Chapter 154

Vincent's POV

When I opened my eyes again, the woman standing over me was practically glowing.

Joy—unmistakable, barely contained. But underneath it, layered just beneath the surface, was something else. A flicker of anxiety. A guardedness she was working hard to conceal.

I didn't know her. But she clearly knew me.

I searched my mind carefully, turning over every corner I could reach. Nothing. Not even a shadow of recognition.

So I asked.

"Who are you?"

"You—" She stopped. Caught herself. "You don't recognize me?"

Her voice landed in the right register—shock, hurt, disbelief—but her mouth betrayed her. The corners pulled upward just slightly before she pressed them flat, like she was physically fighting back a smile she had no business showing.

I kept my expression neutral and let the question hang. "Should I?"

"Do you know where you are?" she asked quickly, pivoting. "Do you know who you are?"

I didn't. Not just her name or her face—everything was gone. Who I was, how I'd gotten here, what had come before. All of it had vanished, as completely and cleanly as if someone had simply switched off the lights.

And this woman—her reaction was all wrong.

I filed that away.

I tried to reach further, to force something loose from the fog. Pain answered immediately—sharp, vicious, driving itself through my skull like a blade twisting behind my eyes. I grabbed my head without meaning to, teeth clenched, riding it out.

She flinched. Called for the doctor.

The doctor ran his assessment and delivered his conclusion with practiced calm: traumatic brain injury, significant memory loss, cause and duration unknown. Could be temporary. Could be permanent. No way to know yet.

I didn't argue. He wasn't wrong—I genuinely couldn't remember anything.

He told her that familiar people, familiar places, familiar stories might help accelerate recovery. Something to anchor the mind.

So she told me.

Her name was Mia. Mine was Vincent. I was the head of a powerful criminal organization—a mob boss, as she put it—and the two of us were married.

I let her talk. I watched her face while she spoke.

Nothing she said produced even a single flash of recognition. No warmth, no familiarity, none of the instinctive ease you'd expect to feel around a spouse. She was a stranger to me in every sense that mattered.

That could mean the amnesia.

Or it could mean she was lying.

The first explanation was more convenient. The second one felt more plausible.

But there was something else—something I couldn't account for. While she was talking, images surfaced at the edges of my mind. Vague, half-formed, slipping away the moment I tried to focus. Fragments. Impressions.

One kept returning.

A figure. Slender, poised, with the kind of effortless grace that stays with you even when you can't explain why. I couldn't make out her face. Every time I reached for it, the image dissolved.

Mia was watching me closely as she spoke, and at some point it occurred to me that the figure in my mind didn't look like her. Didn't move like her. Didn't feel like her.

"Vincent." Her voice broke through. "What are you thinking about?"

"What you've been telling me," I said.

"Does any of it feel familiar?" She held my gaze with an intensity that was just slightly too careful. Probing. Measuring.

I saw it clearly then—the calculation running beneath her concern. She wasn't asking because she hoped for one answer or the other. She was checking.

Something in me went quiet and still.

Don't tell her.

I didn't know where the instinct came from. Only that it was certain, and I trusted it.

I shook my head slowly. "No. Honestly? It sounds like it happened to someone else. Like you're describing a stranger." I paused. "Are you sure that was me?"

Something shifted in her face the moment I said it.

She smiled.

Softly, sympathetically—all the right shapes. But her eyes brightened in a way she couldn't control, a flash of relief so genuine it slipped through before she could catch it.

She was glad I didn't remember.

I let the observation settle quietly into the back of my mind and held it there.

She said all the right things after that—that she wasn't going anywhere, that she'd help me piece it back together, that my memory might return in time and that was all either of them needed. Her voice was warm. Her words were perfect.

But the joy she'd been struggling to hide since the moment I opened my eyes told me everything I actually needed to know.

Whatever the truth was, Mia was not going to help me find it.

Which meant I was going to have to find it myself.

And she couldn't know I was looking.

---

## Olive's POV

It had been nearly a month.

An entire month, and Gordon was still on the floor.

Not literally—well, sometimes literally, when he'd drunk himself past the point of staying upright. But the rest of the time he was sprawled across his bed or slumped against the headboard, surrounded by empty bottles, having apparently decided that the only appropriate response to Nydia's death was to dissolve himself entirely in bourbon and self-pity.

I was exhausted by it.

I'd expected grief. A week, maybe two. A man was allowed to be dramatic about these things for a reasonable amount of time. But a month of this—the closed curtains, the unanswered texts, the muffled crying she could hear through the wall at two in the morning—it was simply too much.

I hadn't worked this hard to end up engaged to a depressed alcoholic who couldn't function. I had plans. Expectations. A wedding to plan.

I straightened my jacket and knocked on his door.

"Get out!" came the roar from inside. Something shattered against the door—a bottle, from the sound of it.

I took a step back. Steadied myself.

Fine. If that's how we're doing this.

I pushed the door open.

The smell hit me first. Stale air, spilled whiskey, days of accumulated misery. Gordon was sitting on the floor, back against the bed frame, glaring at me with red-rimmed eyes like I was personally responsible for everything wrong in his life.

"I told you to leave," he said.

"I heard you." I breathed through my mouth and kept my voice pleasant. "Gordon. I have an appointment at the bridal boutique this afternoon. I'd like you to come with me."

"No."

"It'll take two hours—"

"No." He dropped his head back against the mattress. "You're the one who wanted this engagement. I've already agreed to marry you. What more do you want from me?"

I looked at him—this man who had once carried himself with such easy confidence, who had once been the kind of person who commanded a room just by walking into it—and felt nothing but contempt.

He had traded all of that for grief over a dead woman.

I tightened my jaw. "Gordon, I am going to have the most beautiful wedding this city has ever seen. And you will be there. Now get up and get dressed."

He didn't even look at me. "No."

"Are you sure about that?" I asked quietly.

He finally looked up, and the contempt in his expression was almost impressive given how wrecked he appeared. "What are you going to do, Olive? Make me?"

"I have Nydia's body."

The words landed exactly the way I intended.

He went completely still. Then he was on his feet—I hadn't even registered the movement—crossing the room in two strides, grabbing my arm with a grip that actually hurt.

"Say that again."

"After the authorities announced the recovery, her parents couldn't bring themselves to claim her. So I did." I kept my voice level. "She's been at a private facility. Under my name."

The look on his face was something I would have found satisfying if I weren't also slightly afraid of him in that moment. He was staring at me like he wanted to take me apart.

"Where is she." It wasn't a question.

"Come with me to the boutique," I said. "Two hours. That's all I'm asking."

His hand moved to my throat. I felt the pressure of his fingers and held very still.

"Tell me where she is." His voice had gone low and completely flat. "Right now."

I didn't answer. I let him hold me there and waited.

"Tell me." He was shaking. "Tell me or I swear to God—"

"Go ahead," I said calmly. "If you hurt me, you'll never find out. And if I'm gone, so is everything I know." I held his gaze. "She's already dead, Gordon. You couldn't protect her while she was alive. You can't even protect her now. What does that say about you?"

He let go of me like I'd burned him.

He turned away, both hands driving into the wall, one punch and then another and then another until his knuckles had to be split. I watched him methodically destroy a section of drywall and felt absolutely nothing.

When he finally stopped, he stood with his forehead against the wall, breathing hard.

"Fine," he said. The word came out like something being dragged out of him by force. "I'll come."

I smoothed my sleeve where he'd grabbed me and turned toward the door.

"Wonderful," I said. "Wear something presentable."