He Gave My Name to Another Woman

Five years into my marriage to Julian Blackwood, on the first day of the new year, he vanished.

There was no signal at the castle.

I felt my way to the key card the driver had left in the front hall, woke our old chauffeur, and had him drive me across the Golden Gate Bridge to a police station in downtown San Francisco.

The last place anyone had seen Julian was the Blackwood headquarters downtown. The officer who took my statement read it over, and something in his voice changed.

“Ma’am, you’re saying your husband is Julian Blackwood? Then what’s your name?”

“Vivian Morel. Have you heard something about my husband?” I couldn’t see him. My fingers twisted nervously in the hem of my coat.

He rapped his knuckles hard on the desk. “Ma’am, I need you to cooperate. Your real name, please.”

I froze. “That is my name. I’m Vivian Morel.”

Behind me, some punk with bleached hair snorted. “Nice try, blind girl. Looking a little like her doesn’t make you her.”

“Everybody in San Francisco knows Julian Blackwood bought his wife a hundred-million-dollar superyacht to celebrate her pregnancy. Mrs. Blackwood’s been posting nine-photo carousels on Instagram every day. She’s been trending for a week.”

At that moment, the giant LED screen across the street was playing an interview with Julian.

“Last night was New Year’s Eve, Mr. Blackwood. What did you wish for?”

“For my beautiful wife to have an easy delivery. For her to be safe and happy, always.”

“Aww, thank you, honey~”

The woman’s voice was sickly sweet. Even the little lilt she put at the end of her words was a perfect copy of mine.

My scalp went cold. I felt the blood drain out of my face.

———

Chapter One

Five years ago, a car accident took my sight. Julian was wrecked.

Everyone in San Francisco said the Blackwood heir would never marry a blind woman.

Someone even found a college girl who looked eighty percent like me and slipped her into his bed.

When Julian found out, he nearly strangled her with his bare hands.

His eyes were bloodshot, his whole body shaking with the effort of holding himself back.

“Get out! Vivian is the only woman I love. Any woman who looks like her makes me sick!”

That night he drove to the hospital and held me so tightly I could barely breathe. His tears burned against my shoulder.

“Baby, let’s go to City Hall tomorrow and get married. Please. I want you to be the lady of the Blackwood family—for real, in front of everyone.”

The whole world knew Julian Blackwood was hopelessly, desperately in love with me.

So why was there another woman standing at his side now, using my name?

It felt like someone had torn a hole in my chest and the wind was howling straight through it.

I had to find Julian. I had to ask him to his face.

I stumbled out of the police station in a daze, and a loose billboard came crashing down from above.

The last thing I heard before everything went black was a voice, frantic, almost out of its mind. “Honey! Honey, what happened?”

When I opened my eyes again, a harsh white light stabbed into them.

A second later, they flew wide open.

By some miracle, I could see.

This was the castle in the hills of Marin County, just north of the Golden Gate Bridge. The home Julian had built for me.

Before I could take in this strange, familiar world, I heard Julian’s voice outside the door, talking to his oldest friend, Luke.

“Julian, how much longer are you going to let Rosalind pretend to be Vivian? It’s been five years!”

Julian let out a long, ragged breath.

“I don’t know! Back then, the old men on the board flat-out refused to let me marry a blind woman. I loved Vivian too much to give her up, so I told them her sight had been restored—and had Rosalind stand in as her at every public event.”

“But those old men are all dead now! So why are you still—”

“Rosie’s pregnant!” Julian cut him off. “And… I can’t explain it. After playing the part for so long, I think I actually can’t live without her.”

Luke sounded stunned. “Have you lost your mind? Have you forgotten who was driving the car that night? Her drunk of a brother, Dirk!”

“If it weren’t for him, Vivian would still have her sight. If she ever finds out—”

“Enough!” Julian’s voice went flat. “Rosie’s innocent. What her brother did has nothing to do with her. I put that drunk in prison. He’s never getting out.”

“Vivian doesn’t like to go out anymore, and I’ve got the whole castle jammed—no signal. She lives in the castle I built for her. She’ll never find out.”

On the other side of the door, I bit down on my lip so hard I tasted blood. Tears ran down my face.

The castle was kept warm as springtime all year round. I was cold to the bone.

I took a stack of drawings out of the nightstand. Julian had drawn every one of them himself. They were our story.

In the first, we met in a canyon in the Utah wilderness. He’d broken his leg, and I’d nursed him for three days and three nights.

In the third, he climbed Mount Rainier alone—fourteen thousand feet—to pick me a wildflower that only grew at the snow line.

In the eighth, I’d told him I loved ballet, so he chartered planes and flew in one of the finest companies in Europe just to dance for my birthday.

In the fifteenth was the castle he’d designed for me after I went blind—grand and beautiful, and safe in every corner.

In that one, he was down on one knee. Honey, from now on, I’ll be your eyes. You’re the only one in my heart.

The girl in the picture was laughing, throwing herself into his arms.

I let my mouth curve into something like a smile. Then I set the drawings alight, one by one, and threw them onto the bed.

Julian, your love is dirty now. I don’t want it anymore.

As the flames caught the bed curtains, I reached into the hidden compartment at the bottom of my jewelry box and pulled out a business card I’d kept there for five years.

No name. Just a number.

Five years ago, a man had pressed it into my palm. Call this number, and wherever you are in the world, I’ll come and bring you home.

The fire roared up. The smoke alarms began to scream.

In the chaos I slipped out the side door, found an old phone booth by the road at the foot of the hill, and dialed.

“Nick. You said that any time in the next five years, I could come back to the company. Does that still stand?”

His voice was low and rich, like a cello. “Of course it does, my dear Alice. Milan has been heartbroken without you.”

“There’s a complication with my identity. A passport and exit papers will take seven days at the very least.”

“And how exactly do you plan to leave San Francisco? From what I hear, Blackwood isn’t the type to let you go.”

Something flickered in my eyes. “I’m going to give him a present. My body.”

Julian had let someone else become Vivian Morel, hadn’t he?

Fine. Then I would vanish from his life completely.

The words were barely out of my mouth when a pair of warm hands closed around my waist.

Julian buried his face in my shoulder. His voice was shaking. “Honey, thank God you’re okay. If anything had happened to you, I wouldn’t want to live.”

“Vivian, he thought you were still inside. He kept trying to go back in for you. The chandelier came down and almost crushed him!” Luke had followed him out, white as a sheet.

Only then did I see the burns all over Julian’s arms, his torn shirt, his eyes red from the smoke.

My breath caught. A fine, needling pain spread through my chest.

Julian, you’d throw your life away for me.

So how can your heart hold two women at once?

“Mr. Blackwood.” A timid voice came from behind us.

Rosalind stood there in a white dress, delicate as anything, pulling a suitcase.

The hands on my waist went rigid. Then they let go.

Julian ruffled my hair and lied without missing a beat. “Honey, one of my business partners is here to talk shop. Wait here for me, okay?”

Then he walked quickly over to Rosalind, pulled her into his arms, and started to sign.

In front of someone who “couldn’t see,” sign language was the safest whisper there was.

They never dreamed that I could see every single word.