The private registrar's office smelled of paper and rain. Mei's palms were steady but her heart was not. When Adrian placed the signed certificate on the desk—two names, a clause of privacy, a single line that would change everything—she felt the world tilt in a way that had nothing to do with romance.
"This is for the lawsuit," he explained. His voice was a scalpel. "A public separation will ruin us both if we're not careful. We make them believe what they want, and they will leave us alone."
She thought of the future—of rent and a mother who paid bills on time and a sister who could not know. She thought of the way Victor Hsu had smiled at the gala like a shark smelling salt. She thought of the photo she had found on a stranger's phone the night before, an image that might have been planted.
"We will sign," she said. "We will play the part."
They married in official silence—no dinner, no witnesses besides a clerk who looked bored to the point of piety. It felt like the sort of contract Mei had signed a dozen times in her life: small, necessary, and quietly binding. She had never believed in weddings. She had believed in not being used.
When he slid the ring—simple, unornamented—onto her finger, she felt the press of metal cool against the warmth of her skin. In her chest, a hesitation opened. "For show," she reminded him.
He nodded. "For now."
At the hotel afterward, they kept faces of strangers who might be lovers or partners or predators. They ate bread in a silence that was less empty than guarded. At the end of the night, when he walked her to her cab, he asked, offhand, with a careful cruelty that disguised the question, "Are you sure you can pretend?"
"For as long as I have to," she said.
He did not know, then, how long she would have to.