Her Fiancé Sent His Twin, She Chose the Brother She Loved novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Wrong Man at My Party
At her engagement party Nadia works out that the man in her fiancé's suit is his twin, ends the engagement in front of two hundred guests, and hands the ring to Victor; as she finishes, Sal collapses.
At 7:40 on the night of my engagement party, my fiancé crossed the rooftop carrying my tea, and it was exactly right.
Oolong, no sugar. A lemon wedge on a saucer beside the cup, not in it.
Three minutes of steeping, which I could tell by the color.
In three years Domenic had never once gotten it right.
He ordered me coffee and called it a surprise.
"Three minutes," he said, and handed me the saucer.
"Thank you," I said.
Two hundred guests were eating arancini under the string lights, and a cousin with a phone was filming the cake.
I stood there holding the one correct cup of tea in Domenic's history and felt my stomach drop.
Something was wrong, and it was wearing my fiancé's suit.
I decided to be fair and run three tests.
My first rule at work is that I don't decide anything until I have written three options.
Option A, he'd practiced.
Option B, he'd asked someone.
Option C was the one I didn't want to write on the card in my clutch.
"What time did you text me this morning?" I asked.
"7:02," he said. "You said the lemon joke was the best part."
I had said that, in the elevator, to Marcy.
Domenic slept until nine every day of the three years I'd known him, and still managed a 7:02 text each morning.
I had always taken that as proof he loved me enough to set an alarm.
I handed him my phone.
"Read me the text," I said.
He read it out loud, every word, including the joke about the roof being empty if I wanted the quiet.
He did not scroll to find it.
"That's very good," I said.
"I have a good memory," he said, and drank some of his own water with great care.
His hair looked wet.
It was combed flat behind his ears and glued there, every strand.
Domenic wore his hair cropped short, and he had stubble.
This man was clean-shaven.
"Look at me," I said.
He looked at my shoulder first.
He waited a beat, and then his hazel eyes came up and found mine.
I knew that pause.
I had known it for seven years.
Domenic met everyone's eyes the second they walked in. He had never paused for anyone in his life.
"Victor," I said quietly.
The man in my fiancé's suit closed his eyes.
"Hi," he said.
I took him by the sleeve and walked him past the bar, past a tray of prosecco, and into the coat room, where a teenager from the catering company was eating a cannoli in the dark.
"Out," I said.
She left with the cannoli.
I turned on Victor.
"Where is he?"
"The Marlowe Hotel bar," Victor said. "I'm told it's a very important dinner. He asked me to stand here for ten minutes, and then for ten more, and then it was an hour."
"An hour," I said. "At my engagement party."
"I said no first," Victor said.
"How many times?"
"Once. Out loud."
I dialed Domenic and put him on speaker.
He picked up on the second ring, and I could hear glasses and a man laughing.
"Nad," he said, warm and a little out of breath. "Happy engagement day, love. How's the cake?"
"Where are you?"
"Gallatin only does Thursdays. I told you about Gallatin. It's one night, and Vic's basically me with better handwriting."
"He's basically you," I said.
"He's done it before," Domenic said. "He did my statistics final in college. Nobody got hurt."
Victor looked at the coat rack.
"Domenic, what did I just order for myself?"
There was a pause on the line, and I heard him cover the phone and ask somebody for a menu.
"Tea," Domenic said. "A tea. Something with a flower."
"Oolong."
"That's the one."
I hung up.
Victor held out his hand, and I put the phone in it.
"I owe you an apology, Nadia," he said.
"You can start by coming back up with me," I said. "You're not leaving until I say so."
"Understood," he said.
The band was playing something slow and bright.
Marcy was by the stairs with my coat over her arm, and she took one look at my face and handed me the microphone off the stand, which wasn't her job and was exactly right.
I climbed onto the little stage.
Two hundred faces turned toward me, and so did every phone.
I pulled the folded card out of my clutch.
Option A, thank everyone. Option B, thank everyone, but shorter.
Option C said: do not mention Dean's golf.
"I wrote three versions of this toast," I said. "None of them were for tonight."
A few people laughed.
Then Victor stepped up beside me in the borrowed suit, with his hair shining, and the laughter stopped.
"This is Victor," I said. "Domenic's brother. He's been standing in for the man I'm supposed to marry."
Nobody moved.
A waiter stopped with a tray of arancini held out to nobody.
"Domenic isn't here," I said. "He's across town at a dinner, and he sent his twin to say yes for him."
I took the ring off my finger.
It came off easily. It always had.
"I'm not marrying a man who sends a stand-in," I said.
I put the ring in Victor's palm and closed his fingers over it.
"Give that to your brother," I said. "Tell him the tea was perfect."
His face did something I didn't have time to read.
In the front row, Domenic's father set his glass on the table and let out one loud laugh, and then he stopped laughing.
He put his hand flat against his chest.
"Hm," he said.
Then he went down onto the terrace tiles, and the whole roof started screaming.
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