Part 2Unmasking The Fake Fiancee

The air pressure in the dressing room plummeted to absolute zero.

The wardrobe assistants, sensing the catastrophic shift in Harrison’s aura, held their breath and practically melted into the corners of the room, terrified to make a sound.

Harrison didn't yell. He didn't throw a tantrum. He just stood there in suffocating silence, but his hands, hanging loosely at his sides, curled into fists so tight his knuckles turned bone-white.

He stared at the peeling edge of the tattoo. The tender anticipation in his eyes fractured, piece by piece, replaced by a dark, chilling hostility that made the blood run cold.

Sloane finally sensed the shift.

She turned her head stiffly. Catching Harrison’s horrifying reflection in the floor-to-ceiling mirror, she followed his line of sight down to her own back. She saw the peeling plastic film.

"H-Harrison…"

All the color drained from Sloane’s face. Beads of cold sweat instantly broke out across her forehead. She scrambled, her hands flying backward in a panicked attempt to cover her shoulder blade.

"No, Harrison, listen to me, let me explain. I’ve had this terrible skin allergy lately, and the birthmark, it—"

"Is that so?"

Harrison cut her off. His voice was a sheet of ice.

He didn't even bother tearing apart her absurd "allergy" excuse. Instead, he took two slow, measured steps forward, towering over her. Out of nowhere, he asked a question that seemed entirely unrelated to the moment.

"Sloane. When we were kids at the county foster home… what exactly was inside the glass jar we buried in the dirt under the old oak tree in the backyard?"

The moment those words left his mouth, I felt a physical shockwaves rip through my body. Standing in the hallway, my blood ran cold, then rushed to my ears in a deafening roar.

The old oak tree. The glass jar.

It was a suffocatingly hot summer fifteen years ago. The cicadas were screaming in the trees.

I was tiny, and I was crying hysterically because an older kid had stolen the single piece of candy the house mother had given me.

A boy had run all the way to the corner store, taking the twenty cents he’d earned from collecting aluminum cans for a month, and bought two pieces of the cheapest penny candy they had—butterscotch hard candies, wrapped in clear cellophane with little gold farmhouses printed on them.

After we ate the candy, we carefully flattened the two clear wrappers with the little gold houses. We folded them, placed them inside an empty jelly jar, and buried them beneath the roots of the old oak tree.

He had looked at me and said, “Stella, when we grow up, I’m going to build us a house exactly like the one on this wrapper, and we’ll never be apart again.”

Inside the room, Sloane’s breathing was erratic, bordering on hyperventilation.

Back at the office, she had constantly called me into her suite under various pretenses, aggressively fishing for details about my childhood in the foster system. But the jar was a secret that belonged only to him and me. I would never just hand that over to anyone. The most I had ever let slip was that my friend and I liked to bury things in the yard.

Now, Sloane was sweating through her makeup, her perfectly styled hair sticking to her forehead. She swallowed hard, her eyes darting frantically as her brain scrambled to piece together an answer from the fragmented rumors she’d stolen from me.

"It… it was a jar full of glass marbles!"

Sloane bit her lip, forcing her chin up in a desperate attempt at composure, offering a smile that looked more like a grimace of pain.

"Right, Harrison? We didn't have money for toys back then. You found a jar of marbles somewhere, and we buried it, pretending it was pirate treasure…"

Silence.

A dead, suffocating silence stretched over the dressing room for ten agonizing seconds.

Outside the door, I closed my eyes. Tears slipped silently down my cheeks, splashing onto the velvet tray and shattering against the diamonds of the heavy tiara.

Harrison let out a low, rough laugh. There was zero warmth in it. It was entirely composed of mockery, disgust, and profound self-loathing.

"Marbles." He chewed on the word, his eyes going entirely dead. "Right. A jar of glass marbles."

Sloane’s composure completely shattered. Realizing the gig was up, she lunged forward in absolute terror, grabbing at the sleeves of Harrison’s tuxedo, hoping her tears could blur the reality of what was happening.

"Harrison, please, you have to listen! I was so young, I just can't remember! But I swear it’s me! Look at my face, look at me—"

"Get your hands off me."