Chapter 1

After ninety-nine failed attempts to win the heart of the brilliant but cold Dr. Julian Burke, I drugged him for one night of passion. It didn't make him love me. I fled to London in shame.

Three years later, a photo surfaced. It was Julian, smiling tenderly at a younger woman-a dead ringer for his deceased first love.

I flew back to New York to end our sham engagement, but he destroyed me first.

He publicly accused me of leaking his research, and his testimony sent me to prison. While I was inside, I was brutally attacked and lost a kidney. My father, crushed by the scandal, died of a stroke, and I wasn't there to say goodbye.

I was just collateral damage in his twisted atonement for a ghost, a convenient villain to protect her manipulative sister. He let me rot, believing I was a monster.

But he didn't know the secret I carried from that one night.

After my release, I took our son and vanished. I would build a new life, and he would never know the son he abandoned or the woman he truly broke.

Chapter 1

Chandler POV:

I stood at the edge of the London Bridge, the cold wind whipping my hair around my face. Three years. Three years since I last saw him, three years since I drugged him and forced a night of passion, thinking it would make him love me. It didn' t.

My phone buzzed in my hand, Gale's name flashing on the screen. She was my best friend, my confidante, and my only connection to the world I' d abandoned in New York.

"Hey, stranger," she said, her voice a familiar blend of concern and exasperation. "Are you still ignoring my Julian updates?"

I stared at the murky Thames below. Ignoring Julian Burke's updates had become my religion. A silent vow against the pain.

Ninety-nine attempts. Ninety-nine times I tried to chip away at the ice surrounding Dr. Julian Burke' s heart. He was brilliant, a neuroscientist whose mind was a universe of its own, but his emotional world was a frozen wasteland. I loved him with a ferocity that bordered on madness.

My family' s money, my brother Charlton' s influence – none of it could buy his affection. Our engagement was a business deal, a $5 million donation to his lab, brokered by Charlton, meant to secure my position by his side. I had convinced myself that proximity would breed love, that my fire could melt his ice. I was wrong. So desperately, painfully wrong.

That last night. The desperation had clawed at me, a wild animal in my chest. He was leaving for a conference, his bags packed, his mind already miles away. I saw my chance, a twisted, desperate gamble. A sedative in his drink, a night stolen, a memory I both cherished and despised. Then, I fled. To London. To escape the wreckage I' d made and the man who wouldn't see me.

"No, Gale," I lied, my voice thin against the wind. "I'm just... busy."

"Busy ignoring your own life, you mean?" she shot back. "Look, I know you said no news, but this is different. It' s everywhere. You need to see this."

My stomach clenched. Gale never pushed unless it was important. My fingers, trembling slightly, navigated to the link she' d sent minutes ago. It loaded slowly, each pixel forming a new layer of dread.

And then, there it was. A photo.

Julian.

My Julian. The stoic, brilliant man who rarely showed emotion, whose face was a mask of academic seriousness. He was smiling. A tender smile, a soft bend of his lips that I had only ever dreamed of seeing directed at me. His eyes, usually cool and analytical, were warm, focused on the young woman beside him.

Hayden Wilkerson. The caption named her. A graduate student.

My breath hitched. My world tilted. She was a dead ringer for Kathryne. His deceased first love. The woman who haunted his every waking moment, the ghost between us.

The image hit me like a physical blow. It wasn't just a smile; it was devotion. It was the love I had craved, the tenderness I had begged for, the warmth that had been systematically denied to me. And it was all for someone who looked exactly like the woman he could never forget.

He hadn't moved on. He'd found a replacement. A cheaper, younger version of his lost love. My blood ran cold, then boiled with a furious heat.

"Chandler? Are you there?" Gale' s voice was a distant echo.

"I' m here," I said, my voice barely a whisper, then hardening, "And I'm going back to New York."

"What? Why? Did you see the photo?" Gale sounded frantic.

"I saw it," I bit out, the words tasting like ash. "And I'm going back to end this farce. Officially."

I hung up before she could reply, my decision firm, cold, and razor-sharp. I needed to confront the past, to sever the ties that still bound me to this ghost, to him.

The journey felt endless. As the plane cut through the clouds, my mind replayed our first meeting like a broken film reel. It was at one of Charlton' s excruciatingly dull charity galas. Another evening of forced smiles and vapid conversation. I hated these events. The air was thick with the scent of money and desperation, a suffocating perfume.

I was twenty-two, fresh out of an art history program that my family considered a frivolous indulgence, and utterly bored. My eyes scanned the room, looking for an escape, when they landed on him. Dr. Julian Burke. He was tucked away in a corner, far from the glittering crowd, his intense gaze fixed on a complex equation scribbled on a napkin. He wore a perfectly tailored suit, but his mind was clearly in another dimension, a stark contrast to the performative glamour around him.

He was oblivious to the world, utterly consumed by his thoughts. His dark hair was slightly disheveled, as if he' d run his hands through it a thousand times in frustration or triumph. There was an intellectual fire in his eyes, a depth that captivated me instantly. He wasn't like the other men who orbited my world, eager for my attention or my family's connections. He was indifferent. And that made him irresistible.

