The wedding band feels like a manacle. Across the breakfast table, Damien Voss—my husband of precisely forty-eight hours—peels a blood orange with surgeon’s precision, offering me the first segment. ‘They told me you prefer these over grapes.’ My throat tightens. That’s right; I mentioned it once, years ago, to his ‘cousin’ at a charity gala. Except Damien wasn’t there. Was he? His smile doesn’t reach those glacier-blue eyes as footsteps echo in the hall. ‘We have fifteen minutes before the board meeting,’ he murmurs, thumb brushing my wrist where the tracker bracelet digs in. ‘Check the piano bench. And Emma? If they ask about your sister’s asthma, say it worsened after the honeymoon.’ The door opens. His hand snaps away as his mother glides in, her pearl necklace catching the light like a set of miniature skulls. I realize three things simultaneously: Damien just warned me, someone is monitoring my medical history, and that orange peel he discarded? The flesh side is scribbled with chemical formulas in tiny, frantic handwriting.