Loves My Sister, Married To Me

The Hampton breeze carried salt and dying summer heat through the canvas walls of the luxury tent.

Charlie Powell sat alone in an Adirondack chair by the fire pit, stirring her lukewarm hot cocoa with a bamboo stick. The marshmallows had dissolved into a sticky film on the surface. She checked her watch. Claudius had been gone for two hours, off to what he'd called "an urgent call with his partners" from the city.

Her iPhone sat on her knee, face down.

The screen lit up.

A chime pierced the crackling of dying embers.

Charlie picked up her phone. Unknown number. iMessage. No text-just a thumbnail image.

She tapped it.

The screen expanded to reveal a scanned document. It looked official, bearing a county seal in the corner. She squinted against the dim firelight and leaned in closer.

Clark County, Nevada.

Marriage Certificate

Her thumb stopped scrolling.

Groom: Claudius Buchanan.

Bride: Vivianne Mercer.

Charlie's breath caught. She read it again. The names hadn't changed. But the date was worse.

One year ago.

Three months before he'd rented Rockefeller Center-the ice rink, one thousand white roses. That proposal wasn't really a proposal; he'd simply knelt in the snow, called her his forever, and slid a ring onto her finger-one she'd believed meant something.

Her stomach churned.

Hot cocoa spilled onto her silk dress. She didn't feel it. Her hands trembled so violently that she had to grip her phone with both thumbs to steady the image. She zoomed in on the seal-on the signature-on those raised embossings, catching the light like a scar.

It's real.

This is real.

A wave of nausea rose in her throat. She swallowed it down, tasting the metallic tang of copper. Her fingers twitched across the screen, scrolling, zooming, searching for any misaligned pixels, for the telltale blurring of Photoshop tampering.

Nothing.

Footsteps crunched on gravel.

Male laughter, loud and loose with bourbon.

Charlie's head snapped up. Two figures emerged from the tree line, silhouetted against the distant glow of the main house. She knew those voices. Kael Erickson's braying drawl. Burk Bennett's smoker's rasp.

Claudius's inner circle.

Her body moved before her brain caught up. She slid from the chair, bare feet silent on the cool grass, and pressed herself into the thick shadow of an ancient oak. The bark scraped her shoulder blades through the thin silk.

The men stopped ten feet away.

Kael raised a crystal tumbler, amber liquid catching the firelight. "Claudius is still playing house with that Powell girl," he said, and laughed. "Poor bastard's been at it for a year."

Burk exhaled cigar smoke, a gray cloud drifting toward Charlie's hiding place. "Small price," he said. "You know why he's doing it."

"Corina." Kael's voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper that carried perfectly in the still air. "Two years she humiliated him. Threw that pink diamond in the champagne tower. Called him-what was it?"

"Trash with a trust fund." Burk chuckled. "So he takes the little sister. Fucks her stupid. Makes her fall in love." He flicked ash into the fire pit. "Poetic, really."

Charlie bit her lower lip. Hard. Blood bloomed against her tongue, metallic and warm.

"Speaking of," Kael said, lowering his voice further. "Heard a rumor from the Hamptons set. Charlie's been sick in the mornings."

Burk's laugh turned ugly. "Don't worry. He's got it handled. That clinic on 73rd? The one his cousin runs? One phone call. Perfect little accident. She'll never even know she was pregnant."

The world tilted.

Charlie's back slid down the oak trunk until she crouched in the dirt, knees drawn to her chest. Her hands found her stomach, still flat, still secret. The night air turned to ice water in her lungs.

She remembered last night. Claudius's mouth on her abdomen, whispering about the future. His palm spread wide and possessive. The tenderness that had made her cry.

Now it made her want to scream.

A dry branch snapped beneath her heel.

The sound cracked like a gunshot.

Kael's head whipped toward the oak. His eyes narrowed, scanning the darkness. "You hear that?"

Charlie stopped breathing. Her pulse hammered in her ears so loud she was sure they could hear it. She pressed her hands harder against her belly, as if she could shield what might be growing there.

A cat shrieked from the underbrush.

Kael jumped. Burk cursed. "Fucking strays," he muttered. "Come on. Claudius is waiting."

They moved off, voices fading toward the main house.

Charlie didn't move for sixty seconds. She felt a scream clawing its way up her throat and swallowed it down, the effort making her eyes water. Her body wanted to collapse, to curl into a ball and weep until she was empty. But a cold, sharp thought cut through the panic: the baby. Her baby. The one they were talking about like a problem to be erased. The thought was a shard of ice in her gut, clearing the fog of terror. Then her lungs remembered how to work, and she gasped, sucking in air that tasted of smoke and her own terror. Sweat soaked through her dress, cold against her spine.

Charlie pushed through the canvas flap and locked the brass latch behind her.

