. CHAPTER 1 — The Perfect Room

The slap cracked across the ballroom louder than the string quartet’s final note.

Nora’s cap shifted. One white rose slipped from the bucket and rolled across the marble, absurdly graceful. For half a second nobody moved. Not the guests. Not the planner. Not even the cameras, which kept blinking their little red lights as if this were exactly what cameras were born to witness.

Vanessa’s hand remained in the air, fingers trembling with the shock of what they had done. Then pride rushed in to rescue her. She pointed at Nora.

“Get her out,” she said, her voice shaking but sharp. “Before she ruins everything.”

That was the sentence that ended her future.

Andrew did not walk. He ran.

His tuxedo jacket opened as he sprinted down the aisle, past billionaires, judges, cousins, investors, and one elderly uncle who whispered, “Well, finally, entertainment.” Andrew reached Nora just as her knees weakened. He caught the bucket with one hand and wrapped the other around her shoulders.

“Nora,” he said, and the name broke on the way out.

She tried to smile. “I’m all right, Andy.”

Only three people in the world called him Andy. Two were dead.

The crowd understood before Vanessa did. She stared at Andrew’s face—white with fury, wet-eyed with panic—and felt the first crack in her plan.

Andrew turned slowly toward her.

“Say her name,” he said.

Vanessa blinked. “What?”

“Her name is Nora Marsh. She raised me. She fed me when my family forgot I was alive. She sat beside me in hospitals when no one from the Hawthorne bloodline bothered to answer the phone.” His voice dropped, deadly calm. “And you slapped her in front of my guests.”

Lydia Caldwell rose from her chair, pearls trembling. “Andrew, sweetheart, weddings are emotional—”

“Sit down, Lydia.”