Emily's POV
The scream tore through the silence like a blade through silk.
I jolted upright in bed, my heart hammering against my ribs as the sound echoed through the mansion's corridors. For a moment, I sat frozen, the darkness pressing in around me, wondering if I'd imagined it.
Then it came again...raw, agonized, unmistakably real.
Victor.
I threw back the covers and stumbled into the hallway, my bare feet silent against the cold marble floor. The mansion was eerily quiet, the kind of oppressive silence that made every breath feel too loud. I moved toward the sound, my pulse racing, until I stood outside Victor's door.
My hand hovered over the doorknob, trembling.
You are never to enter my room.
His words rang in my ears, clear and commanding. He'd made it a condition, a boundary I wasn't supposed to cross. The room was his sanctuary, his private space where even his wife...fake or otherwise...had no business entering.
But then another scream ripped through the door, and my hesitation shattered.
I twisted the knob and pushed inside.
The room was vast and dark, illuminated only by pale moonlight filtering through floor-to-ceiling windows. Heavy curtains framed the glass, and expensive furniture cast long shadows across the polished floor. But my attention fixed immediately on the figure thrashing in the massive bed near the window.
Victor.
He was in the bed, actually in the bed, his body twisted in the sheets, his hands clawing at the air as if fighting off some invisible attacker. His wheelchair sat empty beside the nightstand, a silent witness to his vulnerability. His head thrashed from side to side, his face contorted in an expression of pure terror.
"No... no, please..." His voice was hoarse, desperate, nothing like the cold, controlled tone I'd grown accustomed to. "Sharon... the brakes... I can't... I can't stop it!"
My throat tightened. Sharon. His dead wife.
I rushed forward, my hands reaching for his shoulders. "Victor! Victor, wake up!"
The moment my fingers touched him, he seized my wrist with crushing strength. His eyes flew open, wild and unseeing, dark pools of panic and confusion. He pulled me closer with surprising force, his grip iron-tight around my arm.
"Sharon?" His voice cracked on her name, thick with anguish and something that sounded like hope. "Sharon, I'm... I'm sorry?"
I tried to pull back, but he held firm, his other hand coming up to cup my face with trembling fingers. His thumb brushed across my cheek, and the tenderness of the gesture made my chest ache.
"I shouldn't have...," he whispered, his voice breaking. "The accident... there was so much blood. I tried, God, I tried, but I couldn't move..."
"Victor, it's me. It's Emily." I kept my voice soft, gentle, even as my wrist throbbed under his grip. "You're having a nightmare. You need to wake up."
For a long moment, he stared at me with those haunted eyes, his expression caught between horror and desperate longing. I could see the battle playing out across his face...the dream fighting against reality, memory warring with the present.
Then recognition dawned.
His eyes focused, truly focused, and I watched comprehension flood in like cold water. The horror that washed over his features was immediate and absolute. He released me as if I'd burned him, his body jerking backward instinctively...but his legs didn't respond. They never did.
I watched the realization crash over him in waves. The vulnerability. The exposure. The humiliation of being seen like this...weak, terrified, trapped in a body that wouldn't obey his commands.
He tried again to move away from me, his upper body straining, his hands pushing against the mattress, but his lower half remained stubbornly still. The frustration and shame in his eyes was devastating to witness.
"Emily." My name came out strangled, barely audible. "What are you... what are you doing here?"
I rubbed my wrist, feeling the phantom of his grip still there. "You were screaming. I heard you from my room."
"Get away from me." The words came out low, dangerous. His hands gripped the sheets, knuckles white. "Get away from me right now."
"Victor, you were having a nightmare. You were in pain. I couldn't just..."
"I don't recall asking for your opinion on what you could or couldn't do." His voice was ice, each word sharp enough to cut. "I told you never to enter my room. Do you have any idea what 'never' means, or was that too hard for you to understand?"
The cruelty in his tone made me flinch. "I was worried..."
"Worried?" He laughed, but there was no humor in it, only bitterness. "How touching. The hired wife playing her part so convincingly. Tell me, Emily, was breaking into my room part of your grand plan to secure your position here? To what, catch me at my weakest so you could use it as leverage later?"
