2: 2

2.

The investigator worked fast, and before long I had every file on the two of them.

Just as I'd expected, their relationship was clean to the point of being unnatural. There wasn't even a single photo of them together in public.

And the cleaner it looked, the colder I felt inside.

When water is too clear, no fish can live in it. Flora and Jude weren't just childhood sweethearts. Before I came back, they'd been slated for an arranged marriage to each other.

They'd grown up together, gone to school together, and yet there wasn't one photo of them side by side. That absence was the biggest tell of all.

My phone chimed. Twenty million had just been pulled from the company account.

I called the finance office immediately.

"Who authorized you to touch the company's money?"

The man on the line floundered.

"Mr. Fisher, it was your fiancée and your mother—"

Before he could finish, Flora's voice came through from his end.

"Darren, Jude couldn't land any investors, he was practically in tears. Mom and I talked it over. Ten million goes into his new project, and the other ten million is for him to get himself outfitted properly."

"He's a project manager now, after all. What he wears and carries has to look the part, or people will laugh at him."

I actually laughed out loud.

"He cried, so my money covers the difference?"

"He needs to look expensive, so I'm supposed to foot the bill?"

"Flora, I was unconscious for three months. That twenty million isn't just cash. It's the company's lifeline!"

"Enough! It's only twenty million."

"Jude is your brother. He even gave Flora up to you. What's wrong with giving him a little something back?"

That was my mother, her voice thick with disgust.

I thought back to that day in the hospital room, when I woke up out of a sentence that should have been death, and met the shock in her eyes.

Maybe that wasn't joy. Maybe I'd wrecked whatever plan she'd already set in motion.

"That is the company's lifeline," I said again. "It cannot be torn out by the roots."

Flora acted like she hadn't heard a word.

"All right, honey, stop making a scene. The money's already in his account."

"The suit I ordered for you is in. Get yourself ready and I'll come pick you up so you can try it on."

Rage churned in my chest, and I forced it down.

The priority right now was to lock down proof that they'd moved my twenty million behind my back.

I saved the call recording and waited for Flora to come get me.

But night fell and she never showed, and her phone stayed switched off the whole time.

Just as I was starting to think something had happened to her and I was about to call the police, she came strolling back with my mother and Jude, all of them laughing together.

The first thing I saw was the suit on Jude's back. My wedding suit.

Before I could say anything, Jude spoke up, his face all nervous apology.

"I'm sorry, brother. Mom and Flora said you weren't well enough to go out, so they had me try it on for you."

"I'll take it off and give it to you right now—"

Before Jude could move, my mother stepped in front of him.

"Darren! Jude was only trying to help, and this is how you repay him? Have you no heart at all?"

I said nothing. I just looked at that suit fitting Jude like it had been tailored for him, then at my own body, gone gaunt from three months in a coma, and said dryly,

"You're sure this suit was made for me?"

"Flora, the one you really want to marry is Jude, isn't it?"

The air went dead for three seconds. Then Flora spoke.

"What are you talking about, honey. I'm carrying your baby."

"You're right that I didn't think the suit through. I'll get someone to have it altered right now—"

But Jude cut in. "In your condition, brother, even in a suit you couldn't make it to the wedding, could you?"

"Exactly." My mother chimed in.

"Why not let Jude stand in for you at the wedding? It's dignified and it saves everyone the trouble."

In that instant, I actually caught it. A flicker of hope in Flora's eyes.

I found it almost funny. I nodded, right there.

"Fine. Give him the wedding. Let him go sign the marriage certificate with you, and put the baby under his name too."

"And I'll throw the company in as a wedding gift. How's that?"

Flora finally realized something was wrong and grabbed my hand.

"Honey, don't be like this. You're the one I love. You're the one I'm marrying."

"But your health really isn't up to the wedding. It's better to let Jude go in your place. It's easier for everyone."

Easier for what? Easier for them to scheme against me and quietly swallow every last piece of my fortune?

I pulled my hand back and looked at Flora.

"The wedding's off. I'm not getting married."

3: 3

3.

Maybe I was still holding on to some foolish hope.

Either way, I couldn't bring myself to tell Flora to get rid of the baby.

But back in the bedroom, I finally really looked at the place. The décor was overdone, gaudy in every direction, and nothing about it matched my taste.

I opened the closet. It was packed full, all of it loud, flashy clothes.

I'd lost my memory, but a person's preferences don't just change overnight, and I knew for a fact I would never buy clothes like these.

Then the toothbrushes, the towels, the slippers. Everything came in matched pairs.

But Flora had told me plainly that we'd been together a year, and that I'd always treated her with respect.

She said even the baby only happened by accident, that she'd gotten pregnant when she came to find me because she was worried after someone set me up.

There was no way anything of hers should be in my home.

Unless...

Unless she was never my girlfriend at all. She was Jude's.

