Shuler Toy Thomas

The wedding planner handed me my bouquet, and that was the exact moment my fiancé announced he was marrying my best friend instead. "Vera Sloane." Daniel Cross said my name into the microphone like he was reading a grocery list. Three hundred guests turned to stare at me. "I can't do this. I'm in love with Mira." My bouquet hit the floor. Mira Quinn stepped out from behind the floral arch in a white dress. My shade of white. She had her hand pressed to her flat stomach, lashes wet with tears she'd clearly rehearsed. "I'm so sorry, Vera," she whispered, loud enough for the front rows. "We tried to fight it. But the baby—" The room gasped as one creature. Daniel pulled her against his side and looked at me with something worse than hatred. Pity. "You're a kind person. You'll understand. You always put others first." I stood there in the dress I'd spent six months altering myself, because I'd been too proud to let Daniel pay for anything. Because I didn't want him to know. To know what, exactly? That the quiet, broke art teacher he'd been "saving" from a sad little life had a secret she'd buried so deep she almost believed it gone. "Say something," Daniel pressed, almost gentle. "Don't make this harder than it has to be." I looked at the two of them. My fiancé of three years. My best friend of twelve. And then I started to laugh. It came out wrong—high, cracked, hysterical. Mira flinched. A few guests recoiled like I'd snarled at them. Daniel's jaw tightened. "She's having a breakdown," Mira murmured, burrowing into his chest. "I told you she couldn't handle it." "Vera." Daniel's voice dropped to a warning. "People are watching." People were watching. Yes. Watching the woman in the secondhand-altered gown get dumped at the altar by the handsome man and his pregnant, beautiful best friend. I wiped my eyes. My hands had stopped shaking. Something colder than calm was sliding into place inside me, locking like a vault door. "Daniel," I said softly. "Did you ever ask why I never let you meet my family?" He blinked, thrown. "Because they're dead. You told me—" "I told you a lot of things." I bent down, picked up my fallen bouquet, and set it neatly on the empty chair where his mother sat, white-faced. "You should have asked more questions." My phone buzzed in the silk clutch at my wrist. One message. From a number I hadn't answered in four years. I read it. And for the first time all day, I smiled like I meant it. The message said: Miss Sloane, the board has voted. The company is yours the moment you walk back through our doors. Your grandfather's final condition has been met. Welcome home. Daniel saw my face change. "What is that? Who's texting you?" I slipped the phone away. "You just made the most expensive mistake of your life," I told him. "And you don't even know it yet." Then I turned, gathered my ugly perfect dress in both fists, and walked down the aisle alone—out of the church, out of his life, and straight toward the inheritance I'd run away from the day I met him. Behind me, Daniel called my name twice. I didn't slow down.

My husband signed the divorce papers on our anniversary. He didn't look up. He just slid the pen across the table—to his mistress. "Sign as the witness, baby," Marcus told her, smiling. "Make it official." Sloane Vance laughed and signed her name in pink ink, dotting the "i" with a tiny heart. I sat there in my five-year-old coat, holding a grocery bag, while the two of them celebrated my erasure like it was a wedding. "Don't make a scene, Hazel," Marcus said, finally glancing at me with that look—the one that said you're lucky I ever married you. "You knew this day was coming. You brought nothing to this marriage. No money, no family, no connections. I carried you for three years." He carried me. I almost laughed. Behind him, on the wall, hung the painting I'd bought him for his first promotion. He didn't know I'd paid for it with money that could buy the entire building we lived in. He didn't know a lot of things. "Sloane's family owns half the harbor district," he went on. "Her father can get me on the board. You—" he gestured at me, at my worn-out sneakers, "—you can't even get me a dinner reservation." Sloane giggled and looped her arm through his. A diamond bracelet slid down her wrist. I recognized it. It was the one Marcus told me he "couldn't afford" when I asked him to help pay my mother's hospital bill. The one I ended up paying myself, quietly, the way I did everything. "Where will you go?" Sloane asked sweetly, tilting her head. "You don't have anyone, do you? No parents. No backup. Just… nothing." I looked at the divorce papers. At the line that said I'd walk away with the contents of one suitcase and zero claim to "his" assets. His assets. Every penny he had, he'd borrowed against my name three years ago. He just never read the fine print. I picked up the pen. "Hazel?" Marcus frowned. "Don't tell me you're going to cry." I signed my name. Then I set the pen down and stood up. "Congratulations, Marcus," I said softly. "I really hope she's worth it." I walked to the door, suitcase in hand. And as I reached for the handle, my phone buzzed. A single text from a number I hadn't seen in seven years. "Miss Calloway. Your grandfather is dead. You are the sole heir to the Calloway Group. The board is waiting for your signature. The jet is at the private airfield. — Walsh." I closed my eyes. The name "Calloway" was the one thing in this world that could turn Marcus's face white. And he'd just thrown me out before learning it was mine.

My husband pressed a gun into another woman's hand—on our first anniversary—and told her to shoot me if I ever spoke to her like that again. I stood frozen in our marble foyer, three weeks pregnant with his child he didn't know about, still holding the anniversary cake I'd baked myself. The woman was Bianca. His first love. The capo's daughter who'd vanished four years ago to marry into a rival family, then crawled back to him last month with a bruised cheek and a tragic story. "She's in danger, Aria," Dante had told me the night he moved her into the east wing. "Her husband beats her. I owe her my protection. I'm the reason she left the family in the first place." That was always his answer. He owed her. He'd hurt her. She suffered because of him. What about me? I had married Dante Moretti through a blood alliance between our families—my father's debt paid in my body and my name. No proposal. No love. Just my hand placed in his by a priest who looked terrified of him. But God help me, I had tried. One year of running his estate like a fortress. One year of memorizing the names of every soldier, every enemy, every threat. One year of sleeping beside a man who killed without flinching but had started, somewhere along the way, to hold me at night like I was something worth keeping. I thought we were building something. The way he'd taught me to load a pistol with his hands over mine. The way he left espresso on my nightstand before dawn meetings. The way he'd kissed my shoulder once and called me moglie—wife—like it meant more than ink on a contract. Then Bianca came back, and everything I thought we had turned to ash. Tonight was supposed to be ours. Dante had promised. A private dinner on the terrace, just us, away from the family, away from the war. I had cooked for six hours. New dress. The pearl earrings he gave me at our wedding. When I came downstairs, Dante was already in the foyer—standing close to Bianca, his hand on her waist, the two of them laughing at something I'd never hear. "Dante? The terrace is ready—" "Change of plans." He didn't look at me. "Bianca got a threat from her husband's men today. She's shaken. I'm taking her to the safe house personally." "But tonight was—" "It can wait." He finally glanced at me. Annoyed. "You'll survive one night, Aria. She might not." Bianca peeked from behind his shoulder, her eyes glassy with practiced tears. "I'm so sorry, Aria. I told him not to ruin your evening. I can stay—" "No," Dante said, sharp. "You're coming with me where I can protect you." Then he did it. He pressed his backup pistol into her trembling hand and folded her fingers around it. "Anyone touches you, you pull this trigger. And if she—" his eyes flicked to me, cold "—ever makes you feel unwelcome in my home again, you point it at her instead." The door closed behind them. The house went silent. I stood there in my new dress, anniversary cake melting in my hands, one palm pressed flat against my stomach. I had planned to tell him about the baby tonight. Now I wasn't sure I'd live long enough to.