Chapter 1
After the wedding rehearsal, my fiancé. Elias Carter-top consigliere to the Corsini family-reached over and pulled the
seatbelt across me, clicking it into place.
“Baby, you already married me in the rehearsal,” he said softly. “I won’t be at our actual wedding.”
I froze. “What do you mean?”
He smiled and kissed my forehead. “I met a girl. Feisty as hell. Didn’t want to be the other woman. So… we got married
this morning.”
“I’m someone else’s husband now. If I go through with our wedding. my wife will be devastated.”
My mind went blank. My voice shook. “Why? The ceremony’s a week away.”
He sounded apologetic. Innocent, even. “Baby, you’re the one I love most. But a man’s a man. And eighteen is eighteen.”
“If you can’t bring yourself to cancel, just find someone to stand in as the groom. Don’t make yourself suffer. I’d hate to
see you hurt.”
The tablet kept playing clips from our rehearsal.
The laughter spilling from the speakers sliced into me, inch by inch.
I pressed my lips together and shoved the ultrasound deeper into my bag.
He was right.
I shouldn’t be the one suffering.
Elias acted like nothing had happened, his fingers brushing my cheek the way they always did.
But every word out of his mouth was poison.
“You know how stubborn young girls are. Without a title, she wouldn’t even let me touch her.”
‘I chased her for six months. Finally got her into bed last night.”
It felt like someone had a hand around my throat. My limbs went cold and stiff.
He just smiled, smug.
“Right where you’re sitting now. Like a little wildcat-scratching one second, completely tame the next.”
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My gaze followed his, landing on the windshield.
There were still handprints on the glass. One big. One small. Overlapping..
Nausea hit like a tidal wave. I gripped the seatbelt, hard, until my eyes burned red.
He cupped my pale face, frowning slightly. “Why are you crying? You’re still Mrs. Carter.”
Those blue eyes were still full of that cloying, suffocating tenderness.
As if the man casually telling me he married someone else-who just described sleeping with her in this exact seat-
wasn’t him.
The absurdity clamped down on my chest, choking the air out of me.
He sighed and said, with a hint of resignation. “I know you’re mad. But she’s sensitive. If I show up at the wedding, she’ll
cry.”
“She’s not like other women. She’s pure. Knows her worth. Wants someone who belongs only to her. It took me six
months to take her virginity. I have to take responsibility.”
“You’ve always been understanding, sweetheart. You get it, right?”
Six months.
We’d been planning our wedding for six months.
So while he personally oversaw every detail-the flowers, the venue, the invitations-everything I’d ever dreamed of…
Somewhere I couldn’t see, he was doing everything he could to get another woman into his bed.
I curled my cold fingers and closed my eyes. “Since you’ve already married someone else, we’re done.”
He blinked, then let out a soft laugh. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“You’ve belonged to me since you were eighteen. Two abortions. If you leave me, what man would even want you?”
I stared at him.
It felt like a burning coal sat in my chest.
Ten years.
We’d lived under a bridge. Split a moldy piece of bread. Drank water just to stay alive.
I couldn’t afford birth control. Couldn’t afford an abortion.
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So I froze in the snow outside. Then fell down a flight of stairs.
That’s how I lost both children-crying until there were no tears left, until the pain swallowed everything.
Elias had knelt by my hospital bed and stabbed himself twice in the stomach.
Blood all over his hands, his body shaking. he covered my eyes and said, word by word, “Samantha, I’ll give you a good life.
If I ever betray you, I deserve to die a miserable death.”
Those promises.
I believed them for half my life.
And now, for a woman he’d known six months, he threw it all away.
I couldn’t understand it.
How someone who loved me that much could… rot like this.
His phone rang.
A special ringtone. I’d heard it so many times in the middle of the night. He always said it was a client.
I trusted him too much to question it.
Now I saw how stupid that was.
He didn’t pick up right away. His voice stayed calm, like he was soothing a child throwing a tantrum.
“Why ruin everything we have over something that doesn’t matter? We have ten years together. You really want to
throw that away over a piece of paper?”
‘Samantha, you’re not young anymore. No parents. No job. No one but me to take care of you. Keep this up, and it won’t
end well for you.”
He pulled the car over.
“Take a cab home. I need to pick her up. Think about what I said.”
The door slammed like a slap across my face.
I watched his car disappear, then bent over on the side of the road and threw up until tears streamed down my cheeks.
Elias got one thing wrong.
No one marries someone who distracts you.
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She married for love, but he wed her to save his first love. Heartbroken, she…
That piece of paper-the one I waited ten years for-was given to someone else in six months.
Love doesn’t change.
It just moves.
I looked up at the gray sky, my chest hollow and cold.
After a long time, I finally took out my phone and made a call.
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She married for love, but he wed her to save his first love. Heartbroken, she…
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