Chapter Six
915 Words
The dress was red.
Not wine red. Not rose red. Stop-traffic, set-fire-to-your-excuses, everyone-look-at-me red. It clung to places I didn't know I had and pooled at my feet like a challenge.
"You look terrified," Ms. Vane said from the doorway.
"I look like I'm about to vomit."
"Same thing, different font."
She walked into the bedroom—my bedroom, the one with the locked door and the chair and the note I'd hidden under the mattress. She was carrying a box. Long. Flat. Important-looking.
"What's that?"
"Your jewelry for tonight. The family pieces. Mr. Wolfe's grandmother collected vintage diamonds." She opened the box. Emeralds. Actual emeralds, the size of my thumbnail, set in yellow gold. "You'll wear these with the ring."
"The ring is already too much."
"The ring is the appetizer." Ms. Vane set the box on the dresser and looked at me. Really looked. Like she was seeing past the red dress and the terrified eyes and the way my hands were shaking.
"You're not what I expected," she said.
"What did you expect?"
"Someone greedier."
I laughed. It came out sharp and broken. "Give me time."
She almost smiled. Almost. "The car leaves in twenty minutes. Don't be late. And don't embarrass him."
"Anything else?"
"Yes." She paused at the door. "Watch out for Liam. He's not just angry. He's desperate. Desperate men do stupid things."
She left.
And I stood there, wearing a dead woman's diamonds, trying to remember how to breathe.
---
The gala was at the Plaza.
Adrian didn't say a word during the drive. He sat across from me in the back of the black car, phone in hand, thumb scrolling through emails or messages or whatever occupied his brain when he wasn't ruining people's lives.
"You could at least pretend to be nervous," I said.
"I'm not nervous."
"Lucky you."
He looked up. His eyes traveled from my face to the neckline of the red dress to the emeralds at my throat. Slowly. Deliberately. Like he was memorizing me.
"You look the part," he said.
"That's not a compliment."
"It's not an insult either."
The car stopped. Red carpet. Flashbulbs. A line of photographers behind velvet ropes, shouting names I didn't recognize.
"Ready?" Adrian asked.
"No."
"Good. Stay close. Smile. And whatever you do—don't let go of my hand."
The door opened. Cold air rushed in. Adrian stepped out first, and the cameras exploded. Light. Noise. Voices screaming his name.
Then he turned and offered me his hand.
I took it.
---
The carpet was longer than it looked on TV.
Adrian's palm was warm against mine. His fingers laced through my fingers. He moved slowly, deliberately, stopping every few steps to let the photographers get their shot.
"Smile," he murmured.
"I am smiling."
"That's a grimace. Try again."
I thought about my mother. About her bills, paid. About the new facility, the better doctors, the hope I hadn't felt in years.
I smiled.
And something in Adrian's expression shifted. Softened. He lifted our joined hands and pressed a kiss to my knuckles—right there, on the red carpet, in front of everyone.
The cameras went insane.
"There," he said quietly. "Now they believe it."
"Was that in the contract?"
"It's in the fine print."
"There is no fine print. I read the whole thing."
He leaned closer. His lips brushed my ear. "Then you should have read it twice."
---
Inside was worse.
Chandeliers. Champagne. Hundreds of people in black and white, all of them staring at the woman in the red dress holding hands with Adrian Wolfe.
"Don't talk to anyone without me," he said.
"I'm not a child."
"You're a liability."
I pulled my hand away. Just for a second. Just to prove I could. But he caught it again, fingers wrapping around my wrist, gentle but unbreakable.
"Ivy."
"What?"
"Please."
That word again. Please. From a man who probably never said it to anyone else.
I stopped fighting.
"Fine," I said. "But you owe me."
"I already owe you everything."
He said it so quietly I almost didn't hear. And before I could ask what he meant, a voice cut through the crowd behind us.
"Well, well. The happy couple."
Liam.
---
He was wearing white. Of course he was. White suit, white shirt, white smile. He looked like a ghost or a groom or both.
"Liam," Adrian said, voice flat. "I didn't expect to see you here."
"You revoked my invitation. But security remembered my face." Liam's eyes slid to me. To the ring. To the emeralds. "You look lovely, Ivy. Death becomes you."
"Excuse me?"
"Those jewels. They belonged to my grandmother. She died wearing them."
The room felt colder. I pulled the wrap tighter around my shoulders.
"Liam," Adrian warned.
"I'm just being friendly." Liam stepped closer. Too close. His cologne was different tonight—sharper, almost metallic. "I wanted to wish you both luck. Six weeks is a long time. Anything can happen."
"Is that a threat?" I asked.
Liam smiled. "It's a promise."
He walked away. The crowd swallowed him. White suit, white smile, gone.
Adrian's hand tightened on mine.
"We're leaving," he said.
"But we just got here."
"Now, Ivy."
He pulled me toward the exit. Fast. Too fast. I stumbled in the red dress, caught myself on his arm, and felt something cold press against my side.
Not his hand.
Something else.
I looked down.
A note. Cream-colored paper. Looping letters.
"Tick tock."
- Writer
