My father didn't even look at the photos.

He looked at me, standing in the doorway of his study with my split lip and my swollen cheek. Then he held out his hand.

"Give me the phone, Sylvia."

"Dad, you need to see this. Julian and Celeste were—"

"I said give it to me."

I handed it over. I was stupid enough to think he wanted a closer look.

He glanced at the screen for maybe two seconds. His jaw went tight. Then he raised the phone and smashed it against the edge of his marble desk.

Once. Twice. A third time, until the screen spiderwebbed and went black.

I stood there with my mouth open.

"What are you doing?"

"Protecting this family." He dropped the dead phone into his wastebasket like it was a used tissue. "Who else has seen these?"

"Nobody. Dad, he hit me. Look at my face!"

"I see your face."

That was all he said. *I see your face.*

My mother came in from the hallway in her silk robe, her reading glasses still pushed up in her hair. She took one look at me and pressed a hand to her chest.

"Sylvia, what happened?"

For one second, I felt like a little girl again. My lip started to wobble.

"Mom, I walked in on Julian. With Celeste. In the bridal suite."

Her hand stayed on her chest. Her face went white.

"Oh, God," she whispered. "Did anyone see? The staff? Was anyone in the hallway?"

I blinked at her. "What?"

"If this gets out, Celeste is finished. No decent family will ever take her. Richard, did anyone else—"

"I handled it," my father said.

"Mom." My voice cracked in half. "I'm the one who got slapped."

She finally looked at my cheek. She winced, the way you wince at a stain on a nice tablecloth.

"We'll get you some ice, sweetheart. And concealer. Tomorrow the lighting will be soft anyway."

I laughed. I couldn't help it. It just came bubbling up out of me, wild and wrong, and both of them stared at me like I was the one who'd done something shameful.

Headlights swept across the study window.

A car door slammed. Then another.

Julian walked in first, fully dressed now, hair combed, not a wrinkle on him. Celeste trailed behind him with her face buried in her hands. She was sobbing so hard her shoulders shook.

My ring was gone from her finger. I noticed that right away.

"Mr. Marlowe. Mrs. Marlowe." Julian nodded politely, like he'd come for dinner. "I thought it was best to bring her home myself."

"Mommy," Celeste wailed, and threw herself into our mother's arms.

Mom held her tight. Stroked her hair. Rocked her.

She hadn't touched me once.

"Shh, baby. It's alright. Mommy's here."

"It's not alright." Celeste lifted her blotchy face. Her mascara ran in perfect black lines. "I didn't want anyone to find out like this. I was going to tell you."

"Tell us what, darling?"

Celeste gulped. Her eyes slid to me, then away.

"I'm pregnant."

The room went dead silent.

The clock on the bookshelf ticked. Somewhere downstairs, a dishwasher hummed. I stared at my sister's flat stomach under her little pink dress and felt the floor tilt under my feet.

"How far along?" my father asked.

Not *how could you*. Not *with who*. Just *how far along*, like he was asking about a quarterly report.

"Seven weeks," Julian answered for her.

Seven weeks. That was the weekend he told me he was in Chicago.

My father rubbed his forehead. He paced to the window and back. Then he turned around, and I watched his face settle into the expression he wore at board meetings right before he fired someone.

"Here's what happens," he said. "The engagement goes forward tomorrow. Nothing changes."

"Dad—"

"The wedding moves up. Two months, not ten. Celeste goes to the house in Lake Como until the baby comes. When it's born, it's yours, Sylvia. Yours and Julian's. Your name on the birth certificate."

I couldn't feel my hands.

"You want me to raise their baby."

"I want you to raise your *nephew*. Your own blood. And keep this family and the Reyes family together, the way we planned."

"That's brilliant, Richard," my mother breathed. "No one would ever know."

Julian said nothing. He didn't have to. The corner of his mouth lifted, just slightly.

Celeste sniffled into Mom's shoulder. Then she peeked at me, and I swear on everything I have, her wet eyes were smiling.

"No," I said.

My father's eyebrows rose. "Excuse me?"

"No. I'm not marrying him. I'm not pretending her baby is mine. I'm not walking into that ballroom tomorrow."

"Sylvia, be reasonable," Mom said. "Think about your sister."

"I am thinking about my sister. I'm thinking she should've kept her legs closed around my fiancé."

Celeste gasped and burst into fresh tears. Mom clutched her tighter and glared at me like I'd stabbed her.

My father crossed the room in three strides.

"Upstairs," he said. "Now."

