Chapter 14: The First Rescue

The shareholder dinner was exactly what Damien had warned me it would be, the room colder than the gala, the people sharper, less interested in pretending to like me and more interested in deciding whether I was worth their time at all.

I sat between two women I’d never met, both polite enough at first, asking the usual questions. How was I settling in. Did I like the city. Was the house big.

It was the third question from the one across from me that changed things.

“So how long had you and Damien actually been seeing each other,” she asked, swirling her wine like the question meant nothing. “Before the wedding, I mean. Or did it all happen rather fast.”

“It happened fast,” I said.

“Mm.” She smiled in a way that didn’t reach her eyes. “Must have been a whirlwind. One day you’re the sister nobody really talks about, and the next you’re Mrs. Blackwood.” She turned to the woman beside her like she was sharing a joke. “Funny how life works out for some people.”

A few of the women near us laughed, soft and quick, the kind of laugh that wanted you to know it was at your expense.

I felt my face get hot but I kept my voice steady. “It is funny,” I said. “I used to wonder the same thing about people who marry for money. Then I remembered I didn’t have to wonder, because I already knew Damien before any of this happened.”

That wasn’t even true, not really, but it landed clean enough that the woman blinked and didn’t have a comeback ready.

“I only meant—” she started.

“I know what you meant,” I said.

The table went quiet in that careful way tables go quiet when everyone is listening but pretending not to.

I thought I had it handled. I really did. My hands were steady on my napkin and my voice hadn’t shaken once and for a second I actually felt proud of myself.

Then she leaned in again, lower this time, just for me. “It’s just hard to take you seriously as his wife,” she said, “when everyone knows you were never the one he was supposed to end up with.”

That one hit somewhere deeper than I wanted it to.

I opened my mouth to answer and nothing came out right away. The words were there but my throat had gone tight and I hated that one sentence could undo everything I’d just managed to hold together.

“Is there a problem here.”

Damien’s voice. Calm. Not loud at all. He was standing right behind my chair, hand resting lightly on the back of it, like he’d simply walked over to check on me and happened to overhear the rest.

The woman straightened immediately. “Damien. No, of course not. We were just talking.”

“It didn’t sound like just talking,” he said. “It sounded like you were trying to decide for my wife whether her own marriage is real.” He let that sit for a second. “I’d rather you didn’t do that again. Not to her, not where I can hear it, not anywhere.”

“I didn’t mean anything by it.”

“I’m sure you didn’t,” he said, in a tone that made it clear he didn’t believe that for a second. “Excuse us.”

He pulled my chair back gently and I stood, and the woman was already gathering her things, mumbling something about needing to find the restroom, gone before anyone could say another word.

We walked toward the terrace doors and I didn’t speak until we were outside, the noise of the dinner fading behind us.

“You didn’t have to do that,” I said. “I had it.”

“I know you had it,” he said. “I watched you have it. That’s why I waited as long as I did.”

I looked at him. “You were watching the whole time?”

“From the moment she asked how long we’d been seeing each other,” he said. “I almost didn’t step in at all. You were doing fine on your own.”

“Then why did you?”

He was quiet for a second, looking out at the dark garden below the terrace. “Because the second thing she said was different from the first,” he said. “The first thing was rude. The second was cruel. There’s a line. You don’t have to fight every battle by yourself just because you’re capable of it.”

I didn’t know what to say to that so I didn’t say anything.

We stood there a moment longer, the wind doing something soft to my hair, and I felt that strange mix of feelings I kept having around him lately, grateful and unsettled at the same time, like I couldn’t decide if I wanted him to keep showing up like this or if it scared me a little that I was starting to expect it.

“We should go back in,” he said. “Lucas will wonder where I’ve gone.”

We went back inside, and the rest of the dinner passed without much else worth remembering, polite talk, dessert nobody finished. At some point one of the women near me mentioned Victoria’s name, not unkindly, just in passing, asking if anyone had heard from her lately, if she was doing alright wherever she’d gone.

Nobody had an answer.

I realized, sitting there with my fork halfway to my mouth, that I hadn’t heard a single word from my sister since the morning she disappeared. Not a call. Not a message. Nothing.

That night, lying in bed, I found myself reaching for my phone and typing her name into the search bar before I even decided to do it.

She’d made it painfully clear she didn’t want anyone looking for her.

But Victoria disappearing wasn’t what unsettled me.

It was the silence.

Victoria loved being seen. She documented everything, holidays, dinners, bad coffee, new shoes. If she was happy, the world knew. If she was miserable, the world knew that too.

Now.

Nothing.

Not a single post since the wedding.

I stared at my phone longer than I meant to.

It wasn’t like her.

And for the first time since she’d walked away, I found myself wondering less where my sister was…

…And more why she disappeared.