Total pages in book: 90
Estimated words: 88960 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 88960 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
I close the door.
Okay. Okay.
I sink onto the edge of the bed and try to breathe. The mattress is impossibly soft, the kind of expensive-soft that makes you feel cradled. Under other circumstances, I might appreciate it.
Under these circumstances, all I can think about is the man who carried me here. His arms around me. His eyes on my mouth.
Stop it, Bailey.
My phone.
The thought cuts through everything else. My phone was dead in the bookshop, but maybe...
I dig into my pocket with shaking hands. It's there. Small and familiar and so beautifully ordinary.
I press the power button.
The screen lights up.
Seventy-three percent battery. Full signal. Everything working exactly as it should.
For one wild, hopeful moment, I think: I can call for help. I can call 911. I can call Heart and tell her I've been kidnapped by fictional characters and please, please come get me.
And then I see the date.
The date is wrong.
Not just wrong. Impossible.
According to my phone, it's three weeks ago. Three weeks before the day I walked into Hewhay's bookshop. Three weeks before Marilyn came into the studio. Three weeks before everything.
I stare at the screen.
I stare at it until the numbers blur.
Then, with fingers that don't feel like mine, I open my text messages.
They're there. All of them. Messages from Heart about work schedules. Messages from the group chat with the other assistants. A message from my mom asking if I wanted to come home for dinner next Sunday.
But the dates are wrong. Everything is from three weeks ago or earlier.
I check my email. Same thing.
I check social media. My accounts are there. My posts are there. My life is there, laid out in pictures and status updates, exactly as I remember it.
Except.
I scroll through Lauve Studio's page, looking for the post about Marilyn's wedding. The one that made Heart assign me to the account because she knew—she knew—it would twist something in me.
It's not there.
Marilyn's wedding hasn't been booked yet. Because according to this timeline, Marilyn hasn't walked into the studio yet. Because according to this timeline, that day hasn't happened.
I open my contacts. Find Heart's number. My thumb hovers over the call button.
And I realize I have no idea what I would say.
Hi, it's Bailey. I know we talked yesterday except yesterday hasn't happened yet. Also I'm trapped in a book and a mafia king wants to marry me. How's your Tuesday?
I set the phone down on the bed beside me.
I stare at the silk canopy above me.
And I try very, very hard not to scream.
HERE'S THE THING ABOUT photographs.
A photograph can lie. Not obviously, not in ways most people would notice, but in small, subtle ways that change everything. A shadow removed. A color corrected. A person edited out and the background filled in so seamlessly you'd never know they were there.
The finished image looks right. It looks real. But if you know what to look for, you can tell. There's something off about the lighting. Something wrong with the way the edges blend. The picture is lying to you, and once you see it, you can't unsee it.
That's what this feels like.
My life is here. My apartment, my job, my phone full of messages from people I know. Everything is in place. Everything looks right.
But something has been edited.
Time has been moved. Events have been shifted. And I'm standing in the middle of it, like someone Photoshopped me into a picture I was never supposed to be in.
The book.
It has to be the book.
Hewhay's gave me a book that had my name in it. My face. My mannerisms, described in ink that looked centuries old. And I read it, fell asleep in that too-comfortable armchair, and woke up here.
In a world where my life exists but the timeline has shifted.
In a world where four mafia kings rule from the shadows.
In a world where I'm apparently going to marry one of them in three days, whether I like it or not.
I laugh.
It's not a good laugh. It's the kind of laugh that comes right before crying, or screaming, or possibly both. The kind of laugh that tastes like burnt sugar at the back of your throat—something that should be sweet but went wrong somewhere.
I press my hands over my face and try to breathe.
In. Out. In. Out.
I am not going to have a panic attack in a silk-draped room in a fictional mafia king's mansion. I am not.
"It's not going to work," I inform the ceiling with as much dignity as I can muster. "I refuse to panic. I'm going to stay calm and rational and—"
"The door wasn't locked."
I scream.
Not a dignified scream. Not even a movie-heroine scream. Just a strangled yelp of pure shock that has me jerking upright so fast I lose my balance, and then I'm—
Oh no.
I'm falling off the bed.
My hand shoots out to grab the bedpost, but the silk sheets have tangled around my legs, and for one horrible, endless moment I'm just hanging there—half on the mattress, half off, one leg trapped in expensive fabric, arm wrapped around carved mahogany like it's a life raft.