"I'm not a child."

"Then stop acting like one." He seized my arm above the elbow and pulled. I dug my heels into the rug, and he just dragged me, all the way up the staircase, past the family portraits, past the photo of me at my high school graduation.

He shoved me into my old bedroom. I stumbled into the edge of the bed.

"You'll thank me one day," he said.

The door slammed. A key turned.

I threw myself against the wood and pounded until my fists went numb.

"Dad! Open the door! Dad!"

Footsteps faded down the hall. Nobody came back.

I sat on the floor with my back against the door for a long time. I cried until my swollen cheek throbbed in time with my heart. Then I just sat there, empty.

Sometime after midnight, I heard voices outside.

I pressed my ear to the crack.

"—she won't cooperate, Richard. You saw her face."

"She'll cooperate." My father's voice, low and tired. "Dr. Albright is sending something over in the morning. A mild sedative."

"Is that safe?"

"It'll keep her calm. Pliable. She'll smile, say yes, and sign whatever's put in front of her. By the time it wears off, it's done."

A pause.

"Put it in her tea," he said. "She always takes tea before big events."

"She'll hate us."

"She'll get over it. She'll walk up on that stage like a good girl. That's all that matters."

Their footsteps moved away. A door closed somewhere down the hall.

I stayed on my knees for a moment. My whole body was shaking, but not from crying anymore.

I wiped my face with the back of my hand. Hard. Until the tears were gone.

Then I got up and went to my closet.

Behind the shoeboxes on the top shelf sat my old laptop, the one from college. Nobody in this house remembered it existed. I pulled it down, blew off the dust, and prayed the battery still held a charge.

The screen flickered on. Thirty-one percent.

I opened my old email, my old notes, scrolling with clumsy fingers until I found it. A contact I had saved two years ago and never once touched.

Just a first name. A phone number. Nothing else.

*Viktor.*

I remembered the night I saved it. Julian, drunk on scotch after his father's birthday party, sprawled across our couch with his tie undone. He'd grabbed my wrist and pulled me close, his breath hot and sour.

"Promise me something, Sylvie."

"What?"

"If you ever see my uncle Viktor at a family thing, you walk the other way." His eyes had been glassy, but his grip was dead serious. "Don't talk to him. Don't look at him. And never, ever owe him anything."

"Why? What does he do?"

Julian had laughed, but there was nothing funny in it.

"He's the reason my father sleeps with a gun under his pillow."

I stared at the number glowing on the screen.

Then I opened the calling app, and my cursor hovered over the green button.

The call rang six times. Then a click, and silence.

No voicemail. No greeting. Just dead air.

I hung up before I lost my nerve, and I remembered the other thing Julian had said that night, slurring into his scotch. *Uncle Viktor runs the whole east side out of a club called The Onyx. Dad won't even drive past it.*

That was enough.

My bedroom window opened onto the roof of the sunroom. I had snuck out that way exactly once, at sixteen, to see a boy who turned out to be terrible at kissing. Back then, I had shoes.

Tonight, I didn't stop to look for any. The ones in my closet were heels, and heels would kill me on wet shingles.

I slid down the drainpipe, scraped my palm raw, and dropped into my mother's rosebushes. Thorns tore at my ankles. I didn't feel them until I was already at the gate.

---

The Onyx had no sign. Just a black door, and a man the size of a refrigerator standing in front of it.

He stared down at my bare, bloody feet. Then at my face.

"Lost, sweetheart?"

"I'm here to see Viktor Reyes."

"Sure you are." He didn't move. "Go home."

"Tell him Julian's fiancée is outside."

That got me something. His eyebrows twitched. He touched his earpiece and turned his back, muttering. I heard my name. I heard *barefoot*. I heard someone on the other end laugh.

Then the door opened.

---

The room was dark wood and low gold light, thick with cigar smoke. Maybe fifteen men sat around tables and in leather booths. Every single one of them stopped talking when I walked in.

Cards froze mid-shuffle. A glass halted halfway to someone's mouth.

And at the back, in the center booth, sat a man who didn't stop anything at all.

He was turning a lighter over in his fingers. Older than Julian, maybe forty, with the same sharp jaw but none of the polish. A scar cut through his left eyebrow. His shirt sleeves were rolled to the elbow, and his eyes, when they finally lifted to me, were gray and very, very still.

"Miss Marlowe," he said. "You're dripping on my floor."

I looked down. Rainwater. Blood. A little of both.

"I'll buy you a new one."

