The Call

Two days later, Naomi's phone rang while she was folding table runners for centerpiece samples spread across her kitchen table.

"Priya?" She hadn't heard from Priya Chandran in weeks — not since Priya's firm picked up an "outside contract review" for the Pemberton-Ashgrove family trust.

"Can you talk?" Priya's voice was low, fast.

"I'm literally folding napkins for my own wedding. Yes."

"Not about napkins." A pause, papers shuffling somewhere on Priya's end. "I shouldn't be calling you. I could lose my job for calling you."

Naomi set the runner down. "Priya, what's going on?"

"The addendum. The one attached to your prenup." Priya's voice dropped further. "I wasn't supposed to see the final draft, I was just proofing formatting, but there's a clause — Naomi, it's about children."

"What about children?"

"It's timed. Twenty-four months from the marriage date." Priya's voice dropped further. "If you two haven't had a biological child within two years, there's a forfeiture trigger. You lose claim to anything in the marital trust. Everything reverts to the Ashgrove side. You'd sign an NDA and—"

The line cracked with static.

"Priya?"

"—someone's at my office door, I have to—"

"Priya, wait, forfeit what exactly, what does 'everything' mean, is Grant even—"

The call dropped.

Naomi stood in her kitchen holding a phone gone silent, a table runner crumpled in her other fist, the smell of centerpiece flowers suddenly sickly sweet.

She called back. Straight to voicemail.

She called again. Same.

Her hands were shaking now, not from cold. Two years. A ticking clock stitched into a wedding contract, hidden behind legal formatting and Corinne's locked drawer and a smile that never once reached her eyes.

She thought of Thursday. Two days away. The day she was supposed to sign papers she'd been told were "standard."

She thought of the key on the chain around Corinne's neck.

And she thought, for the first time since the engagement, that she had absolutely no idea what she was about to marry into.