Then I thought of all her fussing over me lately, the warm little questions, the sweet memories she claimed belonged only to the two of us, and it turned my stomach.

I understood then that I had to get my memory back, and fast.

I got in touch with a well-known brain specialist in America and booked a flight, planning to fly out that same night for tests.

While I was at it, I called the private investigator and told him to look into what Flora kept calling the plot against me.

And into the women I'd been close with before.

But I'd barely finished packing when Flora caught me.

She stared at the suitcase and passport in my hands.

"Honey, the wedding's only a week away. Where do you think you're going?"

"Traveling," I said.

"The wedding doesn't need me there anyway. I'm just going to get out for a while."

Only then did she let out a breath, her voice going soft again as she took the suitcase out of my hands.

"Honey, I already told you. It's not that I don't want you at the wedding. It's just that your health right now isn't up to it."

"Here's what we'll do. I'll take you to get checked out. If the doctor says you're well enough to attend, I'll have a suit made for you overnight, all right?"

Before all this, I'd have thought Flora was gentle and thoughtful, that marrying a wife like her was the luckiest thing that could happen to a man.

But now.

Now, thinking about that warning from my future daughter on the phone, all I felt was cold.

"And if I don't want to get checked out?" I asked.

Flora didn't answer. Instead Madison came in with Jude and a doctor, her face full of disgust as she spoke.

"What kind of nonsense is that? Weren't you the one making a fuss about how you absolutely had to be at the wedding?"

"Flora's willing to give you this chance. You should be glad."

"But I don't want a physical," I said.

Jude shot me down on the spot. "How could that be true?"

"Weren't you just now making an appointment with the top brain specialist in America, planning to get properly checked out and recover your memory?"

"No need to go to all that trouble. Getting the tests done here at home is just the same."

As Jude said it, he signaled the men on either side to move in.

I tried to shout, but they clamped a hand over my mouth.

They dragged me out of the room. The servants saw it and only lowered their heads.

In that instant, I knew for certain. That call from the future was real.

Flora wasn't my fiancée, and the baby she carried wasn't mine.

All of it, every last piece, was a setup to strip me of my fortune legally and by the book.

I dug my fingers into the door frame, still trying to get a call out for help, when a cold syringe of fluid went into my body.

The next second my eyelids grew unbearably heavy, and I blacked out completely.

4: 4

4.

When I woke again, I was in a nursing facility I'd never seen before.

My hand went for my phone on instinct, but Jude was leaning in the doorway, dangling it at me.

"Looking for this?"

"Doctor's orders, big brother. You're not well. No phones for you."

"And it gets better. All these tantrums you've been throwing have made the bleeding in your brain spread fast. A week left, tops."

A week.

They wouldn't even wait one extra day.

They were going to bleed me dry and call it a wedding gift.

My hands clenched into fists. I fought down the urge to cross the room and drive one into Jude's face, and asked him instead.

"You do this, and you're not afraid of what people will say? One of you killing off her fiancé for money, the other one coveting his own brother's wife?"

Jude let out a scornful laugh.

"What people say? Does that measure up to your billion-dollar fortune?"

"Besides, you'll be dead. Even if the whole world takes your side, what exactly are they going to do about it?"

"And for the record, Flora was mine to begin with. We just borrowed her out to you for a couple of days. Don't tell me you actually believed the two of you were madly in love."

I caught the key word.

Borrowed.

In his own roundabout way, Jude had just admitted it. Flora was never my fiancée.

The child in her belly wasn't mine either.

I didn't rise to it. I just asked.

"Where are my wife and my child?"

Jude's face shifted. He didn't answer. He only said,

"You're tired, big brother. Time to rest."

Then he called the doctor in, and they pushed a syringe of something into me.

For the next two days I drifted in and out.

The few times I surfaced, it was to the sight of Flora and Jude being affectionate right in front of me.

Maybe because they knew my time was almost up, the careful pretense was gone.

I couldn't stop any of it. I could only lie there and watch them do as they pleased in front of me.

Seven days later, the wedding arrived, and my body had grown so weak I couldn't even find the strength to open my eyes.

Flora and Jude insisted on bringing me to the ceremony anyway.

"After all, big brother, this is your wedding," they said. "It just wouldn't feel complete without you there."

I knew what this was. They wanted to humiliate me, and they wanted the whole world to witness how the doting little brother and his wife grieved for their dying elder brother the moment I died.

Groundwork, so that later my estate and my "posthumous child" would fall into their hands without a single question.

The wedding went off without a hitch. My mother even produced a forged share-transfer document and read it aloud to everyone.

Proof of how grateful their paralyzed elder brother was to the younger brother caring for his wife and child.

Soon it was time for the couple to exchange rings.

Just as the two were about to slide them home, a sharp woman's voice cut clean through the ceremony.

"Wait! Flora is not Darren's wife! And the child in her belly is not Darren's either!"