A man near the bar snorted. Viktor didn't even glance at him, and the snort died instantly.

I walked straight to his booth. Nobody stopped me. I think they were too curious.

I sat down beside him. Close enough that my wet shoulder brushed his arm.

Somebody behind me swore under his breath.

"Bold," Viktor said.

"Desperate," I corrected. "There's a difference."

"Not from where I'm sitting."

I folded my scraped hands in my lap so he wouldn't see them shaking.

"Your nephew slept with my sister," I said. "She's seven weeks pregnant. My parents want me to marry him anyway and raise the baby like it's mine."

The lighter stopped turning.

"So here's my offer. I want Julian to call me *Aunt Sylvia* for the rest of his miserable life." I made myself hold his gaze. "Do you have the nerve to marry me?"

The silence in that room had weight. I could hear the ice settling in someone's glass.

Viktor didn't answer.

He didn't laugh, either, which I had braced for. He didn't call me crazy or tell his men to throw me out.

He just looked at me. Not at my eyes. At my cheek.

Slowly, he reached over and tipped my chin toward the lamp with two fingers. His touch was light. Nothing like Julian's thumb grinding into the bruise.

"Who did this?"

"Does it matter?"

"I asked you a question."

His voice hadn't risen at all. Somehow, that made it worse.

"I came here with a proposal, Mr. Reyes. Not a complaint."

"And I'll get to your proposal." His fingers stayed under my chin. "Who hit you?"

My throat closed up. I had told my father. I had told my mother. Neither of them had asked me that. Not once.

"Julian," I whispered.

Something moved behind his eyes. Fast and cold, like a blade sliding back into its sheath.

He let go of my face.

Then he stood, shrugged out of the dark wool jacket hanging on the booth behind him, and dropped it around my shoulders. It was heavy and warm and smelled like cedar and smoke. I hadn't realized I was freezing until the shivering stopped.

"Dmitri," he said.

A thin man by the bar straightened up. "Boss."

"Bandages. And find her some shoes."

"What size?"

Viktor glanced at me.

"Seven," I mumbled.

"Seven," he repeated, like it was an order of national importance. Dmitri vanished.

"You still haven't answered me," I said.

"No. I haven't."

He pulled a phone from his pocket, tapped the screen once, and put it on speaker. He set it on the table between us.

It rang twice.

"Uncle Viktor?" Julian's voice. Wary. Careful. A tone I had never once heard him use. "It's almost two in the morning. Is everything okay?"

I stopped breathing.

Viktor leaned back, completely relaxed, and stretched one arm along the top of the booth behind me.

"I hear you're getting engaged tomorrow."

A pause. "Yes. Seven o'clock at the Marlowe estate. I didn't think you'd be interested in—"

"I'm interested."

"Oh." Another pause, longer this time. I could almost hear Julian sweating. "Well. That's... we'd be honored, of course. I'll have my assistant send—"

"Save me a seat at the head table."

"The head table? That's usually reserved for immediate family, and the Marlowes have already—"

"Julian."

One word. Quiet. The men around us went so still they could've been furniture.

"Yes, sir. Of course. The head table."

"Good boy."

I pressed my hand over my mouth. Not to hold in a sob.

To hold in a laugh.

It bubbled up out of me, wild and completely wrong, and I bit down on my knuckle to keep it in. Viktor's eyes slid to me, and the corner of his mouth moved. Just barely.

"Is someone there with you?" Julian asked.

"Nobody you need to worry about tonight."

"Right. Of course." He cleared his throat. "Can I ask what brought this on? You've never come to a family event before."

"Let's just say," Viktor said, studying the bruise on my cheek, "I've taken a sudden interest in your fiancée."

The line went dead quiet.

"My... Sylvia? Why would you—"

"Seven o'clock," Viktor said. "Don't be late."

He ended the call.

I stared at the black screen. My heart was pounding so hard I could feel it in my split lip.

"He has no idea," I said. "He thinks I'm locked in my bedroom."

"Then tomorrow's going to be very educational for him."

"You still didn't say yes."

Viktor turned toward me fully for the first time. The lamplight caught the scar through his eyebrow.

"Before I say anything, Miss Marlowe, I need you to understand what you just asked for." He tapped one finger against the table. "People who marry into my side of the family don't get to divorce out of it."

Across the room, Dmitri came back through the door with a first aid kit in one hand and a pair of black flats in the other.

And a thick manila envelope tucked under his arm.

"Boss," he said, his eyes flicking to me. "You'll want to see this first. It's about her mother."