MARRIED TO THE DEVIL CEO

CHAPTER FIVE: I WON’T PRETEND

I am wearing my sister’s wedding dress.

Someone took it in at the waist an hour ago. Fast, ugly stitches, the kind that will rip if I breathe wrong. Nobody had time to do it properly. Nobody had time for anything today except getting me down this aisle before a clock finished running out on two families that built their whole lives around a day that was never supposed to belong to me.

I keep waiting to wake up.

That’s the thought that won’t leave me alone. Somewhere under the panic and the noise and my mother’s cold hands is this small, stupid hope that I’ll open my eyes and none of this will have happened. Amelia will be next to me, complaining about her shoes. I’ll still be the sister standing in the background with a tissue, not the one in the dress.

I don’t wake up.

The garden looks exactly like it did this morning. White roses. Tiny lights glowing gold in the trees now that the sun is gone. A violin playing somewhere close, soft and steady, like it has no idea it’s playing for the wrong bride.

Three hundred faces turn toward me.

I search the crowd out of habit. Looking for the one face that matches mine. She isn’t there. Of course she isn’t there. And still some old, stubborn part of me keeps scanning every row like she might be hiding behind someone’s shoulder, ready to jump out and end this joke.

She isn’t there.

My feet keep moving even though I never told them to.

I think about the last real conversation we had, three nights ago, her voice on the phone soft in a way I didn’t understand until now. Promise me you won’t panic. I promised. I didn’t know I was promising to marry her fiancé in a dress that still smells like her perfume.

I think about how many times people have mixed us up. How a stranger could stand where Damien is standing right now and never know the difference. How maybe, in some terrible way, that’s exactly what tonight is asking of me. Be her. Just for a few hours. Just long enough to save everyone but myself.

I hate that I said yes.

I hate more that some part of me, small and treacherous, is glad I’m the one standing here and not her.

Damien waits at the end of the aisle in the same black tuxedo he wore hours ago, when he first found me holding his ring in my shaking hand. He doesn’t smile. He doesn’t do anything with his face at all. He just watches me the way he watches everything, like he already knows how tonight ends and is only waiting for the rest of us to catch up.

I reach him.

Up close, he’s taller than I let myself notice earlier. His jaw is set in a way that makes me wonder if he’s as calm as he looks, or if calm is just the mask he’s better at wearing than I am.

The officiant starts talking. Love. Commitment. The joining of two families. Words written for two other people, and I stand here wearing one of their names.

I stop listening.

I’m thinking about my sister’s empty room. The ring on the dressing table. The blank paper. I’m thinking, if anything strange happens tomorrow, promise me you won’t panic, and wondering if she knew. If somehow she knew this exact moment was coming and left anyway, left me to stand in her place without warning me first.

Damien leans in, voice pitched low enough that it’s only for me.

“I won’t pretend this is real.”

The words land somewhere under my ribs. Not cruel. Just true, the way a diagnosis is true. I look up at him and realize, with something close to relief, that he isn’t going to ask me to smile through this like everyone else has all day. He isn’t going to pretend either.

“Good,” I say. “I wasn’t asking you to.”

His eyes hold mine a second too long. Something passes behind them, quick and unreadable, gone before I can name it.

“Do you take this woman?”

“I do.” Flat. Immediate. Exactly what I expected from a man who has probably never hesitated at anything in his life.

The officiant turns to me.

“Do you take this man—”

My mouth goes dry.

I think about my mother’s face when she said her name is gone. I think about my father, pale as paper, signing away pieces of himself to lawyers with cold folders. I think about the three hundred people behind me who don’t know they’re watching a woman marry a stranger to buy her family time.

I think, this isn’t my wedding. This isn’t even my dress.

I think, say it anyway, because if you don’t, everyone loses everything, and you’ll spend the rest of your life knowing you were the reason.

Damien doesn’t reach for my hand. Doesn’t offer me anything soft to hold onto. He just waits, patient, unreadable, like my answer is simply the next fact in a day already full of them.

“I do.”

My voice doesn’t shake. I don’t know whether that means I’m strong or just numb.

“You may kiss the bride.”

He steps closer, and for a second, neither of us moves.

I’m aware of everything at once. The weight of my sister’s dress against my ribs. The three hundred people holding their breath. The way the violin has gone quiet, like even the music understands this is the part no one rehearsed.

I brace for quick. Efficient. The way he’s handled everything today, like grief and panic are simply problems to be managed on a schedule.

It isn’t quick.

His hand rises slowly, fingers just brushing my jaw, tilting my face up with a patience that doesn’t match anything else about today. This close, his eyes aren’t as cold as I thought they were this morning. There’s something moving behind them, something he’s spent all day keeping locked down so tightly I almost believed it wasn’t there at all.

“Ava,” he says.

Just my name. Not Amelia’s. Not the bride’s. Mine. Like he’s making sure, one last time, that he knows exactly who he’s about to marry.

Then he kisses me.

It isn’t the careful, camera-ready kiss I braced for. His hand slides from my jaw into my hair, and my fingers curl into the front of his jacket before I’ve decided to move them, like my body understands something my mind is still three steps behind. The crowd noise falls away completely.

For one impossible, terrible second, there is no missing sister, no locked door, no midnight deadline eating away at both our families. There is only his hand, and the way he holds the kiss a beat longer than either of us meant to, like he’s just found something he wasn’t looking for and doesn’t know what to do with it yet.

When he finally pulls back, neither of us moves.

His eyes search mine, and for the first time all day, I cannot read his face at all. Whatever that was, it wasn’t on the list he laid out for me thirty seconds ago.

I don’t know what scares me more. That he felt it too. Or that some small, reckless part of me wanted him to.

“Congratulations,” he says, voice lower now, rougher around the edges. “You just saved two companies.”

“Is that supposed to be a joke.”

“No.” His jaw tightens. “It’s a warning. That can’t happen again.”

“Which part,” I ask. “The kiss, or the part where you almost sounded human doing it.”

Something flickers at the corner of his mouth. Not quite a smile. Close enough that I notice, and closer still that I catch myself wanting to see it again.

“Careful,” he murmurs. “People are watching.”

“People are always watching you. I’m not used to it yet.”

“You’ll learn.” His hand settles at the small of my back as applause rises around us, guests standing, cameras flashing white and endless. His hand stays there a beat longer than formality requires, and when I glance up, he’s already looking down at me, like for one unguarded second, he forgot we were only supposed to be pretending.

We start down the aisle together. His hand shifts slightly against my back with every step, not letting go, not quite holding on, caught somewhere between the two, exactly like everything else tonight.

I should feel relieved. The vows are done. The clause is satisfied. My family keeps their company for one more day.

I don’t feel relieved.

I feel like I just signed my name to something I haven’t finished reading.

Near the edge of the garden, where the string lights give out and the dark starts, I catch a shape standing still among the trees. Not a guest. Guests move, laugh, lift champagne glasses toward the newlyweds. This person doesn’t move at all. They simply watch, the way you watch something you’ve been waiting a long time to see happen.

I blink, and there’s nothing there. Just shadows and the edge of the tree line.

I tell myself it was nothing.

But beside me, Damien has gone still in a way I recognize now, the same stillness from this morning, when he first looked at the empty bridal suite and didn’t ask where my sister was, because some part of him had been braced for this all along.

“Damien.” I keep my voice low, matching his. “Do you know something I don’t?”

He doesn’t answer right away. When he finally looks at me, whatever calm he’s worn all day has thinned just enough for me to see something underneath it.

Fear.