"That's not fair..."
"Fair?" His voice rose, harsh and cutting. "You want to talk about fair? You violated the one boundary I set. The ONE rule I made explicitly clear. But I suppose rules don't apply to you, do they? Not when you can play the concerned angel, rushing to the rescue."
He finally managed to shift his body, reaching for the wheelchair with trembling hands. I moved to help him, but he held up a hand that stopped me dead.
"Don't you dare," he hissed. "Don't you dare touch me. I don't need your pity, your help, or your presence. I need you to get the hell out of my room before I forget why I hired you in the first place."
"Victor, please..."
"What part of 'get out' is unclear to you?" His hands gripped the edge of the bed as he began the painstaking process of transferring himself to the wheelchair. "Or do you enjoy watching me struggle? Is that it?"
He gestured at his legs with such disgust, such raw self-loathing, that my breath caught.
"I don't think that at all," I whispered.
"I don't care what you think." He finally made it into his wheelchair, and the relief on his face was quickly masked by more anger. "You're an employee, Emily. The only reason you're here at all is because I'm paying you to be. So don't confuse our arrangement with anything resembling a real relationship where you have the right to burst into my room whenever you feel like playing savior."
I took a step back, my vision blurring with unshed tears.
"You said her name," I said quietly, not knowing why I was prolonging this torture. "Sharon. You were calling for Sharon."
His face went pale, then flushed with a rage so intense I almost stepped back further. "How dare you." You have no right. No right to be in this room, no right to witness my private moments, and absolutely no right to analyze my dreams like some amateur therapist."
"I wasn't trying to..."
For a moment, he looked like he might be sick. Then the fury returned, volcanic and uncontrolled.
You have no idea what you're talking about. "You see this?" He slapped his lifeless legs with enough force to make me wince. "This is nothing compared to what I lost. Nothing. And I'll be damned if I let some contract wife dissect the worst moment of my life."
"I just wanted to help..."
"I don't want your help!" The words exploded from him.
He wheeled himself closer to me, and I could see the pain behind the anger, the shame fueling his cruelty.
"Let me make this crystal clear since you seem to have trouble with simple instructions. You are not my wife. You are not my friend. You are not my confidante. You are a transaction. A means to an end. And the moment you forget that, the moment you start believing this charade is real, is the moment this arrangement becomes a problem."
His words felt like shards of glass embedding themselves in my chest.
"We have a public event in five days," he continued, his voice cold. "A charity gala. It will be our first appearance together as a married couple."
My shoulders tensed. "Five days? Victor, I'm not ready. I need more time to..."
"You'll never be ready." His words were flat, final. "But you'll do it anyway. That's what we agreed to. That's what I'm paying you for."
The casual cruelty of that statement, reducing everything to a transaction, made my chest tighten with hurt.
"Fine," I said quietly, my voice barely steady. "Five days. I'll be ready."
"There will be reporters. Cameras. Questions about how we met, why we married, what our plans are. You'll need to have our story memorized perfectly. Charles will brief you tomorrow on the details."
"I understand."
"Under no circumstances will you mention anything about tonight. About what you saw here."
About your weakness, I heard in the unspoken words. About the cracks in your armor.
"I wouldn't," I said, fighting to keep my voice from breaking. "I would never use your pain against you, Victor. No matter what you think of me."
"What I think of you is irrelevant." He turned away, facing the window. "You're here to do a job. Tonight you failed at that job by violating my explicit instructions. Don't fail again. Now get out."
I nodded even though he couldn't see me and slipped out of the room, pulling the door closed behind me with a soft click.
The hallway felt even colder than before. I leaned against the wall, my legs suddenly weak, and pressed my hands over my face. My whole body was shaking, from shock, from hurt, from the devastating cruelty of his words.
You are a transaction.
The only reason you're here is because I'm paying you.
But underneath all those cutting remarks, underneath the walls he'd rebuilt higher and stronger than ever, I'd seen something else. I'd seen the desperate longing in his voice when he'd thought I was Sharon. The tender way he'd touched my face. The agony when he'd spoken about losing her.
