Chapter 3 - Shadows from the PastThe distant chime of a grandfather clock inside the main manor struck ten o'clock. Thirty minutes until guest seating locked down. Thirty minutes until Elise Marlow walked down the aisle to marry the man standing in front of Nora.
Nora stared at him, her chest rising and falling in sharp, shallow breaths.
"Don't lie to me," she whispered, her voice trembling with a mixture of ancient grief and fresh rage. "I stared at that computer screen in our kitchen for three days. I memorized every single word of your email. You said you were staying in Copenhagen permanently. You said our lives were heading in opposite directions."
"I was in Copenhagen, yes," Adrian said, his hands clenching into fists at his sides. "And my phone was stolen out of my jacket at a railway station two weeks before I was scheduled to fly back to Charleston. When I got a replacement phone, my iCloud accounts had been locked out. I tried calling you from landlines, but your number was disconnected. When I came back to the US... you had already left Richmond. Your apartment was rented to strangers."
Nora shook her head rapidly, backing away. "No. No, that's a convenient story, Adrian. What about your father? I called Walter Keller. He told me straight to my face—well, over the phone—that you had made your decision and I should respect it."
Adrian’s expression darkened into something terrifying. A cold, hard realization flashed across his hazel eyes, replacing the confusion with a lethal clarity.
"My father," Adrian said slowly, spacing out the words like a man solving a catastrophic structural flaw in a crumbling bridge. "You spoke to my father?"
"I called his office. He got on the line."
"My father hated you, Nora," Adrian said, his voice dropping to a gravelly whisper. "He thought you were a distraction. He thought an event planner from a working-class family wasn't suitable for a Keller. He told me repeatedly that I was throwing away a brilliant engineering future on a girl who chased dreams with paper lanterns."
Nora felt the ground drop out from under her feet. All the air left her lungs.
"When I came back looking for you," Adrian continued, his voice shaking with suppressed rage, "my father told me you had packed up, moved south, and left a note saying you met someone else. He told me you didn't want anything to do with me ever again."
The courtyard around them seemed to tilt. The bright white chairs, the golden ribbons, the distant chatter of guests arriving through the wrought-iron gates—everything blurred into a swirling vortex of sound and color.
Eight years of hatred. Eight years of rebuilding herself from ash. Eight years of hardening her heart against every man who ever looked her way.
Based on a lie.
Before Nora could process the tectonic shift of reality beneath her feet, a sharp voice cut through the air.
May you like
"Adrian! What on earth are you doing out here with the wedding planner? The photographer is waiting for your portrait session!"
Mrs. Marlow stood at the top of the grand marble staircase, her eyes narrowed with suspicion as she looked down at them.
