Chapter 1

On our wedding day, I opened the bridal limousine with a smile and found a live hen inside instead of my bride.

The surprise passed, and I was calm again.

It had to be another stunt from Miles Carrington, my fiancee's possessive adopted brother.

When I turned, there he was, hanging off Vanessa's arm exactly as expected.

"Vanessa's marrying you, so I'm the one left all alone."

I was about to lose my temper when Vanessa smiled at him indulgently and turned to the officiant.

"The hen can stand in for me. The ceremony means the same thing either way."

The officiant looked mortified.

For the sake of the Rowe and Carrington name, I swallowed it. Again.

Then came the send-off to the bridal suite. The guests were still cheering when I eased the door open.

Miles had Vanessa pinned to the bed, thrashing around like a toddler mid-tantrum.

"I'm not sleeping alone tonight. Vanessa has to stay with me."

I'd hit my limit, but Vanessa cut me off before I could get a word out.

"Then we'll move the wedding night to next month."

The room went dead silent. She kept going as if nothing about this were strange.

"Miles is traveling overseas with friends next month. We can have it then."

She wore a faint smile, certain I'd still be the dignified, forgiving man she planned to marry.

Instead, I took off my boutonniere.

"Don't bother."

Chapter 1

The room went so quiet I could hear every breath in it.

Eleanor Carrington forced a smile and tried to smooth it over.

"Vanessa's brother doesn't know any better. He's got the mind of a child. She'll make the wedding up to you."

Even Eleanor, who had always doted on her adopted son, thought Vanessa had gone too far.

Vanessa clearly didn't see it that way. She stared at me in disbelief.

"Julian, Miles is just too attached to me. Besides, we don't need a wedding to prove what we have.

"Your attitude here is completely out of line."

I stepped over the discarded boutonniere and moved closer, trying to read past the coldness in her face.

Five years together, and I'd believed we'd finally reached the life we planned.

Instead, she'd humiliated me in front of everyone.

All of it came out of me as one bitter laugh.

"So his word is law. And the wedding I spent months preparing—"

Before I could finish, Vanessa's expression hardened.

"Miles is my little brother and I love him. He grew up in an orphanage and he's terrified of being alone. Can't you show a little understanding?"

My fist clenched. Hadn't I shown enough?

The same performance had run on a loop for five years.

Vanessa once livestreamed a proposal to me from a hot-air balloon, then walked out on me in front of a dozen cameras because Miles said he didn't want to eat cake by himself.

Overnight, I turned into the biggest joke in Glenmoor.

Another time, in a downpour, I drove off the road into the river. The water was climbing past my chest and I called her over and over. She never picked up.

I found out later she'd been holding Miles until he fell asleep, because the thunder scared him.

The memories came back so hard I could barely pull in a breath.

My patience was gone. I felt the exact moment it went.

I said it clearly enough that nobody could pretend not to hear. "I'm not going through with this."

A gasp went around the room. Vanessa hauled me into the side room, furious.

"Fine. From now on I'll stay right beside you and ignore Miles completely. Is that what you want? Are you satisfied?"

Miles pounded on the door and she didn't so much as flinch.

"You're not going to die from being alone for five minutes."

Vanessa's chest rose and fell as she watched me.

Then a commotion started outside. Something was happening to Miles.

"Vanessa, I'm freezing. Nothing helps unless you hold me."

Vanessa let out an exasperated breath and was out the door in seconds.

It slammed behind her, and the sound landed somewhere deep in my chest.

I made myself go still. Then I called a number I hadn't used in years.

"You told me once you'd never marry anyone but me. Does that still stand?"

Chapter 2

Sometime after midnight, Vanessa shook me awake.

"Julian, get up and go apologize to Miles. He's in a bad way."

I looked at her, then shut my eyes in exhaustion.

She'd said those words more times than I could count.

After I started dating her, "I'm sorry" turned into a reflex.

Stomach pain made me call her, and the call woke light-sleeping Miles. I apologized.

I asked Vanessa to visit my mother's grave with me, which left Miles without anyone to go shopping with. I apologized.

I said I wanted a child, Miles overheard and panicked that a baby would take Vanessa's attention. I apologized for that too.