Whatever had happened in that accident, Victor blamed himself. The nightmare had made that clear. He was trapped in that moment, reliving it over and over, unable to escape the guilt that consumed him.
And I... I was just a stand-in. A convenient replacement to play a role in his elaborate charade. Nothing more.
The reminder shouldn't have hurt as much as it did.
I pushed away from the wall and made my way back to my room, my footsteps echoing in the empty corridor. Sleep felt impossible now, but I crawled back into bed anyway, pulling the covers up to my chin like armor against the cold.
But as I finally drifted into an uneasy sleep, I couldn't shake the image of Victor's face when he'd thought I was Sharon, couldn't forget the raw emotion in his voice, the desperate way he'd reached for me.
And I couldn't help but wonder what it would feel like if he ever looked at me that way. Not as a replacement, not as an employee, but as Emily.
Just Emily.
The thought was dangerous, foolish, and utterly impossible.
But it lingered anyway, like a ghost.
---
The morning after brought exactly what I'd expected, Victor at his coldest, his walls rebuilt higher and stronger than ever.
Except this time, he didn't even grant me the courtesy of his icy presence.
Lily and I sat at the breakfast table, but Victor's seat remained conspicuously empty. I found myself glancing at the doorway every few minutes, expecting to hear the familiar sound of his wheelchair, the quiet authority of his presence filling the room.
But he never came.
Lily picked at her scrambled eggs, her small face scrunched in confusion. She'd grown accustomed to our breakfast routine...the three of us sharing the morning meal.
"Mom?" Lily set down her fork, her voice small. "Where's Mr. Hawthorne?"
My throat tightened. "He's busy this morning, sweetheart."
"But he's always here for breakfast." She looked toward the empty chair with genuine concern. "Is he sick? Did I do something wrong?"
"No, baby. No, of course not." I reached across the table to squeeze her hand, forcing brightness into my voice that I didn't feel. "Mr. Hawthorne has a lot of work to do today. Important business things. You know how busy he is."
Lily nodded slowly, but I could see she wasn't entirely convinced. She pushed her eggs around her plate for a few more minutes before asking to be excused.
"I'm going to draw Mr. Hops a picture," she announced. "To show Mr. Hawthorne later. Maybe it will make him feel better if he's sad."
My heart clenched. "That's very sweet of you, baby."
I watched her leave, her small figure disappearing down the hallway, and then I just sat there, staring at Victor's empty chair. The absence felt like a statement, a punishment more effective than any of his harsh words last night.
You violated my privacy, the empty chair seemed to say. And this is what you get.
I stood to leave, my breakfast barely touched, when I nearly collided with Jenkins in the doorway. He was carrying a silver tray laden with breakfast—coffee, toast, eggs, fresh fruit—clearly prepared for someone who wasn't eating in the dining room.
Our eyes met, and in that brief moment, an entire conversation passed between us.
I glanced down at the tray, then back up at Jenkins. My eyebrows raised slightly. He's avoiding me.
Jenkins' expression remained professional, but I caught the slight tightening around his eyes, the almost imperceptible nod. Yes, he is. And I'm sorry you're caught in this.
I gestured subtly with my chin toward the hallway where Lily had gone, then pressed my lips together and shook my head slightly. Not now. Not where Lily can hear.
Jenkins understood immediately. He gave me the barest nod, a silent promise that we'd talk later, when little ears weren't present to absorb the tension crackling through the mansion.
"Good morning, Mrs. Hawthorne," he said aloud, his voice professionally neutral. "I trust breakfast was satisfactory?"
"Yes, thank you, Jenkins." I kept my voice equally neutral, playing the part. "Please give Mr. Hawthorne my... my regards."
"Of course, ma'am."
He moved past me toward Victor's study, and I watched him go, that tray of food a tangible reminder of how completely Victor was shutting me out.
I made my way toward Lily's room. I'd meant to tell her about Ashford Academy yesterday, had been so excited to share the news. But by the time I'd returned from the school tour, exhausted from the emotional weight of the day, I'd found her already asleep, curled up with Mr. Hops clutched to her chest.
