Three weeks after my world imploded, I’m standing in a private room at the Pierre Hotel, zipping my sister into a cream silk Vera Wang that does nothing to hide the slight swell of her stomach.
The irony tastes like battery acid.
I'm the maid of honor at my sister's shotgun wedding to my ex-fiancé, playing the role of supportive sister while my insides are screaming.
Patricia insisted on the role of "family unity" and "public perception." Translation: the Castellanos don't air dirty laundry, even when that laundry is stained with unplanned pregnancies.
"Stop fidgeting," I murmur, smoothing the fabric over her bump. "You'll wrinkle the silk."
Kaia examines herself in the ornate mirror. For a moment, something flickers across her face—regret maybe, or fear, or just morning sickness.
Suddenly she looks twenty again. Not the femme fatale who destroyed my future but the little sister I used to protect from Father's drunken rages.
"You can say it," she whispers, eyes meeting mine in the reflection.
"Say what?"
"That you hate me." Her voice cracks, goes small and young. "That you wish I'd fall down the stairs. Lose it. That you want me to suffer the way you're suffering."
The vulnerability catches me off guard. For weeks, she's been untouchable—smug and satisfied, wearing Aaron's ring like a trophy. But now, in this private moment before she walks down the aisle, the mask slips for just a breath.
Then it's back, lacquered and perfect.
"But you won't," she continues, meeting my eyes in the mirror. "You're too good. Always have been."
I should feel triumphant seeing her scared. Instead, I just feel tired.
"I don't hate you." The truth of it surprises me. The rage burned so hot it consumed itself, leaving only ash where my heart used to be. "I pity you."
Her spine stiffens. "Pity?"
"You got exactly what you wanted. A husband who betrayed one woman for another. A baby conceived in lies. A marriage built on someone else's ruins." I adjust her veil with steady hands. "Congratulations, Kaia. I hope it was worth it."
Color floods her cheeks—shame or rage, I can't tell. Her mouth opens, closes, opens again.
"You think you're so much better than me," she finally spits out, venom returning. "So pure. So perfect. But you're just as trapped as I am. At least I chose my cage."
"Did you?" I let the question hang. "Or did he?"
Before she can answer, Patricia's voice cuts through from the hallway, sharp as broken glass. "Ladies! It's time!"
Kaia sweeps past me toward the door, chin high, playing her role to perfection. I follow, smoothing my pale pink Oscar de la Renta and prepare to watch the man I loved marry my sister.
* * *
The ceremony is mercifully brief. A judge, immediate family, a handful of Father's closest associates as witnesses. I stand at the altar, a bouquet clutched in white-knuckled hands, watching Aaron recite vows he wrote for me.
He can barely meet my eyes. When the judge asks for the rings and our hands briefly touch during the exchange, he flinches like I've burned him. His voice cracks on "I do," like he's confessing to a crime instead of pledging his life.
But I notice things now, with clarity that comes from distance.
The way his jaw clenches when Kaia speaks, like he's biting back words. How his hand on her waist looks less like affection and more like he's holding a live grenade. The edge of panic in his eyes when Father claps him on the shoulder and calls him "son."
Had he always been like this? Had I been so desperate for love that I painted a prince over a thug?
At the small reception, I'm three champagnes deep when Aaron corners me by the bar. Kaia's holding court across the room with Patricia's society friends, playing the part of glowing bride while he drowns himself in Macallan.
"Esther." His voice is rough, scotch-heavy. "I need to talk to you."
"We have nothing to discuss." I signal the bartender for another glass, anything to avoid looking at him.
"Please. Just... fuck." He runs his hands through his hair. "I need you to know it wasn't supposed to happen like this."
"Which part?" The champagne arrives and I take a long swallow. "The fucking my sister or the marrying her part? Or maybe the getting her pregnant part?"
"Don't be cruel."
"I learned from the best." I smile, sharp enough to cut. "You and Kaia were excellent teachers."
His hand reaches for mine. I step back, letting him grasp empty air. The rejection visibly wounds him, and good. Let him hurt.
"Kaia, she... she pursued me,” he says desperately, words tumbling out. "Showed up at my apartment in lingerie. Said you were too cold, too perfect, that I needed a real woman who could match my appetites."
"So it's my fault." I don't phrase it as a question. "I was too good to you, too faithful, too pure, so you had no choice but to fuck my twenty-year-old sister. Is that the story you're telling yourself?"
"No, I…" He steps closer, and I can smell Kaia's perfume on his suit. "I still love you. God help me, Esther, I dream about you every night. Your smell, your laugh, the way you used to look at me like I was something good—"
"Stop." The word cracks like a whip.
"Kaia's just…" He gestures vaguely toward his new wife, twenty feet away and oblivious. "She's not you. She'll never be you."
"No," I agree, voice cold as winter. "She's the mother of your child. Your wife. Your problem now. Forever."
"She trapped me." His voice drops, conspiratorial. "The pregnancy, I don't think it was an accident. I think she—"
"Save your regrets, Aaron." I down my champagne in one burning swallow, feeling it scorch all the way down. "Save your sob stories and your excuses. I'm done collecting them."
I escaped to the bathroom, hands shaking with rage I didn't know I still had. My reflection looks like a stranger—hollow green eyes, sharp cheekbones under perfectly styled light-brown locks, mouth painted the color of fresh wounds.
I look like a ghost of myself. Maybe I am.
When I return, there's a black box on my chair. No card, no return address, no indication of how it got there.
Inside, nestled in black velvet, lies a single rose so dark it seems to swallow light. Beneath it, a note in elegant script that makes my pulse race: ‘They took what wasn't theirs. Soon, I'll claim what's mine. Count the days, little princess.’
My heart stutters, then races.
Ian. It has to be Ian. But how did he find me? How did he know?
"Beautiful flower." Father appears at my elbow, eyes tracking the rose. "Secret admirer?"
"Something like that." I close the box carefully, pulse racing.
He hums, already calculating. "Good. Maybe it'll make Cassian work harder for your attention. Competition breeds value."
The casual cruelty of it—that he sees even this as a negotiation tactic—should surprise me. It doesn't.
The rest of the reception blurs. Father parades me around like a show pony, introducing me to every associate, every capo, every man with blood on his hands and money in his pockets.
"My eldest," he says with pride, like he's auctioning art, "The future Mrs. Greyhaven."
Each introduction brings new fragments of horror that people seem eager to share:
"Cassian Greyhaven? Bold choice. His last engagement ended... poorly."
"They say he keeps a private room in his estate. Soundproofed walls, no windows. For… discipline."
"The Snyder girl who refused him? They found her car at the bottom of the harbor. Terrible accident."
"Still, better than the fate of the bride who tried to leave him..."
By the time we leave, exhaustion has settled into my bones like cement.
Kaia and Aaron disappear to their honeymoon suite, and I'm left alone in my room, holding a black rose from a stranger who makes me feel more alive than four years with Aaron ever did.
I trace the note's words with my finger. ‘Soon, I'll claim what's mine.’
The threat should terrify me. Instead, it makes the heat pool low in my belly. Somewhere in this city, Ian is thinking of me. Planning for me. Coming for me.
And in two weeks, I'll belong to Cassian Greyhaven—a man whose name makes hardened criminals cross themselves. A monster who collects brides like trophies.
I fell asleep clutching the rose. My last thought is a traitorous wish: that Ian could somehow save me from the monster I'm being sold to.