This time I didn't even open my eyes. "I'm not going."

Vanessa slapped me without warning.

The taste of blood spread slow and metallic through my mouth.

Something I couldn't read crossed her face, but her voice stayed cold as ever.

"Your mother let jealousy eat her alive, and in the end she couldn't take it and killed herself. Do you want to go the same way?"

The tears came before I could stop them.

The day my mother was found hanging, I'd have followed her. I would have, if Vanessa hadn't driven a knife into her own arm, over and over, right in front of me.

Her hand had shaken around the handle, hot and slick with blood, and she'd looked at nothing but my streaming eyes.

"If you die, I'm going with you."

She was my guardian angel after that.

What I learned later was that the only person she'd ever really guard was the adopted brother who refused to grow up.

She knew exactly where my deepest wound was, and she pressed her thumb into it anyway, just to shut me up.

We stared at each other through a brief, unbearable silence.

Vanessa opened her mouth awkwardly, and Miles's personal ringtone cut her off.

"Julian's trying to take you away from me. What's the point of being alive if I'm alone? I might as well jump."

The call cut out in a burst of shouting.

Vanessa grabbed her coat and shot me a look of pure resentment on her way out.

"If anything happens to Miles, you and I are finished."

I spent what should have been my wedding night alone in the house.

The gossip outlets ran it from every angle. Even the housekeeper looked at me with contempt.

"Ha. Dumped before he's even through the door. That marriage was never going to last."

I sat in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows for a long time. Then a message from Miles came through.

"How's it feel to be Glenmoor's favorite punchline?

"Your mother went through the exact same thing, didn't she? After she died, everyone decided she'd stolen another woman's husband and killed herself out of guilt.

"But I'll let you in on a secret. I'm the one who put the poison in her water. Vanessa cleaned it up for me afterward."

My ears started ringing and I couldn't move.

Everyone had always said an innocent woman would never have let a mistress walk into her own home.

When my mother was later found hanging in the Rowe family chapel, the public took it as proof she'd been guilty all along.

Her death turned into dinner-party conversation. Nobody brought flowers to the funeral. They left bags of rotting garbage instead.

The room tilted. I ran to Vanessa's study and tore through it until I found my mother's autopsy report.

The cause of death was right there in plain type: poisoning.

The suicide everyone believed in was a scene Vanessa had staged with her own hands.

I got to my feet in a daze and nearly went down. When I turned around, Vanessa was already standing behind me.

Chapter 3

She was wearing the wedding-night set I'd picked out for her. It was unbearable to look at now.

She glanced down, saw the autopsy report in my hand, and something guilty flickered in her eyes.

So everything Miles said was true.

I held the report up with shaking hands, still clinging to one thin scrap of hope.

"You knew the truth about how my mother died? The whole time?"

I wanted her to tell me none of it was real.

The guilt crossed her face and vanished. She started picking her words.

"Miles had already been through so much. Was I supposed to stand there and watch a boy that young go to prison?

"Julian, it's over and done with. Can't we just look forward?"

My eyes went wide and nothing came out of my mouth.

All those nights I couldn't sleep, she'd stayed up with me and talked me down until morning.

I thought we were on the same side.

She'd known from the very beginning. And she was one of the reasons my mother was dead.

She could say it this calmly.

Right then Miles came stumbling in and threw himself into her arms.

When he looked at me, he was crying like he was the one who'd been wronged.

"Julian, I know you hate how close I am to Vanessa, but you didn't have to send the autopsy report to the press."

I had no idea what he was talking about.

He pulled up a link on his phone. Every headline called him a murderer.

The next second, Miles grabbed a paring knife off the tray, pressed it to the artery in his neck, and tipped his face up.

"If killing me is what it takes, I'll save you the trouble. Just stop tearing down my name."

He started pushing the point into his skin.

"Don't! Miles, I'll make him apologize right now."

I turned my head and looked at Vanessa, stubborn about it.

"You don't believe me either?"

She didn't answer. The disgust in her eyes had ice in it.

"Julian, this happened years ago. Do you really have to keep hounding him?

"You want him gone. You want me all to yourself, and you'll take him apart to get it."

