TE BILLIONAIRE'S SECOND BRIDE

CHAPTER TWO

Avery's POV

They set me in the living room like a lamb in front of a wolf.

White petals had dropped from the roses onto the floor. Damian stood at the fireplace, his phone in his fist, his face like frozen water. Vivienne sat in the armchair with her cane across her knees. Reginald stood behind her, one hand resting on her shoulder, wearing a sad and gentle face.

No one spoke. The mantel clock ticked forty times.

"She texted me thirty minutes ago," Damian said at last. He turned the screen toward me. It said: I'm sorry. "That is all I get. After two years."

"Damian," Vivienne said. "Sit."

"I don't need to sit."

"The complaint says she took two million dollars from investors in her charity," Reginald said quietly. "I'm so sorry, my boy. It seems she had been moving money for some time."

My mouth fell open. "Celeste has a charity?"

"She had," Damian said. He did not look at me. "She had a lot of things."

I wanted to say, There is a mistake. My sister is careless, but she is not a thief. Then I remembered her ice-cold fingers and the empty room, and the words dried up in my mouth.

Vivienne raised her cane and aimed it at her grandson like a rifle.

"I did not get out of bed at three a.m. to hear about your heart. I came to talk about the will."

My father made a small choking noise.

"Your father's shares," Vivienne said, "pass to you on your thirty-fifth birthday. That is in five days. But the trust has a condition: you must be married by then. A steady family man, the board wanted." She said steady family man like it tasted of pennies. "If you are not, the shares go to the board, the merger with the Reyes Group dies, and your uncle and his friends take over."

"I know the condition, Grandmother."

"Then you know the wedding must happen tomorrow. The Senator is coming. So are the investors and the press. If you cancel, Blackwood Global looks weak. The merger collapses. Four thousand people lose their jobs."

Damian went to the window and stood with his back to us. A muscle jumped in his jaw.

"I'll find someone else."

"In one day?"

"I can pay anyone."

"You can't pay a Vale," my father blurted. Every head turned. Sweat shone on his forehead. "I mean, you needn't. There is another Vale in this room.”

Cold water poured down my spine.

"Papa," I said.

"Avery is smart," he rushed on. "Loyal. Same family, same name. The papers could say the houses are still joined. Nobody gets hurt."

"Papa, please."

Damian turned around and finally looked at me. It was the first time he had really looked, and I wished he hadn't. His eyes raked over my cardigan, my flattened hair, my swollen red cheek. His upper lip curled by a hair. I knew that look. It was how you look at a stain on a white shirt.

"No."

"Damian," Vivienne said.

"Absolutely not."

"Then tell the board you have failed," she said calmly. "Tell four thousand people to go home."

The clock ticked. Petals stirred on the floor in the draft from the door. I counted my own pulse.

And I remembered something else.

Three months ago, at Halden & Cole, I had been assigned a review of a client's supplier payments. I found forty-one payments to vendors that did not exist. Ghost companies, one after another, month after month, for years. Small amounts on their own. Together, they came to nearly one hundred million dollars.

The client was Blackwood Global.

I took my report to my boss. The next morning it was gone from the system, and he told me, without meeting my eyes, Someone important is unhappy. Let it go.

I did not let it go. I kept a copy on a thumb drive taped inside a pair of wool socks.

Now the front door of that house was opening for me.

"I'll do it," I said.

Every head snapped toward me.

"Avery!" my mother gasped, and then her face bloomed into something dangerously close to joy.

Damian stared. "Why?"

"Because four thousand people need their jobs," I said. My voice shook only slightly. "And because my family caused this."

Both were true. Neither was the reason.

He crossed the room. He was so tall I had to tip my head back. I smelled cedar and cold air on his coat. When he spoke, his voice dropped so low that only I could hear it.

"Let me be clear, Miss Vale. I don't want you. I don't need you. You will be a signature on a page. You will live in my house, carry my name and smile for cameras. There will never be room for you in my heart."

It hurt worse than my mother's slap. I lifted my chin anyway.

