Chapter 1 — Broken Wedding, Better Life (1)

The morning of my wedding, I woke up at six, looked at the ceiling of the hotel suite, and thought: I am about to make the biggest mistake of my life.

Which was a strange thing to think on the morning of a wedding. But I'd been thinking strange things for three months — since the moment Elliot Ross, heir to the Ross Hotel empire, had dropped to one knee in front of the Trevi Fountain with a ring the size of a small country and a smile that had been practiced in front of a mirror since middle school.

Everyone said I was the luckiest woman in Aurora City. The daughter of the bankrupt Kane family, marrying into the Ross dynasty? It was a fairy tale. It was a rescue. It was — as my mother had explained, very patiently, three dozen times — "the best possible outcome, Scarlett."

The best possible outcome had a price tag. I'd signed it in the prenup.

The suite was gold and white, all marble and flowers, the kind of room that costs more per night than most people make in a month. My bridesmaids were asleep in the other room — Lena Bell foremost among them, my best friend since college, curled up like a cat who had already gotten the cream.

I should have noticed the signs. I should have noticed everything.

But that's the thing about being twenty-four and drowning: you spend so much energy treading water that you don't notice the sharks circling until they bite.

I got up. I showered. I let the stylists do their work — the hair, the makeup, the dress. The dress was a Ross family heirloom, a century of silk and lace worth more than my parents' house. It fit like it had been made for me, because it had been made for Elliot's mother, who had been almost my size, and whose ghost I could feel in the room, judging my posture.

"Smile, Scarlett," Lena said, watching the stylists pin my veil. "Today's the day you stop being a Kane and start being a Ross."

"Today's the day I get married," I said. "I'm not changing my name."

Lena's smile flickered — a tiny, almost invisible hesitation, the kind you only notice in retrospect, when you're replaying every conversation you've ever had with someone, looking for the cracks.

"You'll change your mind," she said lightly. "Everyone does."

The car came at ten. The cathedral was packed — a thousand guests, three hundred cameras, a livestream that would reach twenty million people. My father walked me down the aisle, his hand clammy on mine, his smile broadcast-ready.

"Remember, Scarlett," he murmured, "everyone's watching."

"I remember," I said. "I've been reminded my whole life."

The organ swelled. The doors opened. And I walked into the cathedral, into the light, into the biggest audience of my life — and I saw Elliot at the altar, beaming, and I saw the future stretching ahead of me like a sentence I'd already signed.

I should have turned around then. I should have listened to the tiny voice that had been screaming for three months.

But I didn't. I kept walking. Because that's what you do. That's what everyone told me to do. That's what twenty-four years of training had made me.

The ceremony began. The priest droned. Elliot's vows were beautiful — memorized, polished, delivered with the exact right amount of sincerity. I stood there, holding flowers, holding my breath, holding everything together.

And then the interruption came.

It wasn't dramatic at first. A phone, ringing in the front row. Elliot's phone — I recognized the ringtone, a custom chime he'd set for a certain contact. He'd mentioned it once, laughing: "My private line. Only very important people get that ringtone."

The phone rang. Elliot's face went pale. He reached for it — actually reached for it, at the altar, in front of a thousand people, on the livestream — and I watched him do it, and something in me went very, very quiet.

He answered the call.

"Not now," he hissed into the phone. And then, louder, to the priest: "Continue."

But I had seen his face. I had seen the panic. And I had seen, in the front row, my best friend Lena Bell, suddenly very interested in her purse, her cheeks flushed the color of a woman who had just been caught.

The priest cleared his throat. "If anyone present knows any reason why these two should not be joined in holy matrimony, let them speak now or forever hold their peace."

And the cathedral held its breath.

And a voice from the back — clear, amplified, the voice of a woman who had decided to stop being furniture — said:

"I do."

The cathedral turned. Twenty million people leaned in. And I turned too, and I saw the woman in the doorway — my oldest ally, my most dangerous friend, the person who had been in the room for every secret I'd ever told:

Zoe Pierce, my college roommate, my lawyer-in-training, holding up her phone like a banner.

"I have a reason," Zoe said, walking down the aisle with the confidence of a woman about to detonate a bomb. "Two reasons, actually. They're in this video. And they're both in the front row."

She reached me, and she turned the phone around, and I saw it — grainy, unmistakable, timestamped two a.m. last Tuesday: Elliot Ross and Lena Bell, in a hotel room, in a state of undress, in a position that left nothing to the imagination.

The cathedral went silent. The livestream went nuclear.

"Scarlett," Elliot began, "that's not what it looks like—"

"Actually," Zoe said pleasantly, "it's exactly what it looks like. I checked. Twice. It's what it looks like from every angle."