CHAPTER FOUR
Vivienne's world went hollow.
Her breath vanished. Sound muted into a dull hum. The room swayed not gently, but like the
ground had lurched beneath her.
She reached for something to hold, anything to steady herself, but her fingers grasped nothing
but air.
Tessa sobbed, dramatic and perfect, placing her hand over her heart. She whispered his name
as if tasting something sweet.
Vivienne watched Maddox open the ring box. She saw the diamond catch the chandelier light.
She saw people turn toward Tessa with applause already forming.
She did not blink.
She couldn't.
"Will you marry me?" Maddox asked.
And Tessa said yes before he even finished the question.
Vivienne didn't hear the cheers. She saw lips moving, saw hands clapping, saw flashes of
cameras.
But she couldn't hear any of it.
Her chest ached, burning from the inside out. Her throat tightened until breathing felt like
swallowing glass. She looked at Maddox, searching for a sign that this was a mistake, a cruel
joke, anything that meant this wasn't happening.
But he didn't look ashamed.
He didn't look conflicted.
He didn't look at her at all.
He only looked at Tessa.
Vivienne's legs wobbled. She stepped backward, bumping into a table. The tremor in her hands
spread through her body, a quiet panic rising and rising.
The world she built around Maddox every memory, every secret, every whisper of a future
shattered in one breath.
She turned away before the tears reached her eyes.
Everything around her spun: the music that regained its volume, the cheers echoing through the
hall, Tessa lifting her newly adorned hand for the crowd, her parents smiling with stiff approval.
Vivienne moved toward the back exit on instinct, her heart crumbling with every step.
A shadow moved near the doorway. The air shifted. A presence waited that did not belong to
this room.
But Vivienne didn't see him yet.
She only felt the hairs rise along her arms, a chill tightening around her spine something
watching, something approaching, something meant for her.
And somewhere beyond the noise of her breaking heart, a new threat awakened its first breath.
Vivienne fled into the nearest corridor as if the walls might swallow her and render the sound of
the celebration a distant and meaningless thing. The air in the hall felt colder, or perhaps it was
that the blood had retreated from her face; either way, every footstep behind her sounded
magnified. Guests continued to laugh and clap somewhere beyond the doors, their joy a jagged
noise that tore at her ears. She moved faster, hands scraping along the banister until the
varnish bit into her palms. Her breath came short and sharp. Her chest contracted as though a
gloved fist had folded her ribs inward.
She reached the tall window at the end of the hall and rested her forehead against the glass.
Outside, the late afternoon sky had the thinness of pressed silk. The estate lawns extended into
a blur of green and darkening trees; beyond them lay the quiet that had always felt like safety
until tonight. For a second she wanted nothing more than to fall into that green and let the world
close over her. Instead, she pressed her palms against the cool glass and tried to slow the
racing of her heart by counting her breaths one, two focusing on the small physical facts to keep
madness at bay.
Footsteps came. Precise. Not the ragged sound of someone fleeing but the measured steps of
those who do not panic. Vivienne turned slowly. Her parents stood in the threshold of the
corridor, their faces blank with that practiced neutrality of people who kept their private
calculations shut behind a polished exterior. Her father's jaw was tight; his suit collar sat
immaculate. Her mother had touched her hair once more, smoothing an imaginary kink as if she
could iron out the calamity of the evening.
"You should not be out here," her father said. His voice was soft but carried the weight of
decision. In it lay the businesslike tone of a man used to closing deals and making cold
calculations. He had the peculiar ability to speak a hurt into etiquette so that it sounded like
policy.
Vivienne stared at him, feeling suddenly very small under that gaze. "I can't " She swallowed.
Words failed like brittle glass. "I need air."
"You will remain," her mother said. There was no warmth in that sentence. Only the strictness of
duty. "There is no escape."
He moved closer, not quite touching her, but close enough to close the distance between
mother's hand and the sleeve of her dress. "We made a decision," he said, and the pronoun
"we" she had always relied on family, together hit her now like a blade. "A necessary decision."
She wanted to laugh at the euphemism. The corridor seemed to narrow. "Necessary for who?"
she asked. The sound that left her mouth surprised her with its steadiness. She had rehearsed
cries and pleas in the dark. They vanished now when the moment came; instead she found
something like a brittle steadiness.
Her mother's eyes flicked to a distant point in the room, and in that microsecond Vivienne
realized she was not the only person who had been decided for. "Do not make a scene," her
mother warned, as though this might be the evening's most egregious sin.
"You're marrying me off like a business transaction," Vivienne said. The words came out sharp.
She tasted copper on her tongue. "To someone I've never met."
Her father's fingers closed over her wrist with a firmness that meant no argument. "You will meet
him." He laid out the plain facts without spectacle: the agreement had been finalized, signatures
signed, terms settled. "Mr. Holt provides insurance to our company. He protects our interests.
He demanded a bride. We supplied our consent."
The name landed like a pistol shot. Grayson Holt. Even the way her father pronounced it quiet,
without flourish made the syllables lethal. Vivienne tasted bile. The corridor seemed to tilt. Her
world had shrunk to letters and a name that belonged in rumor and whispers, names that old
money and old power used as currency in conversations that never included the human cost.
"You did not listen to me," she said finally, and it was not a plea but an accusation. "You told me
you loved me." She thought of the warmth of Maddox's hands, the whisper of promises in the
dark. He had been her harbor; the foundation she thought would hold. The memory of his voice
in the kitchen late that last Sunday returned and seemed suddenly like a lie told with
tenderness.