She slid down the door until she sat on the Persian rug, knees drawn up, forehead pressed against her wrists. The tent smelled of cedar and the ghost of Claudius's cologne.

Above her, the aurora projector hummed.

He'd insisted on bringing it. Set it on the nightstand himself, angled just so, claiming he wanted her to sleep under the stars even inside. She'd thought it romantic.

Now she stared at the black cylinder.

Her legs carried her to the nightstand before she decided to move. She picked up the projector. Heavy. Sleek. The laser aperture stared back like a blind eye.

Below it, almost invisible, a tiny circle of non-reflective black.

Charlie's breath stopped.

She fumbled for her makeup bag. Found the tweezers. Instead of prying, her fingers searched the smooth surface, her instincts screaming. She felt it-a nearly imperceptible seam. She pressed the tip of the tweezers into a tiny, recessed release button, designed to be overlooked. The side panel didn't crack; it clicked open on a silent hinge.

A micro camera stared back at her, no bigger than a fingernail. A blue LED blinked slow and steady. Wireless transmitter attached. Recording everything. Every moment. Every intimacy.

Last night. The bed behind her.

She ran for the bathroom.

Cold water splashed her face, again and again, until her hands stopped shaking. She gripped the marble sink and met her own eyes in the mirror. Wide. Terrified. Pregnant, maybe. Watched, definitely. Targeted, absolutely.

Footsteps outside.

His footsteps. She knew the rhythm. Heavy, confident, the stride of a man who owned the ground he walked on.

Charlie grabbed a towel. Dried her face. Ran.

She reached the nightstand as the tent flap rustled. She snapped the projector casing shut. It clicked back into place with seamless precision, leaving no trace it had ever been opened. The blue LED winked out, hidden again.

She dove into bed and pulled the covers to her chin.

The latch turned.

Claudius stepped through, tall and broad, bringing the night chill with him. He paused at the entrance, looking at her. She kept her breathing slow. Even. Eyes closed.

The mattress dipped.

He sat on the edge, close enough that she felt his heat through the silk sheets. His fingers touched her cheek, rough and warm.

She wanted to recoil. Her body wanted to scream.

She let him touch her.

"Charlie," he murmured.

The voice that had whispered love. That had planned her destruction with the same tongue.

She fluttered her eyelids open. "Mmm?"

"You're cold." His thumb traced her jaw. "And you're shaking."

She forced a sleepy smile. "The wind. Through the canvas."

His eyes searched hers. Blue and endless and completely unreadable. "I missed you."

He leaned down. Bourbon on his breath. His lips pressed her forehead, then her mouth, soft and claiming.

Charlie let him kiss her. Let him pull her against his chest where his heart beat strong and steady and false. She buried her face in his neck so he couldn't see her eyes.

His hand slid down her side. Paused on her stomach.

"You're not feeling well?" he asked, voice gentle as poisoned honey.

The clinic. The words from the oak tree replayed in her skull.

"A little dizzy," she whispered. "Just need sleep."

"Of course." He tucked her in, kissed her temple, and reached for his phone on the nightstand.

Charlie watched him through lowered lashes.

The projector sat inches from his hand. He didn't look at it. Didn't touch it. Just scrolled through emails with the concentration of a man who had nothing to hide.

She closed her eyes and planned how to steal the footage.

The early morning sun filtered through the gaps in the canvas tent, casting thin, golden streaks across the floor. Charlie huddled under the down quilt, her face as pale as paper, her body curled into a tight ball.

She pressed her hands firmly against her lower abdomen, letting out a soft, painful groan-feigning the throes of severe premenstrual syndrome. Her brow furrowed, and her lips trembled, making the act look so real it was almost convincing even to herself.

Claudius, who had been sitting on a folding chair by the bed, reading the Wall Street Journal, immediately dropped the newspaper. The pages fluttered to the ground as he strode over to her side, his usually composed face twisted with obvious anxiety.

He reached out and pressed the back of his hand to her forehead, his brows knitting tighter when he felt the cold, clammy skin. "Damn it," he muttered, his voice laced with irritation. "I told the staff to keep the tent warm. Those idiots let the night wind seep in."

Charlie weakly grabbed his wrist, squeezing it gently, and forced a few physiological tears to spill from the corners of her eyes. "Claudius," she whispered, her voice fragile and trembling, "I don't feel well. I want to go back to the apartment in Manhattan. Please."

Claudius didn't hesitate for a second. He pulled out his phone from his pocket, his fingers moving quickly across the screen to dial Jenilee's encrypted line-his assistant who was always on call, no matter the hour or location.

"Jenilee," his voice dropped to a cold, commanding tone, sharp and unyielding, a stark contrast to the tenderness he'd shown Charlie just moments before. "I need a Sikorsky S-76 helicopter on the camp helipad in twenty minutes. No delays. If it's late, you're fired." He hung up the call without waiting for a response.

