Chapter 3 I Was Drugged The Night Before The Wedding

• Odette's POV
• The rehearsal dinner was a masquerade of manners and money, salt-polished chandeliers and roses so expensive they smelled like contracts.
• Brielle wore ivory silk pretending innocence and a diamond that threw sparks across the stemware. Ellis kept his palm at the small of my back like he owned the spine beneath it.
• We smiled, toasted, lied.
• “To new beginnings,” Brielle said, the table humming with practiced laughter.
• “It never stays buried for long.” The cut of her mouth promised she’d prove me wrong.
• Later, I found her on the terrace, the night wind combing the gardens into obedience while the moon haloed her like it approved.
• “You always liked playing queen,” I said.
• “And you always liked playing ghost,” she answered, turning slow, silk clinging like heat. “Back from the dead and still desperate to be seen.”
• “I’m still standing. Ask yourself why.”
• A server passed; she plucked two flutes, offered one.
• Bubbles rose, catching the light.
• “Peace offering,” she murmured. “We can manage civilized for one night, can’t we?”
• I took it. The first sip was crisp; the second, sweet in a way grapes couldn’t explain.
• “There’s a fitting,” she said. “Room 314, east wing. Try not to keep them long. Tomorrow is important.”
• Her hand brushed my shoulder, light as a hook. “Sleep well.”
• She left before I could decide if that was a wish or a curse.
• The corridor sloped—not in reality, but in my skull.
• My pulse lagged, my skin too warm, every surface glittering a fraction too hard. I told myself it was fatigue. Then 3-1-4 swam on the plaque and the door sighed open.
• Three men. Suits loosened, ties forgotten, smiles pretending politeness. The bed turned down with sharp hotel corners.
• “Ms. Quinn,” the tall one said. “Right on time.”
• “This is a fitting,” I said, my voice sounding borrowed.
• “Of course.”
• He stepped aside, and I stepped in because the hallway wouldn’t hold still under my heels. The door latched. One man drifted toward me with a glass of water that didn’t look like salvation. Another leaned against the door.
• “Back up,” I said. My voice stayed steady.
• “You’re looking faint,” the nearest murmured, reaching for me.
• The door slammed the wall.
• The man filled the frame: tall, storm-glass eyes, shirt sleeves rolled. Callum Sterling. My grandfather once called him a trusted heir back when that meant something. His gaze swept—my face, the men, the bed, the way my knees didn’t trust me.
• “Out,” he said, the word drawing blood.
• The nearest man’s hand kept moving. Callum caught his wrist midair and pressed until a small bone decided it didn’t want to hold its shape; the man gasped and stumbled backward. The one at the door moved like a bad decision. Callum met him with a palm to the chest and a sidestep, using the man’s momentum to fling him into the hall, then turned his head just enough to remind the third one he existed. “Walk, or I put you through the window.” They chose to walk. The door clicked.
• My body wanted to crumple. His hand caught my chin, tilting my face up.
• “Odette. With me.”
• “Brielle—”
• “I know.”
• He slid an arm under my knees, the other along my back, and lifted me as if the floor were optional. I hate being carried. I pressed my face into his shirt anyway, breathing in salt, citrus, smoke, and something that was just him. The elevator hummed. Night air cooled my fever.
• He took me to his apartment, not the hospital and not my hotel. Inside, everything was clean lines and quiet attention: matte-black kitchen, dark wood, a view that stole argument from your mouth.
• A doctor waited with gray hair, discreet eyes, and hands that never fumbled. Light in my eyes, pulse at my wrist, questions without judgement.
• “Aphrodisiac, combined with a mild sedative,” he said finally, voice low.
• “Short half-life. Elevated heat, heightened sensitivity, disorientation. She’ll be clear in a couple of hours. No lasting harm.” He left me water and a look that said he’d seen worse done with better smiles, then he was gone.
• Callum didn’t hover. He existed in the space with a stillness that made everything else less loud. Shirt sleeves rolled, veins a pale rope under his forearms, jaw tight with a fury that wasn’t reckless.
• He had the kind of face that had been handsome long before it learned to be dangerous: straight nose, mouth made to issue orders and keep them. He watched me drink, watched me breathe, watched the pink come back to my cheeks while the heat under my skin smoldered, chemical and humiliating and unmistakable.
• “You stayed,” I said.
• “That’s what I do.”
• “You guard assets.”
• “I make sure you walk out of bad rooms.”
• We looked at each other. I could still feel the residue of what Brielle had poured down my throat, a low burn like a sparkler pressed to the inside of my skin, but the fog had lifted; words lined up without staggering.
• “I’m clear,” I said.
• “No excuses in my head. I know exactly what I’m saying.”
• His eyes, that dark green, searched, measuring like a man who never trusted secondhand reports. “Good.”
• I stood. Barefoot on his floor, dress clinging to my hips in a way that felt like a dare.
• The night outside pressed glass. He was all lines and waiting. I crossed to him until heat slipped from his body into mine and the aphrodisiac sparked meanly in my blood.
• “Thank you,” I said, and the words tasted like iron and surrender and something else I’d sworn to deny. He opened his mouth to say I didn’t owe him anything.
• I climbed into his lap instead, slow and unambiguous, knees bracketing his thighs, skirt riding up. His hands hovered, then settled on my hips, heavy, possessive without apology.
• “I’m sober,” I said. “I want you, Callum. I want you tonight.”
• His pupils widened, dark swallowing green.
• “Say it again.”
• “I want you.”
• The restraint in his face cracked like thin ice.