Chapter 1 — The Document Under the Certificate

The moment my marriage was supposed to begin, Konstantin’s best man slid a second document beneath the marriage certificate, and I understood that I had never been marrying a man.

I had been signing a transaction.

Two hundred guests filled the cathedral.

The priest waited with his pen.

And there, tucked under the paper that was meant to join two lives, was a share-transfer agreement — my stake in Larkhaven Hotels, signed over to Konstantin Rasmussen “for simplified marital management,” to be executed before the license was ever filed.

“Sign it,” Konstantin murmured, still smiling for the room, his voice pitched under the organ music so only I could hear the change in it.

“Don’t make a scene.

Not here.”

From the front pew, his mother, Astrid, watched me with the particular stillness of a woman waiting to see an animal do what it’s told.

Chapter 2 — Quiet Saoirse

That was the woman they thought they had cornered: quiet Saoirse, the foster girl in the inexpensive dress, who avoided cameras and worked, they believed, as an assistant somewhere in a hotel company.

For a year Konstantin had called my caution insecurity, my independence selfishness, my silence proof that I needed him.

Every insult had come wrapped as concern. You’re too trusting to manage your own affairs.