THE PROXY BRIDE: His bride. Her Secret.
The observation hung between them, raw and unspoken.
Clarisse plucked a slim volume from the shelf—Sappho’s fragments, its cover worn soft by time. "My favorite," she said, tracing the spine with that finger. "She wrote about love in broken pieces. Like us." She didn’t look at Amara, but her words landed like stones in still water. Like us.
Amara reached for a book on her own—Machiavelli’s The Prince, the Italian edition she’d read on the jet. Her fingers brushed the scar on her wrist as she opened it, the silver line catching the dim light.