The world goes soft.
That's the only way to describe it.
The sharp edges of the crystal chandelier blur.
The cacophony of the party fades into a low, pleasant hum.
My own body feels disconnected.
A strange, floaty sensation, as if I'm a balloon tethered to the ground by a single, fraying string.
Panic, cold and sharp, tries to cut through the fog.
This is not right.
This is a neurological event.
A psychoactive response.
A symptom.
My clinical brain is trying to file a report while the building is burning down around it.
"My drink."
The words come out wrong. Slurred. Thick.
I look at Theo.
His face is a mask of polite concern for the benefit of the crowd.
But his eyes are sharp. Alert.
They narrow on my face.
"Elara?"
"It's the same," I manage to say, my voice a strained whisper. "Vegas. It's the same feeling."
The change in him is instantaneous.
The polite mask doesn't just slip.
It shatters.
His entire posture shifts.
He becomes a predator.
His eyes dart around the room, scanning faces, looking for a threat.
He takes the glass from my suddenly numb fingers.
"We're leaving," he says, his voice a low, dangerous command.
"Now."
He puts a firm hand on my back and steers me toward the exit.
I can barely feel my feet on the ground.
Each step is a strange, disconnected motion.
Someone tries to stop us. A woman in a red dress.
"Leaving so soon?" she chirps.
"My wife isn't feeling well," Theo says, his voice smooth as glass. A perfect lie. "A little too much excitement."
He doesn't stop moving.
He's a shark cutting through water.
I am a pilot fish, swept along in his wake.
The car ride back to Malibu is a blur.
The city lights streak past the window like abstract art.
My thoughts are coming apart.
Unspooling.
I cling to a single, anchoring idea.
This is not your fault.
This was done to you.
The thought is a tiny, flickering light in a vast, chemical darkness.
Back at the house, the cold air of the foyer feels like a slap.
It helps to clear my head. A little.
Theo guides me to the huge white sofa and sits me down.
He disappears into the kitchen and returns with a bottle of water.
"Drink," he commands.
I obey.
He kneels in front of me, his expression grim.
He is all business.
All focus.
He's not my husband.
He's not my ex-patient.
He's a co-conspirator. A partner in a crisis I don't understand.
"Tell me exactly what you're feeling," he says. His voice is the one he uses on his board. Clear. Precise. Demanding data.
"Cognitive disorientation," I begin, my therapist-speak coming back automatically. "Mild euphoria. A feeling of disassociation. Motor skills are… sluggish."
"And Vegas?"
"The same," I say, the pieces finally, terrifyingly, clicking into place. "The blackout. The gaps in my memory. Theo… I don't think we were drunk."
The admission hangs in the sterile air between us.
"I think we were drugged."
He just nods, his jaw tight.
He already knew.
He'd already gotten there.
I was just the one who had to say it out loud.
"The wedding," I continue, the horror dawning on me with sickening clarity. "The happy couple act in the video. The laughter. It wasn't us. It was the drug."
Someone made us happy.
Someone made us fall in love for a night.
Someone orchestrated our marriage.
Our lives are not our own.
We are puppets, and someone else is pulling the strings.
"Who?" I whisper, looking at him. "Who would do this?"
"I have a list of competitors who would love to see my company implode," he says, his voice hard. "A scandal involving the CEO's mental health history and his therapist-turned-wife would do the trick."
"Or a rival for the Atherton directorship," I counter, my own list of enemies suddenly feeling terrifyingly real. "Someone who wants me to look unstable. Unethical."
We are two people with a thousand enemies.
And one of them just declared war.
"We need proof," I say, my mind starting to clear as the drug's initial wave subsides.
"We need to prove the Vegas incident was a setup."
Theo is already on his laptop, his fingers flying across the keyboard.
He gets his head of security, Dmitri, on the phone again.
The connection is a secure video link. A man with a shaved head and a grim expression appears on the screen.
"Dmitri," Theo says. "The casino security footage from two nights ago. The bar with the crystal dragon. I need the raw files. Now."
Dmitri nods once and his screen goes blank.
We wait.
The silence in the room is a living thing.
It's the silence of two people who have just realized they are pawns in someone else's game.
Five minutes pass.
Ten.
My heart is a frantic drum against my ribs.
Theo's laptop chimes.
Dmitri is back. His expression is even grimmer than before.
Which I didn't think was possible.
"It's gone," Dmitri says, his voice a low rumble.
"What do you mean, gone?" Theo snaps. "An entire night's worth of footage from a Vegas high-roller bar doesn't just go 'gone.'"
"I mean it's been wiped," Dmitri clarifies. "Scrubbed from the primary servers. The backups, too. It's a professional job. Very clean. There are no traces of the original files left. As of this moment, according to this casino's digital records… you were never there."
The hook lands.
It's the final, undeniable proof.
A random drunk night doesn't get professionally erased from a casino's high-security servers.
A conspiracy does.
Our enemy isn't just malicious.
They're sophisticated.
They have power.
And they know how to cover their tracks.
Theo ends the call, his face a mask of cold fury.
We stare at each other, the terrible truth settling over us.
Someone is actively, methodically, trying to ruin us.
And they are very, very good at it.
The rest of the night passes in a haze of paranoia.
Every shadow in the glass house looks like a threat.
Every sound from outside makes me jump.
We are two prisoners, trapped in a beautiful cage, waiting for the next move from an enemy we can't see.
Around 2 a.m., Theo stands up.
"I need a drink," he says. "A real one this time."
He leaves the room.
I hear him in the kitchen, the clink of a glass, the splash of liquid.
He's gone for a few minutes.
When he comes back, he's not holding a drink.
He's holding a single, cream-colored envelope.
His face is ashen.
All the anger, all the controlled fury, is gone.
Replaced by a look of pure, raw devastation.
He looks haunted.
He looks like the man I met three years ago.
The broken one.
"What is it?" I ask, my voice trembling.
He doesn't answer.
He just walks over and hands me the envelope.
"It was slipped under the front door," he says, his voice hollow.
My fingers are numb as I take it.
It's heavy, expensive paper.
My name is not on it.
His is.
I pull out the single sheet of paper inside.
There is one sentence.
Typed in a plain, generic font.
No signature.
No letterhead.
Just seven, perfectly aimed, soul-destroying words.
I know what really happened to Sarah.
And soon, everyone else will too.