When he turned back to Charlie, the coldness in his eyes melted instantly, replaced by that suffocating, overbearing tenderness that made her skin crawl. He picked up a warm wet towel from the nearby table, his movements surprisingly gentle as he dabbed the cold sweat from her forehead and cheeks.

Watching him play the role of the perfect lover so flawlessly, Charlie felt a wave of nausea surge in her stomach. She quickly closed her eyes, pretending to be too weak to keep them open, just to hide the disgust that threatened to show on her face.

Twenty minutes exactly, the distant hum of helicopter blades grew louder and louder, shattering the quiet of the Hamptons morning. The Sikorsky S-76 touched down smoothly on the small helipad near the camp, its rotors still spinning as it settled.

Claudius wrapped Charlie tightly in a soft cashmere blanket, lifting her up bridal-style in his strong arms. She was light in his grasp, but the weight of his touch made her feel trapped, like a bird caught in a golden cage.

As Charlie leaned against his broad shoulder, her peripheral vision caught sight of Kael and Burk standing under a tree in the distance. Their eyes were fixed on her and Claudius, their expressions strange and unreadable-cold, almost predatory. A shiver ran down her spine.

She immediately buried her face in the crook of Claudius's neck, pretending to flinch from the strong wind stirred up by the helicopter's rotors. In reality, she was just trying to avoid the gaze of those two monsters, the ones who had haunted her nightmares since she'd first crossed paths with them.

Claudius carried her onto the helicopter, carefully setting her down on the top-of-the-line leather seat. He leaned over and fastened the four-point safety belt around her himself, his fingers brushing against her waist lightly as he did so-a subtle touch that made her muscles tense.

The helicopter lifted off, and the Hamptons coastline grew smaller and smaller beneath them. Charlie felt the tightness in her chest ease slightly, if only for a moment-away from the camp, away from Kael and Burk, she could breathe a little easier.

Through the noise-canceling headphones, Claudius's deep voice came, soft and low. "Do you want some warm water, baby?"

Charlie shook her head, turning her gaze to the window. The scenery of Long Island rushed by below-lush green lawns, sprawling mansions, the glistening ocean. It was beautiful, but it felt like a distant dream, one she could never reach.

Claudius reached out, his long fingers brushing gently over the back of her pale hand. His gaze was deep and dark, so intense that she couldn't bear to meet it-she had no idea what he was thinking, and that uncertainty terrified her.

Suddenly, he spoke again, his tone casual, as if he was just making small talk. "When you were looking at my friends earlier at the camp... why were you shaking?"

Charlie's heart skipped a beat, panic surging through her veins. Her mind raced, searching for an excuse, a lie that would sound convincing. She turned to him, her eyes filled with feigned grievance. "Their cigars," she whispered, her voice trembling. "The smell was so strong... it made me feel sick to my stomach."

Claudius stared into her eyes for three long, tense seconds-long enough that Charlie thought he might see through her lie. His gaze was sharp, like a knife, as if he was dissecting every word she said, every expression on her face.

Finally, he let out a low, amused chuckle, leaning down to press a soft kiss to the tip of her fingers. "I'm sorry, baby," he said, his voice gentle again. "I'll tell them not to smoke around you ever again. I won't let anything make you uncomfortable."

Charlie forced a weak smile, her back already soaked with cold sweat. She nodded, leaning back against the seat, and closed her eyes again-pretending to rest, but in reality, her mind was racing with fear and relief.

Forty-five minutes later, the helicopter landed smoothly on the private helipad atop the Buchanan Estate penthouse in midtown Manhattan. The dazzling skyline of New York City stretched out before them-tall skyscrapers, twinkling lights, a city that never slept. But to Charlie, it was just another cage, a gilded prison that Claudius had built for her.

Claudius lifted her up again, carrying her through the bulletproof glass corridor that led directly to the master bedroom. The corridor was lined with expensive artwork, but Charlie didn't even glance at it-her mind was too focused on the growing unease in her abdomen.

He set her gently down on the huge custom waterbed, brushing a strand of hair away from her face. "I'll go get you some warm water," he said, turning to walk toward the bathroom.

The moment he turned away, Charlie felt a sharp, crushing pain in her lower abdomen-a real pain, not the feigned PMS she'd been pretending to have. It felt like something was falling, like her body was betraying her.

A warm, sticky liquid trickled down between her legs. Charlie froze, her eyes widening in terror. This wasn't her period. This wasn't the lie she'd been telling.

She realized, with a sinking feeling in her chest, that this might be a threatened miscarriage. And in that moment, all her pretense, all her fear, all her anger, collided into a single, overwhelming panic.