The morning after the masquerade arrived with the subtle cruelty only the elite could perfect—sunlight filtered through gauzy curtains, breakfast served like an apology laced with arsenic. The staff floated through the estate in silence, silver trays balanced with an elegance that mocked the tension lingering in the air.
Venessa sipped her cappuccino with deliberate nonchalance, legs crossed, silk robe draped just so. She wasn't here to look shaken. She was here to survive, and do it so beautifully they'd wonder if she even bled.
Across the impossibly long breakfast table, the remaining women glanced at one another like contestants in a game where the rules changed without warning. Gone were the two girls from the night before—as if they'd never existed.
That was the Lauren way. Erasure through elegance. Brutality in velvet gloves.
It wasn't long before a butler glided in, bearing another invitation—white this time, embossed with silver. No wax seal. No instructions. Just a cryptic line, printed in fine cursive:
"Trust is a currency. Spend wisely."
And beneath it, a time: 3:00 PM. A location: the east wing's sunroom.
The women were dismissed after breakfast, free to wander the estate—but Venessa knew better than to think this was freedom. Every corridor had eyes. Every staff member, a pair of lips sewn shut with loyalty or fear. So she played the game as it was meant to be played: with grace, performance, and razor-sharp perception.
She dressed carefully that afternoon—a fitted cream dress, simple yet disarming. Understated but expensive. The kind of look that whispered power rather than screamed it. Her hair was twisted into an effortless knot, and she wore no jewelry save for a pair of pearl earrings.
At precisely three o'clock, she arrived at the sunroom. Sunlight poured through floor-to-ceiling glass, illuminating the opulence with almost surgical clarity. Crystal pitchers of iced tea and cucumber water were laid out like bait. The remaining women trickled in, exchanging cautious smiles, fragile alliances forming like spiderwebs.
Then she appeared.
Adrienne Lauren. In slate-gray silk and diamonds sharper than any dagger. Her smile was thinner than her waistline, and twice as lethal.
"Today," she said, her voice honeyed and hollow, "you will partner up."
A murmur. Eyes darted. Venessa felt the room shift, calculating, spinning.
"You each have a secret. The other must find it out. You may use any method you wish—questions, charms, lies. But choose wisely whom you trust and what you share. At the end you must tell that secret in-front of all and it will be decided by the judges if get it correct."
She gestured, and a tray of cards was brought forward. "Pair up. Then draw."
Venessa didn't move first. The smart ones never did. Let the ambitious scurry, let the naive cling. She waited, cool and poised, until one of the quieter girls—a redhead named Elise—approached her with the desperation of someone who'd read too many romance novels and not enough history books.
"I trust you," Elise whispered.
Venessa smiled sweetly. "How lovely for you."
They drew their cards.
Venessa's said:"You know the secret. Do not reveal it unless absolutely necessary. The test is theirs. But so is your loyalty."
Elise's said nothing. Just a single line she read on her card: "Find out what she's hiding in her private love life."
Well. This was unexpected, is this girl too naive to reveal her task or playing double game on her. Like in hell, Venessa would tell her anything about her private life. But it could be fun to see how Elise try it because there's no way Venessa was spilling her fallen beans.
They were escorted to separate alcoves of the estate—gilded lounges, velvet-set rooms with views of the gardens. They had one hour. No staff. No surveillance—at least, not visibly. Just the two of them and the unbearable tension of a test dressed up like tea time.
Elise, bless her heart, tried subtlety first. Soft questions, gentle curiosity. Venessa played along for the first fifteen minutes, offering harmless anecdotes, laughter at all the right times, a sip of tea for every dodged bullet.
Then Elise got bold.
"Are you sleeping with Damien Lauren?"
Venessa choked delicately on a cucumber sandwich but she recoved quick. Damn it, it was good Elise used the man's full name otherwise, she would have snorted and acted smug as both her ex "Damon" and the to-be "Damien" had similar sounding names. She could act detached for the mention of stranger "Damien Lauran" but "Damon Krane" would have made her face ugly or eyes disguted. "Huh?"
"I noticed you the most since you walked in, you look like a rich heiress, your choice of dresses, heels, make-up, hair style...everything is perfect. So I guess you must be an elite. And if you're an elite you might have seen, meet the Damein Lauran... "
Elise's speculation made Venessa thoughtful for a moment, it was partially true, except she used to be one of a heiresses but not anymore but habits die hard. She was born in luxury if given to her, she knew how to breath in it. Whereas commoner like Elise might find it difficult and pressurising.
