married to my killer

chapter 2

NAOMI POV

The wedding happened that afternoon, in the garden behind the Voss estate, exactly the way I remembered it happening the first time.

I walked down the aisle toward Julian Voss. He was the man I was marrying. He was also the man who, in the year I'd just lived through and somehow came back from, would let his family have me killed without ever raising a hand to stop it himself.

He was standing at the end of the aisle in a dark blue suit, not black. He'd told me once, laughing, that black made him look like he was going to his own funeral instead of his wedding.

Mia squeezed my hand and let go of me at the doors. After that there was nothing left to do but walk toward him.

Then I saw his face, and something in me went soft, which scared me more than anything else that morning had.

I remembered his face from the first wedding, clearly, in a way I didn't remember most of the other details, not the guest list, not the flowers, not most of the vows. I remembered the exact way he looked at me, like I was the only real thing that had ever happened to him. It wasn't an act. I knew what Julian's fake smile looked like, because I'd watched him use it for a year on reporters and his father's business partners and rooms full of people who wanted something from him. This wasn't that. This was real.

I hated that it was real. It would have been easier if it wasn't.

At the altar, I took his hands because the ceremony required it. His thumb ran once over my knuckles, an old habit I'd forgotten until my skin remembered it before my mind did.

He leaned in close enough that only I could hear him. "You look like you're about to give a business presentation, not get married."

It was the exact same joke he'd made the first time, word for word. I almost laughed out loud in the middle of our own vows.

I loved him. I had spent a year telling myself I didn't, because it was easier to think of him as the man who let me die than to admit the truth: for two years, Julian had made me feel safe and happy in a way nobody else ever had. He used to bring me coffee without me asking, because he'd learned exactly how I took it. He used to ask about my father's old company, the real story, not the short version everyone else got, and actually listened when I told him.

Now I was marrying him again, knowing exactly what he would fail to do for me. I was angry that I could know that and still love him at the same time. It didn't feel like it should be possible. It was.

The ceremony went by quickly, the way ceremonies do. I said my vows. He said this. In the third row, I saw Julian's father, Edmund Voss, watching his son get married. His face wasn't proud. It was relieved, like something he'd been worried about had just been settled in his favor.

I noticed it and filed it away. I didn't know yet what it meant.

At the reception, after the toasts and before the dancing started, Edmund found me standing near the edge of the room. He handed me a glass of champagne without asking if I wanted one.

"You make him better," he said, watching Julian laugh with his groomsmen across the room. "I don't say that lightly."

"That's kind of you to say."

"It's not kindness. I don't really do kindness for its own sake. Ask anyone." He said it like a joke, but something underneath it wasn't joking. "It's just true."

"He makes it easy," I said.

"Does he?" It wasn't really a question.

"Most days."

"Good." He turned his glass slowly, watching the champagne instead of me. "Nothing about this family is easy, you know. It looks easy from the outside. It isn't."

"I'm starting to figure that out."

"Are you?" He looked at me directly then. Neither of us said anything for a second. "I hope you know what you're taking on."

"I think I do," I said.

"Good," he said again, quieter this time, and the moment passed, smooth as it had opened.

Twenty minutes later, Julian found me and pulled me onto the dance floor before I could say no. We were both laughing about something one of his groomsmen had said, not because it was funny, but because we were both a little drunk on champagne and relieved that the ceremony was over.

"You disappeared for a second there," he said, spinning me out and back in. "Everything okay?"

"I'm fine. Your dad's intense, up close."

"He cornered you already? What'd he say?"

"That he's not usually kind, and it's not a compliment when he is."

Julian laughed, a real laugh. "That sounds like him. He means it as a compliment, believe it or not. That's just how it comes out of him."

"I got that, yeah."

"He likes you. I know that's not obvious with him. But he does."

"I believe you."

"You okay, though? You've got a face."

"I don't have a face."

"You've got a face. I've known your regular face for two years. This isn't it."

I looked up at him. This was the face I had missed for an entire year I'd spent hating him.

"Everything's perfect," I said.

He pulled me closer as we turned, close enough that I felt him laugh before I heard it. For one second I forgot I was supposed to be investigating him, and I was just a woman dancing with a man who still smelled like the only place that had ever felt like home. My heart did something I didn't authorize. Not tonight, I told myself. Not with everything I know.

He smiled at me like he believed me completely, because he did. That was the real problem. Julian had never had a reason not to trust the people he loved, and it had never once occurred to him that the people he loved might have very good reasons not to tell him everything.

At some point in the next eleven months, I was going to have to decide whether that was a flaw I could forgive, or the same flaw that had gotten me killed.

That night, I let him spin me around a dance floor I remembered perfectly. I let myself feel exactly how much trouble I was already in.

I didn't decide anything. Not yet.