And then the nightmare had happened, and Victor's cruel words, and suddenly telling Lily about the new school had fallen to the bottom of my priorities.
But I couldn't put it off any longer. Lily needed to know. I'd promised to tell her.
I found her in her room, sprawled on her stomach on the floor, crayons scattered around her as she worked on her drawing. She looked up as I entered, her face still carrying traces of worry.
"Is Mr. Hawthorne okay?" she asked immediately.
"He's fine, sweetheart. Just very busy." I sat down on the edge of her bed, patting the spot beside me. "Come here. I need to talk to you about something."
Lily's eyes went wide, and she scrambled to her feet. "Am I in trouble?"
"Come sit," I said, keeping my expression carefully neutral, almost stern.
She climbed up beside me, her small hands twisting in her lap. "Mom, I didn't mean to..."
"Lily." I kept my voice serious, even a little severe. "I need to ask you something, and I need you to be completely honest with me. No lying, okay?"
Her face had gone pale, her eyes enormous. "Okay," she whispered.
"This is very important."
"I promise, Mom. I won't lie." Her voice was barely audible now, and I could see her mind racing, trying to figure out what she'd done wrong.
I held the serious expression for one more beat, watching her squirm, and then my face broke into a wide smile. "How would you feel about going to a new school?"
The transformation on her face was instant...confusion, relief, then excitement all flashing across her features in rapid succession. "A new school? Really?"
"Really." I laughed, pulling her into my lap. "Mr. Hawthorne enrolled you at Ashford Academy. You start Monday."
"Ashford Academy?" Her voice came out as a squeak. "Mom, that's...that's the school with the big playground and the art room and the music classes! Sarah from my old class, her cousin goes there, and she said it's the most beautiful school in the whole world!"
Her enthusiasm was infectious, and for a moment, I forgot about Victor's coldness.
"They have a really good arts program," I told her. "And small classes. And really nice teachers. I visited yesterday, and it's even more beautiful than you're imagining."
Lily bounced in my lap, her earlier worry completely forgotten. "Can I bring Mr. Hops? Will I have to wear a uniform? Do they have a library? Can I..." She stopped mid-sentence, her excitement dimming slightly. "Wait. What about my friends? What about Emma and Josh and Sarah?"
My heart squeezed. This was the hard part, the inevitable cost of every opportunity Victor's money provided. "You'll make new friends, sweetheart. I know it's scary to leave your old school, but think of all the new people you'll meet."
"But Emma is my best friend." Her voice had gone small again. "We promised we'd always be in the same class. I promised."
I pulled her closer, pressing a kiss to the top of her head. "I know, baby. And I know it hurts. But sometimes things change, and we have to be brave about it. You can still see Emma. We'll arrange playdates. But you're going to love Ashford Academy. I promise."
Lily was quiet for a long moment, processing this. I could see her working through it, weighing the excitement of a new school against the sadness of leaving her friends behind.
"Will there be art classes?" she asked finally.
"So many art classes. Drawing, painting, sculpture, even photography for the older kids."
"And Mr. Hawthorne really arranged it?"
"He did."
Another pause. "Then I want to go." She looked up at me, her eyes still a little sad but filled with determination. "I want to make him proud. He's been so nice to us, Mom.
"Yes," I whispered, holding Lily tight. "He's been very nice to us."
Even if he never wanted to see me again, even if he spent the rest of our contract avoiding me, he'd given Lily this gift. And that mattered.
"Can I go show Mr. Hops my new school uniform when it comes?" Lily asked, her excitement returning full force.
"Of course you can."
She wiggled out of my arms and returned to her drawing, chattering away about all the things she'd do at her new school. I watched her, this bright, resilient little girl who adapted to change so much better than I did.
And I thought about Victor, locked away in his study, eating breakfast alone, rebuilding walls that I'd accidentally breached.
Five days until the gala.
Five days to figure out how to stand beside a man who could barely stand to be in the same room with me.
Five days to perfect a lie that was becoming more complicated with every passing moment.
I just hoped we'd both survive it.