Images.
The first result punches the breath clean out of my lungs.
Boardroom photos. Charity galas. A candid shot from some corporate event where she’s laughing at something off-camera, looking more human than she ever did sitting three feet from my office.
Isabella. Isabella fucking Asher. My former assistant.
The woman who ran my professional life like a Swiss watch. Who made every meeting smoother, every presentation sharper, every crisis manageable. Who probably knew more about my business than I did some days.
I drain the whiskey and keep scrolling like I’m reading my own obituary.
Every image is a revelation—here she is at Harvard graduation, there she is cutting a ribbon at some Hart Industries facility. The same face, the same sharp intelligence in her eyes, but different contexts. Different performances.
Harvard Business School. Valedictorian, of course. Internships that map exactly onto the competence I’ve been missing since she walked out my door yesterday morning. A thesis on “Strategic Deception in Corporate Mergers” that probably explained everything I needed to know about her methodology.
Mother left the family when she was nine—explains the steel backbone and trust issues. Father’s strategic placements explain the rest. This wasn’t some random hire who happened to be excellent at her job. This was a long-term operation.
No scandals. No leverage. No secret addictions or embarrassing arrests. Just a profile that explains everything about Isabella Asher while giving me absolutely nothing to use against Emilia Hart. She’s been playing a perfect game for months.
And there’s something else I’m noticing, maybe because of the whiskey or maybe because it’s just objectively true: she’s striking. Not magazine pretty—something sharper, more dangerous. The kind of face that makes you pay attention in crowded rooms, the kind of intelligence that could probably take down empires if she felt like it.
“Perfect daughter of Daniel Hart. Perfect corporate princess. Perfect fucking actress.” I broke the silence in my home office.
Perfect future wife, if the board gets its way.
I pour another drink and stare at the screen until my cursor blinks like it’s daring me to keep digging. But what’s the point? I already know everything that matters:
She’s brilliant. She’s beautiful. She doesn’t want this marriage any more than I do.
And she’s been sitting three feet from my office for months, probably planning her escape route while I complained about quarterly projections and missed the most sophisticated corporate intelligence operation in modern history.
The irony tastes worse than the whiskey. I’ve been missing Isabella’s competence all day, not knowing Isabella and my intended fiancée are the same fucking person.
Game recognizes game, and apparently, we’ve been playing each other from the start.