The dress doesn't fit.
Elena stares at the gap between silk and her collarbone, at the sagging bodice. The dress was made for Clara. Everything was made for Clara.
Her mother's voice slices through. "Stop fidgeting."
Eleanor Vance stands in the doorway, arms crossed. She doesn't look at Elena's face. She looks at the dress—at the failure of it.
"The seamstress is gone. Pin it. Use the brooch."
Elena's fingers find the pearl brooch on the vanity. She pins the fabric. It pulls. It doesn't fix anything.
"Clara left a note," Elena says quietly.
"I know."
"Do you know what it said?"
"I know she's gone. That's all that matters."
Elena waits for grief, anger, anything. But Eleanor just straightens the hem with cool, efficient hands.
"You leave in an hour. Damon Cross expects a wife. He doesn't care which one."
A wife is a wife. A spare is a spare.
Elena should say no. She should walk out, disappear the way Clara did. But Clara took the car, the cash, the only escape route. And somewhere beneath years of being overlooked, a part of her still wants to be chosen. Even as a replacement. Even as a spare.
"One year," Elena says. "The contract ends in one year."
Eleanor picks lint off her shoulder. "Let's hope he doesn't trade you in sooner."
The Cross Estate sits on a cliff overlooking Ashford City.
Elena watches it grow larger through the car window. The mansion is all glass and marble, sharp lines, cold edges. A monument to a man who built an empire from nothing.
She read about Damon Cross on the ride over. Self-made billionaire. His father drank himself to death when Damon was nineteen. He trusts no one.
The city falls away as the car climbs. Elena watches it shrink—the neighborhood she grew up in, the house where she was never enough, the sister who took everything and left nothing. She should feel angry. Instead, she feels nothing at all. That, more than anything, tells her what this family has done to her.
The car stops. Cold air rushes in. Elena steps out, her heels sinking into gravel.
A man stands in the doorway.
He's taller than she expected. His suit is dark, tailored like armor. His face reveals nothing. No disappointment that the wrong sister showed up.
He looks at her. Once. A slow scan from her pinned dress to her trembling hands to her eyes which she forces to meet his.
Something flickers in his gaze. Then it's gone.
"Come inside."
His voice is low. Flat. Final.
Elena follows.
The interior is worse than the exterior.
White marble floors stretch into silence. Every piece of furniture is placed with precision, but nothing looks touched. A house designed to impress, not to live in.
A woman appears—older, gray hair, warm eyes. "This is Mrs. Hale," Damon says. "She runs the house."
Mrs. Hale steps forward. "Welcome, dear."
Her eyes linger on Elena for a moment longer than necessary. There's something in her gaze—recognition? Pity? Elena doesn't know. But it unsettles her.
Damon stops at the base of a curved staircase. "Your room is in the east wing. The contract is on the desk. Sign it. We'll discuss terms tomorrow."
"That's it?"
The words slip out.
Damon turns. His eyes are dark. "You expected more?"
Elena doesn't know what she expected. Some acknowledgment that she wasn't supposed to be here—a replacement, a spare.
"No," she says. "I didn't expect anything."
Something shifts in his expression. A crack so small she almost misses it.
Then his face closes. "Good. Then you'll fit in perfectly."
He walks up the stairs without looking back.
Mrs. Hale leads Elena through corridors of marble and glass. The east wing room has a bed with white linens, a desk facing the cliff, and a single photograph on the nightstand.
Elena picks it up.
A woman she doesn't recognize—dark hair, gentle smile—holds a baby wrapped in white cloth. The edges are faded. The glass is clean, like someone dusts it regularly.
"His mother," Mrs. Hale says quietly. "Celeste. She died in a fire a long time ago."
Mrs. Hale's eyes flick to the photograph, then away. She leaves with a soft click of the door.
Elena stares at the photograph. Something about the woman's face pulls at her—a familiarity she can't place.
She turns the frame over.
On the back, in faded handwriting:
Elena and Mama. Before the fire.
Her breath stops.
She reads the words again. Her name. Elena. Written here, in this house, on a photograph of a woman she's never seen.
She flips the frame back. The baby can't be more than a few months old. The woman is smiling.
Mama.
But her mother is Eleanor Vance. Cold. Distant. The woman who pinned her into her sister's dress and sent her off like a package.
Isn't she?
Her hands shake.
The door opens.
Damon Cross stands in the doorway, his tie loosened. His eyes land on the photograph in her hands.
His jaw tightens. His fingers curl into a fist at his side. A small tell—but Elena catches it.
"What are you doing with that?"
"Who is this woman?"
He crosses the room and takes the frame. His fingers brush hers. Warm.
"That's none of your concern."
"She has my name on the back. She wrote Elena."
Damon's jaw tightens. He looks at her—really looks.
"There are things about this house you don't need to understand."
"Then explain them to me."
He doesn't answer. He turns the frame face-down on the nightstand and walks toward the door.
"Sign the contract. Stay out of the west wing. And don't touch things that don't belong to you."
The door closes.
Elena stands in the center of the room, her heart pounding.
She should sign the contract. She should follow the rules. She should disappear the way she's always disappeared.
Instead, she walks to the nightstand.
She picks up the photograph again.
The woman in the picture is still smiling. The baby is still reaching for her face.
Before the fire.
Elena looks at the closed door. She looks at the photograph.
And for the first time in her life, she doesn't make herself small.