I should have known something was off the moment the clerk said my name wrong.
“Miss Kiera Dane?”
Her voice was polite, unshaken by the chaos she was about to drop into my life. She looked over her glasses, fingers hovering above her keyboard.
“I’m afraid we cannot release a marriage certificate under that name. According to our database, no legal union exists between you and a Mr. Rowan Cross.”
For a moment, her words didn’t land. My mind simply refused to process them. I stood there, clutching my purse, nails digging crescents into my palms.
“That’s impossible,” I finally managed. “I am Mrs. Kiera Cross. I just need a reprint. I ruined the original while cleaning my husband’s office. Coffee accident.”
She didn’t frown or argue—her expression remained perfectly neutral, softened by the kind of smile clerks use to keep unstable customers from breaking down. With a few taps, she swiveled her monitor toward me. The screen displayed columns of text and system codes my brain refused to interpret.
“Miss Dane,” she repeated in that same gentle tone.
Hearing it again made my stomach twist. “No. No, that’s wrong. He told me the civil paperwork was filed the day the church postponed our ceremony. I saw the certificate. I’ve lived as his wife for three years. We’re married.”
The clerk’s voice dropped into something close to pity. “Ma’am… the system is clear. Mr. Cross is married, but not to you. His legal spouse, for the past three years, has been one Seraphine Vega. Does that name ring a bell?”
It felt as though my knees disconnected from the rest of my body. Seraphine. My best friend. Or the woman I thought was my best friend. Her name cracked something open inside me.
I thanked the clerk—somehow—then walked out in a haze. The world outside looked the same, but everything inside me had collapsed. One blurred drive later, I was standing at the front doors of Rowan’s mansion.
His home, not mine.
I climbed the stairs with numb feet, replaying memories that now felt warped and suspicious. Three years ago, just as I was supposed to walk toward Rowan in a chapel overlooking a hill, everything had fallen apart. My bouquet. My gown. The ceremony. All ruined when news broke that Seraphine had been pushed from a rooftop by someone targeting the woman Rowan loved.
Everyone believed the attacker had mistaken her for me. That she had suffered because of her connection to us.
But she wasn’t even meant to be on that rooftop. That should’ve been my fall.
Instead, Seraphine survived—if one could call lying motionless in silk sheets “surviving.” Her brother, Riven, moved in too, needing medical attention of his own. Rowan said caring for them was the least we could do after what she’d “sacrificed.”
And I trusted him. I trusted every word.
For three years I tended to her, treating her like fragile glass—feeding her, bathing her, brushing the hair she couldn’t lift a hand to touch. I cooked Rowan’s meals. Smiled when he pecked my forehead. Believed him when he blamed stress for avoiding intimacy. I never questioned the certificate he showed me once and tucked away afterward.
Looking back… I had been blind.
As I rounded the hallway, voices slipped through the slightly open door of Rowan’s study. I knew I should leave, but my feet anchored to the floor.
“Rowan, thank you,” Riven murmured, his tone sincere. “For everything you’ve done for Seraphine… and for me.”
Rowan let out the familiar, warm laugh that once made me feel safe. “Don’t be ridiculous. Seraphine has always been important to me. I think about what happened every day. She was never meant to be targeted—that was on Kiera. That’s why I married her. To convince the enemy she was the one I cared for.”
My breath hitched, freezing halfway up my lungs. The room spun, but I remained still, plastered to the wall.
Riven spoke again, soft and unsure. “And if Kiera finds out? What if she decides to leave?”
Rowan scoffed. Actually scoffed. “Kiera? She’s clueless. She doesn’t realize the marriage wasn’t real. And even if she uncovered it somehow… she wouldn’t walk away. She’s been obsessed with me since childhood. Like a stray dog that won’t stop following you home. I pitied her, that’s all. She was convenient.”
A long silence swallowed the hallway.
Then my body finally moved—slow, detached, like I was floating instead of walking. I drifted to my room, the walls of that mansion suddenly unrecognizable. None of it had ever been mine. Not the roof. Not the man. Not the life.
Inside my room, I didn’t cry. I didn’t scream. The rage and heartbreak didn’t explode—they settled into something cold and final.
My fingers trembled violently as I picked up my phone.
My mother answered almost instantly. “Kiera? Sweetheart? What’s happened?”
I swallowed hard. “Mom… do you remember the marriage proposal you were arranging before I insisted on staying with Rowan?”
“Yes, I remember,” she said cautiously.
“Set it up again,” I whispered, each word sharp as glass. “I’m coming home. I’m finished here.”
