Three days later, I married Caleb Romano.
There were no smiling bridesmaids.
No childhood friends.
No flower girls racing down an aisle.
No mother fixing my veil.
No sister crying in the front row.
There were eighty guests, forty-three armed guards, two federal judges Victor claimed were old friends, and enough tension inside the Romano estate to choke everyone in the room.
Victor had wanted the ceremony held at St. Michael’s Cathedral.
Caleb refused.
“No crowds,” he said. “No strangers.”
I wondered whether he was protecting himself.
Or me.
My wedding dress arrived the morning of the ceremony.
It was ivory lace, hand-sewn, impossibly beautiful.
I stared at the label.
The price was more than my mother’s first year of chemotherapy.
I nearly refused to wear it.
Then I remembered Emily.
She used to drag me past bridal shop windows when we were teenagers.
“You’d look horrible in a giant princess dress,” she would say.
“Thanks.”
“You need something simple.”
“You’re planning my imaginary wedding?”
“Somebody has to. Your taste is terrible.”
Thinking about her hurt.
But for once, it also made me smile.
I put on the dress.
At five in the afternoon, the doors opened.
Caleb stood at the far end of the ballroom.
He wore a black suit.
No oxygen tube.
No cane.
He was pale, but somehow stronger than he had been four days earlier.
Removing one suspicious medication from his routine had already improved his blood pressure.
Not enough.
But enough to matter.
When I reached him, his eyes moved over the dress.
“You look expensive.”
I almost laughed.
“That’s the worst compliment I’ve ever received.”
“I’m new at this.”
“At marriage?”
“At compliments.”
The judge began.
I barely heard the first half.
My attention kept drifting to the doors.
To the guards.
To every glass.
Every plate.
Every hand that came near Caleb.
When the judge asked whether I took Caleb as my husband, I thought about fifty million dollars.
Then I thought about the pill dissolving beside him.
The threatening texts.
The anger in his eyes when everyone treated him like a dead man.
“I do,” I said.
Caleb’s turn came.
He looked at me for a long second.
“I do.”
The judge smiled.
“You may kiss the bride.”
Caleb leaned closer.
“This wasn’t in the contract.”
“Neither was insulting my dress.”
He kissed me.
It was supposed to be ceremonial.
Brief.
Meaningless.
Instead, his hand settled carefully at my waist.
His lips were warm.
And for half a second the entire room disappeared.
When he pulled away, he looked as surprised as I felt.
The applause began.
Victor did not smile.
But his eyes were wet.
The reception lasted fourteen minutes before someone tried to kill me.
I was walking toward the terrace when Caleb called my name.
“Lila.”
I turned.
A waiter behind me raised a champagne tray.
Caleb’s face changed.
“Down!”
I dropped.
The window exploded.
A bullet tore through the glass exactly where my head had been.
People screamed.
Guards rushed forward.
Caleb threw himself over me.
Another shot struck the wall.
Then chaos swallowed the room.
Victor’s men dragged guests into corridors.
Security shutters dropped over the windows.
Someone tackled the waiter.
Caleb was still covering me with his body.
“Are you hit?”
“No.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
He pushed himself up.
Then his legs buckled.
I caught him.
“Caleb.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re bleeding.”
The side of his white shirt had turned red.
For one horrifying second, I thought he had been shot.
Then I saw the cut.
Glass.
Not a bullet.
I pressed my hand against it.
“You protected me.”
He looked almost annoyed.
“You’re my wife.”
“Since fourteen minutes ago.”
“Still counts.”
We were moved into an interior security room.
Victor arrived three minutes later with blood on one cuff that I desperately hoped wasn’t his.
“The shooter escaped,” he said.
Caleb’s face hardened.
“How?”
“Boat from the north ridge.”
“That area is monitored.”
“It was.”
I understood first.
“Someone disabled the cameras.”
Victor nodded.
Again.
Inside the estate.
Inside the family.
Someone wanted Caleb dead.
Now they wanted me dead too.
The investigation uncovered something worse.
The sniper had known where I would stand.
The bullet angle proved it.
Which meant the attack wasn’t merely planned around the wedding.
Someone had known the reception schedule.
The exact layout.
My movements.
Only twelve people had access to all three.
Victor.
Caleb.
Me.
Two event coordinators.
Three senior guards.
The household manager.
Dr. Vale.
And Victor’s younger brother, Dominic Romano.
I had met Dominic that afternoon.
He was fifty-one, charming, silver-templed, and everything Victor wasn’t.
Where Victor made rooms colder, Dominic warmed them.
