“What can we do?” I ask her. “What is your father saying?”
“That he can make sure I’ll stay,” she whispers. “That I can still live with them. But this changes everything. You know he won’t let us get married now.”
“You don’t know that,” I tell her, trying to calm her down. “He might still want to go through with it. Nobody’s that fucking evil, Lily Anna.”
She lets out a bitter laugh, shaking her head as she says, “You obviously don’t know my father very well.”
Oh no, I do, darling. That’s the fucking problem.
“Won’t the other family want you to come see them?” I ask. “I mean, they must be wondering now that they’ve found out their daughter is… someone else.”
“Daddy… Oh God,” she chokes out another sob, realizing she can’t call her father by that name anymore. “He’ll make sure I can stay here, but I’ll be at his mercy then, Dexter… He’ll be fully in control of me.”
My head is starting to hurt, the headache behind my eyeballs threatening to make me lash out at Lily Anna, who’s done nothing wrong. I touch my fingertips to my temples, massaging them as I try to think.
My betrothed has just found out she was switched as a baby as part of a hospital fuck-up. This means she’s not an Oakes – and not a Firstborn. It also means another girl is going to take her place in Eden Falls, and she’s faced with two choices – go live with her real family, thousands of miles away from me, or stay here at Emilian Oakes’ mercy. I have no doubt his sick obsession with Lily Anna has now reached its head. It’s going to get worse and worse now that he knows she’s not actually his daughter. He’s going to steal her away from me, and I can’t allow that to happen.
“There’s another way,” I tell Lily Anna, and she raises her tear-streaked face. “I can help you.”
“How?” she asks, her bottom lip trembling.
“Hear me out,” I tell her. “It’s… it’s a lot to take in. But I think we can get away with it.”
“Okay,” she whispers, nodding eagerly as she sits closer to me, her dress fanning out on the floor beneath us.
She looks so goddamn beautiful tonight, on the eve of her seventeenth birthday. She’s wearing a poufy gown made of pale pink tulle, and elegant tall pumps. I’m almost three heads taller than her now, but the heels put her a little closer to my height.
Her parents – well, I suppose just the Oakes now – threw her this birthday party and decided to drop the bomb on her minutes before they started greeting guests. When I came up to Lily Anna, she was already shivering and tearing up, and we took advantage of the first moment we got to sit atop the stairs leading up from the grand hall in Oakes Estate. The partygoers below us look happy and carefree, and Lily Anna is anything but.
The full impact of what’s about to happen is hitting me now. I could lose her. I could lose her forever.
“We need to play our cards right,” I tell her softly.
“Like how?”
“Well, this stays between us,” I whisper. “Don’t tell anyone.”
“Not even Araminta?”
“No,” I laugh despite everything, tucking her hair behind her ear as I look at her affectionately. “Not even Araminta.”
This girl is a daily reminder that I fucking do have a heart.
“So, tell me,” she says, eagerly closing the distance between us until she’s practically sitting on my lap. “Tell me what we should do.”
“You need to go into hiding,” I tell her, touching my palm to her thigh. “We need to convince your family, new and old, that you’re gone, and there’s no way to find you.”
“Emilian won’t give up until he finds me,” she mutters. “And I have a feeling neither will the other family.”
“I know,” I nod. “That’s why we need to fake your death.”
“W-What?” she stutters, giving me an incredulous look. “We can’t do that.”
“We can, and we have to.” I grab her hands by the wrists, bringing them closer against my chest. “Listen to me. You won’t get hurt at all. We’ll say I was the witness. You threw yourself off the cliffs – you couldn’t handle leaving me, or Eden Falls.”
“Nobody will buy that,” she whispers, her eyes finding mine.
I know her so well by now, I can tell what she’s thinking. She wants me to tell her there’s another way. But I know there isn’t. If she wants to get out of this damn mess with me, she’s going to have to listen and do as I say.