EVANGELINE
The week moved like a nightmare she couldn't wake up from.
Monday morning Adrian called. She didn't recognize the number at first but his voice was unmistakable. Desperate. Pleading.
"Eva, please. Just let me explain. That thing with Natasha meant nothing. It was a mistake. I was confused about our relationship but I want to make it right."
She blocked him without responding.
Twenty minutes later he called from a different number.
She blocked that one too.
Tuesday Natasha sent a text message.
You should thank me. Adrian was never going to make you happy anyway. You always bored him. I did you a favor. Now go marry your billionaire and pretend your life is fixed.
Evangeline stared at the message for a long time. She wanted to feel angry. Instead she just felt empty.
The reporters started Tuesday afternoon.
They camped outside her apartment building like vultures. Cameras and lights and shouted questions about whether it was true she was marrying Sebastian Thornfield. About whether it was real or just business. About what happened to her engagement to Adrian.
She ignored them and took the service entrance to avoid the crowds.
By Wednesday she'd stopped checking social media. The headlines had evolved from engagement party scandal to something darker. People were connecting dots between her personal humiliation and her father's company collapse. They were suggesting she'd had something to do with the sabotage. That her reckless behavior had triggered the FDA investigation.
Lies that felt close enough to truth that they stuck to her skin.
Thursday she visited her father.
He was awake and alert, which was better than she'd seen him in days. The doctors said his heart was stabilizing. That he was improving. That maybe the worst had passed.
Until he asked her the question she'd been dreading.
"Are you sure about this, sweetheart? Marrying Sebastian? You barely know him."
Evangeline sat on the edge of his hospital bed and did something she'd promised herself she wouldn't do.
She lied.
"I love him, Dad. I know it happened fast but I love him. And he loves me. That's why he agreed to help with the company."
Her father's eyes filled with tears.
"Thank god," he whispered. "Thank god you won't be alone in all of this."
She held his hand and let him believe that love had saved them. That this wasn't a business transaction disguised as a marriage. That somewhere in this entire disaster, there was something real and good and worth believing in.
It was the kindest thing she could do for him. Lie.
Friday night she stood alone in her apartment.
Everything she owned was packed. The lawyers had already moved most of it to the Thornfield penthouse. Her childhood bedroom. Her mother's jewelry. The few things that actually meant something.
All of it gone to a stranger's home.
She'd met Sebastian twice now. The proposal. The contract signing. She'd felt that electricity when they touched and then she'd spent an entire week trying to convince herself she'd imagined it.
But she hadn't imagined it.
And tomorrow she was going to marry him.
Evangeline looked at herself in the apartment mirror. She looked like a ghost. Like someone had slowly drained all the color and life out of her until she was just a shell moving through the world.
That's what this week had done. It had hollowed her out.
She'd destroyed her engagement to Adrian by simply existing. He'd destroyed her by cheating. Natasha had destroyed her by betraying her. Her father's business partner had destroyed him by sabotaging years of research.
And now she was walking into marriage with a man made of ice just to keep everyone from drowning.
Her phone buzzed.
Unknown number. She almost didn't look at it.
But something made her check.
The message was from Sebastian.
Wear something beautiful tomorrow. We're starting a war.
She read it three times.
Not we're getting married.
Not let's keep this professional.
We're starting a war.
Like this wasn't just about saving her father anymore. Like this wasn't just about business deals and separate bedrooms and one year contracts.
Like tomorrow when they walked into city hall, something was shifting. Something was beginning.
Evangeline's hands shook as she set down her phone.
She didn't know what Sebastian meant by war. She didn't know what he was planning or why he'd sent that message or what any of this actually was beneath the surface of the contract they'd both signed.
She just knew that she was about to marry a stranger with ice in his eyes.
And that stranger had just told her they were starting a war.