"And aboive it all, you've this air of confidence about you, like you knew you're the chosen one...you never ask or talk about Damien as if either you know the man so well than other that you don't need or you're completely uninterested in him. And I highly doubt, that any women here would not be..."
Point. It was true Venessa hadn't shown any interested in knowing her groom or about him from others, that's because she was focused on Adrinne and the little off time she gets from these games she spend designing, it was like working on plan B if you miss the plan A, that is being Adrinne Lauran's daughter-in-law.
So thinking about the groom who has yet to show his full face seems like daydreaming she couldn't afford. Hence, she didn't...it was simple but Venessa felt like it would took difficult for Elise to digest.
"You really think, I know Damien Lauran, trust me darling if I were, would I still be here playing hide and seek with secrets and amateur interrogators?"
Elise flushed, embarrassed but emboldened. "Then what are you hiding?"
Venessa leaned in, eyes glinting. "Don't you know the first rule of sharing? Always show your weakness as your strength."
Elise blinked.
"I don't ask for secrets—because people offer more when they think no one's listening. You all talk, and I listen. I think a lot about Damien, but I noticed none of us have actually seen him. That's why I never asked."
Hearing it put that way, Elise laughed—light and triumphant, as if she'd just solved a riddle no one else had dared to try. Her eyes sparkled with the thrill of revelation, certain she'd glimpsed the real Venessa.
Venessa took a slow sip of tea, hiding her smirk behind porcelain and polish. Elise's laughter still lingered in the air, light and self-satisfied—as if she'd plucked some forbidden truth from Venessa's carefully curated silence.
Cute.
It always amused her, how quickly people mistook access for insight. Give them a smile, a half-truth dressed in vulnerability, and they'd walk away thinking they'd discovered buried treasure—never realizing they'd been handed costume lie.
Poor thing. She didn't even realize the version she thought she'd uncovered was the one Venessa had chosen to let her see.
It was then—perhaps in overconfidence or the giddy high of believing she'd cracked some private code—that Elise began narrating her life to Venessa like a broadcast channel, uncorked and pouring without filter.
She spoke of her hometown, the kind with one bookstore and two bakeries that all shut by six. Of her father, once a logistics advisor for the Laurens in their South Pacific ventures—dismissed quietly after a contract dispute that no one dared call betrayal. Of her selection: a letter that had come wrapped in silver ribbon, arriving the same day as her final university exam results. As if fate had penciled her into a different story entirely.
"I wasn't supposed to be here," she said with a half-laugh, brushing her curls behind one ear. "But maybe that's why I'm exactly who Mrs. Lauran and Damien need."
Uff, the naivety. Venessa thought but said nothing. Just watched her with the serene stillness of a cat observing a bird mid-song.
Venessa remained seated. Still, calm, unreadable.
But inside?
A quiet storm brewed. Not fear—no, this was deep and intense curiosity.
The kind with eyes so intent—so starved to see beyond the glass—that mirrors cracked beneath the weight of their gaze.
Because the game, for all its elegance and deadly choreography, didn't make sense. Not really. Not if you stopped clinking teacups and started asking real questions.
Why would the Adrienne Lauren—matriarch of old money, terror in stilettos, woman with blood colder than her diamonds—stage a game to find a daughter-in-law?
Why masquerades, secrets, temptation, psychological strip poker? What kind of twisted selection process was this?
Venessa had seen, heard of these kinds of games before—at boardroom tables, in foundation galas, even at her own engagement party, right before Damon Krane turned her into a headline. But this? This was something else.
It didn't reek of matchmaking. It reeked of vetting.
Adrienne wasn't looking for someone to complete her son.
It felt... off.
Venessa leaned back on the velvet divan, letting her gaze drift across the room's rococo carvings, the curated opulence. Everything here screamed wealth—but wealth with intent. Wealth that watched.
This wasn't a mother-in-law searching for someone to butter scones and birth heirs. No. This was a queen looking for a war general in disguise. Someone who could outlast, not just outshine.
Venessa narrowed her eyes.
This isn't about Damien, she thought.
And that? That was far more disturbing.