I felt a pull, a strange, electric current drawing me towards him. It was unlike anything I had ever experienced. An obsession, perhaps, born from the sheer novelty of someone who didn't care about the Evans name. He was a puzzle, and I was determined to solve him.

I walked over, my heart pounding a frantic rhythm against my ribs. "Dr. Burke?"

He looked up, his eyes, the color of a winter sky, piercing through me. There was no recognition, no flicker of interest. Just a brief, almost annoyed, acknowledgement of my presence.

"Miss Evans," he said, his voice a low, resonant baritone that sent shivers down my spine. He knew my name – a small victory.

"Chandler," I corrected, offering a dazzling smile. "And please, call me Chandler."

He nodded, a curt, dismissive gesture, and his gaze immediately dropped back to his napkin. I was used to being the center of attention, but Julian Burke treated me like an inconvenient interruption. It only made me want him more.

I tried every trick in my arsenal. Flirtation, witty banter, intellectual conversation about art and philosophy – anything to capture his attention. He responded with polite, detached answers, his eyes always drifting back to his work, his mind miles away from the ballroom. He was a fortress, impenetrable.

"He' s a genius, Chandler," Charlton had told me later that night, watching me from across the room as I tried to engage Julian. "But he' s a loner. Brilliant, but cold."

"Cold doesn' t mean unfeeling, Charlton," I' d retorted, my gaze still fixed on Julian. "It means he hasn' t found anyone worth feeling for yet."

Charlton, ever the pragmatist, saw an opportunity. Not for me, initially, but for the Evans Corporation. He approached Julian about potential funding for his neuroscience lab. Julian, always needing resources for his cutting-edge research, agreed to meet. Charlton, being Charlton, then casually mentioned his sister' s... interest.

Julian, of course, remained oblivious, or indifferent. For months, I pursued him. Dinners, lab visits, attempts to understand his complex research – I threw myself into his world. He tolerated my presence, sometimes even engaged in discussions, but there was always a wall between us. A transparent, yet impenetrable, barrier. My infatuation grew into a desperate longing.

"He's never going to love you, Chandler," Gale had said one night, watching me scroll through photos of Julian, a wistful look on my face. "He's still in love with Kathryne."

The name was a dagger. Kathryne. The ghost. Julian' s first love, tragically killed in a car crash on her way to see him, years ago. I knew about her, of course. Everyone in his small, academic circle did. She was the reason for his perpetual melancholy, the wound that never healed. Gale had told me the story in hushed tones, almost reverently. Julian had been consumed by grief, withdrawing from the world, burying himself in his research.

"It's just an idealized memory, Gale," I had insisted, though a cold dread snaked around my heart. "He needs someone real. Someone here, now."

"You can't compete with a ghost, Chan," she warned. "Especially not one he blames himself for."

Her words had stung, but my obsession wouldn't let go. I believed my love was powerful enough to break through his grief, to bring him back to life.

Charlton, seeing my unwavering, almost pathological, pursuit, decided to formalize the unspoken arrangement. He offered Julian a substantial donation for his lab – $5 million – in exchange for an engagement to me. It was a cold, calculated move, a business transaction disguised as romance. Julian, desperate for funding for "The K.W. Initiative" (a project I later learned was named after Kathryne Wilkerson, a research initiative dedicated to finding cures for rare neurological disorders, something Kathryne was passionate about), agreed. I swallowed my pride, choosing to believe it was a stepping stone, a beginning, not a humiliating end.

The engagement was a charade. Julian was polite, distant, always focused on his work. Our conversations were factual, devoid of emotion. He never touched me unless absolutely necessary, and even then, his touch was clinical, absent. The icy wall remained.

I grew increasingly desperate. Ninety-nine failed attempts at his heart. Each one a fresh wound.

And then came that night. The night before I left for London. A desperate act, fueled by alcohol and a devastating sense of impending loss. I saw him packing, his mind already on his next conference, on his research. He was slipping away, and I couldn't bear it.

I drugged his drink. Just enough to make him drowsy, to lower his guard. I wanted one night. One moment of intimacy, however stolen, however wrong. I wanted to feel his skin against mine, to imagine, just for a few hours, that he was mine.

The memory was a blur of shame and longing. His eyes, hazy with confusion, as I kissed him. His body, yielding under my touch, but his mind absent. The morning after, I woke alone. He was gone, a note on the pillow. Emergency at the lab. See you when I get back. No endearment. No acknowledgement of what had happened. Just a cold dismissal.

That was the last straw. My heart, already bruised and battered, finally shattered. I booked the first flight to London. I ran.

Now, as the plane descended towards JFK, the old wounds ripped open. The photo of Julian and Hayden, a fresh, festering infection. He had found his replacement. His heart, which I had bled trying to win, was now given freely to a ghost made flesh.

A vengeful fire ignited in my chest, burning away the last vestiges of my previous desperation. I wasn't running anymore. I was coming back to burn this bridge down, once and for all. To end this engagement that had become a monument to my foolishness and his cruelty. He would learn that Chandler Evans was not a woman to be discarded and replaced. Not anymore.