The lilies ended up on the kitchen island, still wrapped, leaking pollen onto the marble.

Declan tugged his tie loose, draped his jacket over a barstool. Each gesture too casual. A man rehearsing normal.

"The rehearsal," he said. "I should explain."

I didn't look up. I was pulling a roast from the oven, the pan heavy between two mitts. Seared dark on the outside, pink at the center. Seasoned with the rosemary and garlic his mother taught me the first Christmas after our wedding.

"You don't owe me an explanation," I said.

That stopped him. I felt the pause, the recalibration. He'd walked in with a script. I was supposed to cry, yell, throw something. That was the old Nora. The one who made it easy.

"Her grandfather is dying, Nora."

I sliced the meat in clean, even strokes.

"Stage four. Doctors say he won't make it past the month. He has one wish — to see her married before he goes. She asked me. As a friend. None of it is real."

I arranged the slices on a white platter and garnished with thyme.

"Nora, are you listening?"

"Every word."

I carried the platter to the dining room. Two places already set. The good silverware. I'd done it an hour ago, while he was at the chapel pretending to marry another woman.

I sat. Unfolded my napkin. Smoothed it across my lap.

"You're not upset," he said. Not a question. An accusation.

"Should I be? It's charity. A dying man's last wish. What kind of wife would I be?"

He sat. His knife and fork hovered above the plate, suspended.

"This roast is good," I said. "The rosemary really came through."

"Nora."

"Hmm?"

"You watched the livestream."

"I did."

"And you're fine."

"I understand."

His fork came down with a small sharp clink. He leaned back, and I saw it — the thing he couldn't hide. Not anger. Not relief.

*Irritation.*

He wanted the fight. He needed it. The screaming, the tears, the part where I fell apart and he got to be the reasonable one, the patient husband managing his unstable wife. I spiral. He steadies. I beg. He forgives. The ugly machine keeps turning.

I cut another piece of meat.

"You seem very calm."

"I had a good day. Cleaned the house. Made dinner. Watched a little TV."

His jaw worked. He stabbed his roast without tasting it.

"There's something you should know," he said. "About the wedding. The ceremony itself is real — legally."

I set my fork down. Slowly.

"Maya's grandfather — the lawyers were specific. He wants to see her *married*. Signed paperwork. Witnessed. It's a technicality, Nora. The annulment is already drafted. Forty-eight hours after the ceremony, it's done. Like it never happened."

"You're going to legally marry another woman."

"For three days."

"While still married to me."

"It's not bigamy if the annulment is pre-filed. My lawyers checked."

I picked up my water glass. Took a sip. Set it down at a precise angle relative to the plate.

"Why are you telling me this now?"

"Because the press is going to find out. I need you to be ready."

"Ready how?"

"To stand by me. Publicly. One statement. One photo. After that, this all goes away."

I smiled. Soft. Warm. The way I used to smile when I still believed him.

"Of course, darling. Whatever you need."

The relief on his face was immediate, almost obscene. He reached across the table and covered my hand with his. His skin was warm. Mine was room temperature.

"I knew you'd understand."

"I always do."

He went back to his meal. He'd already moved on, already calculating press releases and photo angles. Already planning what came next.

He didn't notice me slip my phone from my lap and tap a single line into the burner number I'd memorized two weeks ago.

*Confirmed. He just told me himself. Move on Phase 2.*

The screen went dark.

I picked up my fork.

"More wine, Declan?"

He told me to wear the diamonds.

The Cartier set he'd given me for our fifth anniversary — necklace, earrings, bracelet, all in a leather case that lived in a vault he didn't know I had access to. *"Wear them tonight,"* he'd texted at four. *"Press will be heavy."*

I wore them.

I also wore a black silk gown cut to the navel, my hair down, no lipstick. The diamonds did the talking.

The Carlton Hotel ballroom blazed with chandeliers and the kind of money that doesn't need to introduce itself. Three hundred guests. Old industry families. New tech money. Two senators and an heiress who'd married a Saudi prince.

And in the corner, exactly where I needed him to be — Victor Thorne.

Forty-six. Hedge fund. The kind of man who bought failing companies for sport and resold them in pieces. He stood alone near a pillar, swirling bourbon, his back to a wall that gave him a view of every exit. A predator's posture in a room full of prey.

I walked toward him without looking at Declan.

"Mr. Thorne."

He turned. His eyes swept me once — not the way men usually looked at me, but the way an appraiser looks at a painting. Calculating. Cataloging.

"Mrs. Hastings."

"Nora."

"Victor."

A waiter passed. I took two glasses of champagne and handed him one. He accepted it without comment, which told me everything I needed to know.

"I hear your fund just shorted three of my husband's suppliers," I said.

"Public information."

"I hear you have a position open on your board."

"Also public."

"I have something for you that isn't."

I opened my clutch. Slid out a single black USB drive — encrypted, labeled with nothing — and pressed it into his palm. His fingers closed around it without hesitation.

"What is it?"

"Twelve months of Hastings Corp internal emails. Acquisitions, asset transfers, three offshore shells my husband doesn't list on any filing. There's enough on that drive to move his stock fifteen points by Tuesday."

Victor's bourbon glass paused halfway to his mouth. The first tell. Small. Involuntary. The kind of reaction a man like him had spent decades training out of himself.

"Why are you giving this to me?"

"Because I want the same thing you do."

"And what's that?"

"Hastings Corp on the floor by the end of the quarter."

A muscle moved in his jaw. He set his bourbon down on the tray of a passing waiter without looking. Slid the USB into his inside breast pocket.

"Mrs. Hastings—"

"Nora."

"Nora. If what you say is on this drive—"

"It is."

"—then we should talk somewhere that isn't a charity gala."

"Monday. Your office. Nine a.m."

"I'll have my assistant—"

"No assistants. Just you."

I turned to leave. He caught my elbow. Not hard. The pressure of a man who needed two more seconds.

"One question."

"Yes?"

"Why now?"

I looked at him over my shoulder. Past him, across the room, Declan was laughing with the senator's wife, his hand resting on the small of her back like he had every right to it.

"Because he thinks I'm already dead," I said.

I walked away.

Halfway across the ballroom, Maya Croft stepped into my path.

She was wearing emerald green, hair swept up, a diamond pendant the size of a fingernail resting in the hollow of her throat — a pendant I recognized. I should have. Declan had bought it for our seventh anniversary and told me a week later he'd lost it on a business trip.

I smiled at her. Wide. Genuine.

"Maya. You look stunning."

She blinked. She'd come over to twist a knife. Instead, I'd handed her a mirror.

"Nora. I — wasn't sure you'd be here tonight."

"Why wouldn't I be?"

"After the news—"

"What news?"

Her eyes flicked past my shoulder. Looking for Declan. He was still across the room, ignoring both of us.

"Nothing," she said. "Forget it."

"Lovely necklace."

Her hand rose involuntarily to her throat. Touched the pendant. Realized, half a second too late, what she'd just confirmed.

I leaned in. Close enough that the diamonds at my ears brushed her cheek.

"Enjoy the necklace, Maya. It suits you."

I walked past her into the crowd, and behind me I felt her standing very still, holding a glass of champagne she'd suddenly forgotten how to drink.

Across the room, Victor Thorne raised his glass an inch in my direction.

The hunt had started.