"Follow me. Stay close. Don't make a sound."
I turned and started walking, not waiting to see if he followed. He would. When you threw a drowning man a rope, he didn't ask questions.
The security office was in the administrative wing, tucked into a corner where guests never ventured. My domain. I had a storage room attached to it—barely bigger than a closet, crammed with old equipment and files nobody needed. No windows. No cameras.
The last place anyone would think to look for a missing groom.
I led him through the service corridors, sticking to routes I knew would be empty at this hour. The wedding chaos had pulled everyone toward the gardens and the main building—back here, near the administrative wing, we were alone.
The security office was empty—my team was out coordinating the search. I keyed in the code, guided him into the storage room, and closed the door behind us.
"Stay here." I kept my voice even. "Don't move or make noise. Everyone's focused on the exits and the perimeter. This is the last place they'll check."
He stood in the middle of the cramped space, surrounded by filing cabinets and spare radios. He looked lost. Younger than twenty-six. Like someone who'd just stepped off a cliff and hadn't hit bottom yet.
"Why are you doing this?"
The question hung in the stale air between us.
I could have given a dozen answers. Because I'd seen the look on his face and recognized it. Because I'd spent too many years watching people pretend to be fine until they weren't. Because some instinct I couldn't name had kicked in the moment our eyes met, and walking away had stopped being an option.
Instead, I said, "Stay here. I'll be back."
I closed the door and went to work.
Chapter 3
Tobias
The door clicked shut, and I was alone.
The storage room was barely eight feet square—crammed with filing cabinets, spare equipment, and boxes that looked like they hadn't been opened in years. A single bare bulb cast harsh shadows across the walls. No windows. No clock.
Stay here. I'll be back.
I sank to the floor with my back against a filing cabinet, knees drawn to my chest, and tried to make sense of what had just happened.
Vance Kessler had found me. The same man who'd caught me at the fountain four weeks ago, whose touch had haunted my dreams ever since—he'd found me cowering in a corridor, and instead of turning me in, he'd hidden me here.
Why?
I didn't have an answer. I barely had thoughts at all, just fragments of sensation and memory tumbling through my mind like debris after an explosion.
Elizabeth's radiant face this morning. My mother adjusting my boutonnière with her brand of affection that always felt like criticism. The weight of my father's hand on my shoulder, a grip that saiddon't embarrass me.
The corridor. The doorknob. The moment I stopped being what everyone expected.
What have you done?
I pressed my palms against my eyes and tried to breathe.
The storage room was silent, but my mind filled the quiet with horrors. I imagined the chaos outside—voices calling out, footsteps hurrying through corridors, my father's face when he realized I was gone. I could picture him perfectly: cold fury, calculating assessment of damage, already thinking about spin control and damage limitation.
My mother would be quieter. She always was. But her silence was worse than my father's rage.
And Elizabeth—
I couldn't think about Elizabeth.
