Chapter 1 - My Sister Kissed My Groom Before Everything I Knew Changed
Petra Caldwell stood in the banquet hall doorway while her twin sister kissed the man she was supposed to marry in four weeks. Cecily’s hands gripped Marcus’s lapels; his forehead rested against hers with a tenderness Petra recognized because he had once reserved it for her. Petra held the sample centerpiece she had driven forty minutes to collect, wondering how long the two people she trusted most had been waiting for her to leave a room.
She placed the arrangement on a folding chair, its artificial eucalyptus brushing the metal back, and walked out before either noticed. Marcus had cried when he proposed, carried a photograph of her mother in his wallet, and helped choose those centerpieces with his hand against her back. Eleven minutes later, Petra reached her apartment garage, where she sat with the engine running until she realized she could not make herself go upstairs. She was a forensic accountant, but the figures she kept counting offered no explanation: three years together, 212 guests, one sister.
She drove again and stopped at Coldwater, an old bar in the warehouse district, where she ordered whiskey and stared at the glass. When a man settled beside her despite nine empty stools, she nearly told him to leave. His dark suit belonged somewhere else; a scar crossed his jaw, and white tape covered his right knuckles. Instead of offering sympathy after she told him what she had seen, he asked how much the wedding would cost her.
“Thirty-eight thousand, mostly nonrefundable,” she said, explaining that another wedding was about the only way to use what she had already paid for. He introduced himself as Constantine Drave and described his work as logistics and asset management; when she mentioned finding hidden money for a living, his attention sharpened. Before she could ask why, three men entered, and the bartender stopped moving. Their leader told Drave that Mr. Aguilar was tired of waiting for the lawyers to resolve a shipment dispute.
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“Sit down,” Petra said, exhausted by men interrupting conversations to demand something, and the stranger turned toward her with open disbelief. Drave shifted beside her, his hand moving beneath his jacket, and said, “My wife asked you to sit down.” After a tense exchange about Monday, the men withdrew, leaving Petra with her fingertips pressed against the bar. They had seen her face, heard him call her his wife, and believed him.
“Who is Aguilar?” she asked, looking from his bandaged hand to the door. Drave called him a business rival, then admitted that being married to him could make someone either very safe or very exposed. Petra set down her empty glass, understanding that his lie had already placed her inside a dispute she knew nothing about. “You need a wife,” she said, watching his expression change. “An actual wife.”
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