He hugged Caleb.
Kissed my cheek.
Called me “the miracle bride.”
He also controlled Romano Holdings whenever Victor was unavailable.
When I mentioned his name later, Caleb went quiet.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“That’s never true when someone says it like that.”
Caleb looked toward the door.
“My uncle has been more of a second father than an uncle.”
“You trust him?”
“Yes.”
He answered quickly.
Too quickly.
I said nothing.
At midnight, we finally reached the bedroom assigned to us.
One bed.
Of course.
I stared at it.
Caleb noticed.
“I can sleep somewhere else.”
“It’s your house.”
“Our house now, apparently.”
“That’s terrifying.”
“For both of us.”
I removed my veil.
My hands were shaking.
I hadn’t noticed until then.
Caleb saw.
“You could leave.”
I turned.
“What?”
“The contract is signed. I’ll make sure you get the first ten million. You don’t need to stay.”
“You’re offering me an exit after someone shot at me?”
“I’m offering it because someone shot at you.”
“What about you?”
“I was dying before you arrived.”
Anger hit me so fast I nearly threw the veil at him.
“Stop saying that.”
“What?”
“Stop speaking about yourself in past tense while you’re standing in front of me.”
“I’m being realistic.”
“No. You’re making surrender sound intelligent.”
His eyes flashed.
“You don’t know what fourteen months of this feels like.”
“No, I know what five years of watching people die feels like.”
“That isn’t the same.”
“You’re right.”
I stepped closer.
“I watched my mother ask whether she was going to die. I lied to her because I was scared. I watched my sister stop talking about college because everybody around her started treating the future like a cruel joke. I learned something from both of them.”
Caleb’s anger faded slightly.
“What?”
“Hope doesn’t mean pretending death isn’t real. It means death doesn’t get to make every decision before it arrives.”
The room went quiet.
Caleb looked at me for a long time.
Then he sat on the edge of the bed.
“I used to run seven miles every morning.”
I sat beside him.
“I hate running.”
“I boxed.”
“Also terrible.”
“I climbed Kilimanjaro when I was twenty-five.”
“Show-off.”
He smiled faintly.
“I was engaged once.”
That surprised me.
“What happened?”
“She left.”
“When you got sick?”
“Two months after.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. She was afraid.”
“People can be afraid and still be cruel.”
He looked at me.
“And you?”
“What about me?”
“You got shot at on your wedding day.”
“Technically, shot near.”
“You’re correcting the grammar of an assassination attempt?”
“I cope strangely.”
He laughed.
A quiet, tired laugh.
Then his expression softened.
“Are you afraid?”
“Yes.”
“Of me?”
“No.”
“My father?”
“A little.”
“That’s healthy.”
“Mostly I’m afraid we’re running out of time.”
His eyes held mine.
For the first time, there was no sarcasm between us.
No contract.
No money.
No Romano empire.
Just two people sitting beside each other in a room where one of them might not survive the year.
Then my phone buzzed.
Another anonymous message.
This one contained a photograph.
My stomach turned.
It was a picture of me and Caleb inside the bedroom.
Taken less than a minute earlier.
From somewhere inside the house.
Beneath it were six words.
YOU SLEPT BESIDE THE WRONG MAN.
Caleb stood so fast he nearly fell.
“Where was that taken from?”
We searched the room.
The window.
The hallway.
The adjoining dressing room.
Then I saw a faint red reflection behind an antique clock.
I pulled it away from the wall.
A tiny camera was hidden inside.
Caleb stared at it.
Only senior household staff had access to the room before the wedding.
He reached for his phone.
Then stopped.
“What?”
He looked at me.
“If we tell my father, he locks the estate down again.”
“That seems reasonable.”
“And whoever is doing this destroys every remaining piece of evidence.”
I understood.
“You want them to think we haven’t found it.”
“Yes.”
Caleb removed the camera carefully.
Then he smiled.
It wasn’t a pleasant smile.
It was the first expression I had seen that made me understand he really was Victor Romano’s son.
“We stop waiting for them to make the next move.”
“What do you suggest?”
“We lie.”
“To who?”
“Everyone.”
The following morning, we announced Caleb was getting worse.
We told the staff he had suffered another cardiac episode overnight.
We canceled all visitors.
We allowed Dr. Vale to examine him.
We told Dominic the wedding attack had frightened me enough that I was considering leaving.
And then we waited.
By sunset, somebody took the bait.
A man I had never seen before entered the estate pharmacy.
Security footage showed him using an access code belonging to only one person.
Dominic Romano.
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