"I understand."

"Good." He pulled a folded paper from his pocket and pressed it into my palm. "Read it. Sign it. You have one hour."

The contract ran six pages.

Clause one: The marriage will last one year. Clause four: The wife will attend all public events. Clause six: There will be no physical relationship. Clause seven: The wife will not interfere in company business. Clause nine: There will be no children, under any circumstances.

I read clause nine twice. Something small and sad curled up in my chest. I had always wanted a loud house, sticky hands, a crowd at the table, everything my own childhood had not been.

I signed anyway.

When I looked up, my mother stood at my shoulder. She plucked the pen from my fingers and smiled, and it was the first real smile she had given me in years.

"You always wanted to be useful," she said.

I said nothing.

The wedding was at noon, in the Church of the Holy Name in Rhinebeck. It was a cold, gray, stone church that smelled of beeswax and wet wool coats, and every pew was full.

Celeste's dress was white silk with a long lace train, made for a girl with a size-four waist. The seamstress worked for an hour, letting out every seam. She still could not close the back. In the end she hid the gap with a row of white ribbons and safety pins, and she whispered as she tied the last one, "Don't breathe deeply, miss."

I looked in the mirror. I looked like a pillow tied up in a bow.

Two hundred guests turned to stare as I walked the aisle on my father's arm. I heard every whisper.

That's the sister?

Is that the same dress?

Poor thing, look at the back.

He must be desperate.

At the altar, Damian stared at a spot somewhere above my head, like a man waiting for a late train.

The priest read the vows slowly. Damian answered in a flat voice. When it was my turn, my throat felt lined with sand.

"Do you, Damian Alexander Blackwood, take this woman, Celeste Vale..."

The priest glanced down at his paper. He had to. It was printed with the wrong name.

A ripple of silence moved down the pews. His ears went red.

"Avery," he corrected. "Forgive me. Avery Vale."

Someone in the back snorted a laugh. Damian's mouth twitched. It might have been pain. It might have been contempt. I wanted so badly for it to be pain.

"I do," he said.

At the word kiss, he bent and pressed his lips to my cheek, quick and cold, like stamping a document. Cameras exploded in white flashes down both aisles.

At the reception, I stood alone beside a cake I could not bring myself to eat. Across the ballroom, Damian shook hands with a tall man with silver at his temples. Senator Callum Reyes. The man whose money made this whole marriage matter. They laughed together. Damian did not look at me once.

I slipped out onto the balcony. The wind cut through the silk. I gripped the frozen iron railing and let one tear fall, only one, because I had promised myself I would allow just one.

"Congratulations, my dear."

Reginald stood at my elbow, holding two flutes of champagne. He offered me one.

"Thank you, Uncle Reginald."

"Just Reginald." His smile was gentle. "You were braver today than your sister."

"I don't know where she is."

"Of course you don't." He sipped. "I only hope you will be careful, Avery. This family is not as friendly as it looks. Some people in it do not like surprises. Especially clever ones."

The flute went cold in my fingers.

"I'm not sure what you mean."

"Of course not." He patted my shoulder like a favorite niece. "Enjoy your night."

He strolled back inside.

I was still standing there when a young waiter brushed past me. He did not look at my face. He pushed a small phone into my hand, murmured, "For you," and dissolved into the crowd.

The screen was already lit, connecting a call.

"Mara?"

Celeste. Small, breathless, terrified.

"Celeste! Where are you? What did you..."

"Listen. I didn't take that money. I swear on Grandma's grave.

Somebody used my name. Somebody close to Damian."

She was crying.

"They said I could disappear, or they would tell everyone what really happened at Ashfall Lake."

Every hair on my arms rose.

"What do you mean?"

"They know it wasn't me, Mara. They know it was you." Her voice cracked in half. "And whoever knows was there that day. They've been waiting seventeen years to finish it."

The line died.

Behind me, through the glass doors, two hundred guests lifted their glasses to the bride.

One of them wanted me dead.