Chapter 1 ⋆˚࿔

Three months before my wedding, while I was examining a seventeenth-century mourning brooch beneath a magnifying lamp, my phone vibrated beside my elbow.

I ignored it at first.

The brooch had arrived from a private collection in Boston with a provenance record that contained a seventeen-year gap, and seventeen-year gaps bothered me. Objects did not simply vanish from history. Someone owned them. Someone moved them. Someone decided whether the next person should know where they had been.

My phone vibrated again.

With a sigh, I set my pencil down and reached for it.

The message came from a number I didn’t recognize.

DON’T MARRY MY HUSBAND.

I stared at the words for a moment.

Then I laughed.

It wasn’t much of a laugh—more a breath through my nose before I turned the phone facedown and went back to the brooch.

Being engaged to Adrian Vale had taught me that strangers possessed an astonishing amount of confidence when discussing lives that did not belong to them.

Before Adrian, I had been Claire Rowan, museum acquisitions specialist, chronic misplacer of umbrellas, and a person whose photograph had never appeared anywhere more exciting than an employee newsletter.

Then one blurry picture of Adrian kissing me outside a restaurant had changed everything.

Within forty-eight hours, strangers online had identified my job, my university, the approximate cost of the dress I’d been wearing, and the fact that my shoes had been purchased on sale.

Our engagement six months later had been worse.

Apparently marrying one of the wealthiest men in the country transformed every choice I made into public property.

The dress.

The venue.

Whether I was “appropriate” for the Vale family.

Whether Adrian was marrying too soon after becoming a widower.

That last one still appeared occasionally, even though Celeste Vale had been dead for four years.

So an anonymous woman claiming Adrian belonged to her was hardly the strangest thing I had encountered.

My phone buzzed a third time.

I left it facedown.

“Claire?”

I looked up.

Maya stood in the doorway, balancing two coffees and wearing the expression of someone who had already decided one belonged to me.

“You planning to eat today?”

“I had breakfast.”

“You had coffee.”

“That counts until noon.”

“It’s twelve-thirty.”

I glanced at the clock and frowned.

She handed me the cup anyway. “Your billionaire is corrupting you. Rich people are supposed to have assistants who remind them to eat.”

“Adrian reminds me constantly.”

“Then why aren’t you listening?”

“Because that would encourage him.”

Maya laughed and disappeared back into the corridor.

I smiled as I took a sip.

That was the part nobody writing about Adrian ever understood.

They saw the photographs: Adrian Vale stepping from black cars in dark suits, Adrian Vale leaving shareholder meetings, Adrian Vale standing beside politicians and CEOs with the cool, unreadable expression that had earned him a dozen unoriginal nicknames in the financial press.

They did not know the man who texted me at eleven in the morning to ask whether I had remembered my lunch.

Or the one who kept a ridiculous assortment of herbal tea in his kitchen because I’d once mentioned that I liked one particular brand.

Or the man who, when his mother had suggested adding another hundred and twenty people to our wedding guest list, had leaned toward me and murmured, Say the word and we’ll get married at city hall.

My phone rang.

Adrian.

I smiled before answering. “Shouldn’t you be terrifying a boardroom somewhere?”

“I finished early.”

“That sounds unlikely.”

“It means they surrendered efficiently.”

His voice was low and dry, and I could picture the small shift at the corner of his mouth that passed for a grin when he was working.

“Remind me never to negotiate with you.”

“You do it constantly.”

“And I win.”

A pause.

“You believe that?”

“I’m marrying you, aren’t I?”

“That sounds suspiciously like evidence that I won.”

I laughed and leaned back in my chair.

There it was again—that ridiculous sense of ease.

Eighteen months with Adrian, and somehow he could still make the rest of the room disappear simply by calling me.

“I have a question,” he said.

“That sounds dangerous.”

“The florist wants to know whether you actually care about the place settings at the rehearsal dinner.”

I closed my eyes. “There are separate rehearsal-dinner place settings?”

“Apparently.”

“Adrian.”

“I know.”

“I cannot possibly have an opinion about this.”

“Then don’t.”

“Your mother will have an opinion.”

“My mother has enough opinions for several governments. You are not required to share them.”

I smiled.

He softened slightly. “Claire, if there’s anything about this wedding you hate, cancel it.”

“I don’t hate it.”

“You hate approximately sixty percent of it.”

“Only fifty.”

“Very reassuring.”

I looked toward the invitation proof sitting beneath a stack of acquisition reports. Heavy cream paper. Hand lettering. A wedding large enough to require security meetings.

“Maybe I hate forty-five percent.”

“Progress.”

“And I like the groom.”

“That seems useful.”

My smile widened.

“Eat lunch,” he said.

“You called about place settings.”

“I called because I knew you wouldn’t have eaten.”

“Controlling.”

“Correct.”

“Goodbye, Adrian.”

“I love you too.”

The call ended.

For several seconds, I sat there smiling at the dark screen.

Then the anonymous message returned to me.

DON’T MARRY MY HUSBAND.

It seemed even more ridiculous now.

I opened the text thread.

There was nothing else. No photograph. No link. No explanation.

I tapped the number, but there was no contact information attached to it and no useful identifier.

Probably someone using an app.

Probably someone bored.

Possibly someone hoping I would panic publicly and give them a story to sell.

Adrian would not find it amusing.

If I showed him, Julian Cross would probably have the number traced before dinner, my office security would mysteriously double, and someone would begin asking whether I needed an escort between the conservation room and the bathroom.

No.

One strange text did not deserve the Adrian Vale treatment.

I typed:

Who is this?

For a moment, nothing happened.

I almost felt foolish for replying.

Then three dots appeared at the bottom of the screen.

The answer came immediately.

You already know my name.

The humor drained out of the room.

I sat a little straighter.

There were dozens of reasonable explanations. Someone who knew me. Someone Adrian had dated. Someone who resented the engagement. Someone who had discovered enough information online to make a cheap attempt at frightening me.

I started typing again.

Before I finished, another message appeared.

Two words.

CELESTE VALE.