I didn't sleep.

Not unusual for me -- I worked night shifts. But this sleeplessness felt different. It pressed on my chest the way a too-full room does, all that silence that wasn't actually quiet.

At four a.m. I gave up.

The living room was dark except for the city lights through floor-to-ceiling windows. I found the contract in a folder on the kitchen counter. Forty-seven pages of dense legal text.

Page 47. Section 12. Subsection C.

I read it three times.

*In the event that the marriage is proven to have been entered into fraudulently by the Hartwell party -- including but not limited to misrepresentation of identity, concealment of material facts, or deliberate deception -- the penalty clause activates. The Hartwell estate shall be forfeited, and a forty-percent share of the Hartwell hotel portfolio, currently held in trust, shall transfer immediately to the Cross corporation.*

My hands went cold.

The Hartwell hotel portfolio. Three hotels, mortgaged to almost nothing -- but still legally asset-bearing. The last thing our father left us that wasn't debt.

If Adrian found out I wasn't Vivienne, he didn't just lose a wife.

He gained forty percent of everything we had left.

I sat on the floor with the contract and thought: she knew. Vivienne knew about this clause. She had to. She'd sent me here knowing this could detonate.

My phone buzzed. Same unknown number.

*Still awake? Smart. You'll need to be.*

I typed: *Who are you?*

The reply was fast.

*My name is Daniel Reeve. Financial journalist. I've been investigating Cross Corp for eighteen months. Three of my sources have gone quiet. I believe there's fraud in the company -- not from Adrian, but from his board. The marriage to your sister was supposed to be a distraction. I'm not sure what role you're meant to play.*

Financial fraud. Board conspiracy. A clause that would strip my family of everything.

And me, stuck in the middle.

---

He was already up at seven.

At the kitchen island with black coffee and his laptop, dressed in charcoal slacks and a white shirt, sleeves rolled. He looked up when I walked in.

"The hospital called," he said. "They said a Vivienne Hartwell is expected back at St. Luke's for a shift on Monday."

My stomach dropped.

"I'm on leave of absence," I said carefully.

He studied me. "You're a nurse?"

"Yes."

"The briefing said you ran charity galas."

*Vivienne runs charity galas.* "I do that too. The nursing is personal -- I started after our father's illness."

Not entirely a lie. Our father's illness had been why I became a nurse and Vivienne became a socialite. We'd just responded differently.

Adrian watched me for a moment longer than comfortable.

"You don't seem like her," he said.

The room went still.

"The photo," he continued. "You seem different. Quieter."

"Weddings are stressful," I said.

Something shifted in his expression. Not warmth -- something adjacent. A loosening.

"Yes," he said. "They are."

He went back to his screen. I let out a breath I'd been holding since yesterday.

"There's a company dinner Friday," he said without looking up. "You'll need to attend."

"All right."

"Don't call me Adrian at the dinner. Call me Mr. Cross. We're running a brief-courtship story. Questions will come. Stay close."

"I'll be there," I said.

I poured coffee and took it to the window and looked at the city coming awake, and somewhere down below a hospital I actually worked at was opening its doors for another shift without me.

*You need to decide whether you're playing your sister's game or your own.*

I still didn't know who Reeve really was.

But I was starting to think he knew exactly what he was doing.