I stood there with no idea what to do with my hands.

My mother and I were the ones this had been done to. Why were we the ones carrying it?

I moved toward Miles to force the truth out of him, and he drove the knife into the right side of my abdomen.

Blood came fast.

Then he backpedaled, arranging his face into terror.

"Julian, please don't hit me. I swear I'll never come between you and Vanessa again."

Vanessa's face changed completely.

"This is my fault. I spoiled you until you lost all sense of where the line was, and now you think you can do whatever you please."

Then she turned and called for her security team. "Get in here. A hundred slaps. Nobody stops until the count is done."

Three big men closed in and I backed away. "It wasn't me. I swear it wasn't—"

The blows started falling before I finished, one after another.

When I could lift my head again, Vanessa was gently soothing the person in her arms.

It was as if I weren't in the room.

I clamped a hand over my stomach and watched the blood run out between my fingers.

I shut my eyes and rode out more slaps than I could count.

Eighty-eight, eighty-nine, ninety...

Only when the sound stopped did Vanessa spare me a glance, the way you'd toss someone a coin.

She saw my swollen face, saw me kneeling in a pool of my own blood, and her breath caught.

Right on cue, Miles let out a small whimper and pulled her attention back.

Through a haze, I watched her take his arm and walk out without a second of hesitation.

The next morning, the messages from the person coming to collect me got more urgent by the hour.

I packed quietly and got ready to leave the Carrington estate.

Then an anonymous video landed on my phone.

A bulldozer was rolling into the cemetery where my mother was buried.

I hadn't recovered from the shock before cheerful music erupted downstairs.

Chapter 4

Miles stood at the center of the ballroom in a tailored suit, Vanessa at his side, guests crowding in with birthday wishes.

He shot me a satisfied look, waiting for me to detonate.

I understood instantly. He'd sent the video.

With every eye in the room on me, I walked toward the center.

Vanessa opened her arms, assuming I'd pull her in and ask to make up, the way I always had.

Not this time.

I went around her and stopped in front of Miles.

"Miles. What was that message supposed to mean?"

Vanessa yanked me back by the arm, disgust all over her face.

"Look at the state of you. You've got no dignity left. Is this the man who's supposed to head the Carrington family?"

Under the guests' contemptuous stares, I turned and found myself in a mirror.

I looked like hell. Hollowed out, shaking so hard I couldn't stop it.

These past few years I'd seemed to gain everything while losing everything.

I stepped back and forced myself steady under Vanessa's unsettled gaze.

"Vanessa. Make Miles leave my mother alone."

She frowned, confused. Miles came toward me with a show of concern.

"You okay, Julian? How could I possibly do anything to your mother? She's been gone for years."

As he got closer, his expression twisted into something ugly.

"Vanessa promised to sign me a plot of land for a haunted house. I just had to help myself to your mother's grave first.

"And think about it. She got branded a homewrecker for nothing. All that resentment still down there. It's going to make the place so much better."

My eyes went wide.

Before I knew what I was doing, both my hands were locked around his throat.

"Why can't you leave her alone? Why—"

Vanessa wrenched me off and threw me aside, then stood over me.

"Julian, you've gone way too far.

"What do you get out of ruining Miles's birthday? All you're doing is making me hate you more. You push me further away every time."

I'd lost control completely, and what came out of me was barely a voice.

"Vanessa, I'm not marrying you. Not ever."

Her whole expression tightened.

"You can actually say that out loud? Julian, have you taken a single thing about us seriously?"

Then Miles started coughing hard, clutching his throat, unable to get a word out.

I was shoved out of the way, and Vanessa took him and left without hesitating.

Miles looked back at me with a look of pure triumph.

His phone lay forgotten on a table, still playing the footage of a bulldozer grinding my mother's headstone flat.

Whatever was left of me broke right there.

A month later, while Miles was overseas with friends, Vanessa threw herself into planning another ceremony.

The groom never came. What arrived instead was formal notice that the engagement and the wedding had been called off unilaterally.

"What?"

At that moment Eleanor Carrington came storming in with an envelope in her hand.

"Vanessa. Look at what you've done."

She tore it open, and her breath stopped.