Chapter 2

"Chandler? What's this?" Kloe's voice pulled me from the dark corners of my memory. She held up a small, woven bracelet, dark red, almost brown, with a faint, rusty stain on it. She had been rummaging through a forgotten box in the back storage room.

My blood ran cold. My hands, still on the counter, clenched. It was a piece of my past I thought I had buried deep. "Where did you find that?" My voice was sharper than I intended.

Kloe flinched. "Just in this old box of forgotten things. It looks like it used to be pretty. Is it yours?"

I walked over, my movements stiff. My gaze fell on the bracelet. The pattern was unmistakable. I had woven it myself, years ago. "It was," I said quietly, taking it from her. The faint stain, I knew, was dried blood. My blood. From that night.

It brought me back to the beginning, to a time before the betrayal, before the pain. A time when I thought Jake was my future.

I remembered the first time I saw him. He was a boy then, barely seventeen, huddled in the alley behind the Robbins mansion. Rain poured, plastering his dark hair to his face. He was shivering, bruised, a raw wound in the opulent world I inhabited. He came from a disgraced family, a world of poverty and violence I couldn' t fathom. My parents, the Robbins, would have turned him away.

But I couldn't. Something in his eyes, a fierce, desperate intelligence, called to me. I was 16, privileged, and naive. I brought him inside, against my adoptive mother Eunice' s furious objections. Alon, my older adoptive brother, sided with Mother. But I stood my ground. I insisted. He needed help. I saw a spark in him, a potential that deserved more than a cold, wet alley.

I nursed him back to health. I tutored him, helped him catch up in school. He was brilliant, a sponge for knowledge. He soaked up everything, from etiquette to economics. He transformed from a street rat into a polished, ambitious young man. He was my project, my confidant, my shadow. He called me his "savior."

We grew up together, navigating the treacherous waters of the Robbins family' s high society. We were inseparable. He was "my Jake." We shared whispered secrets in the moonlight, snuck out to dive bars, dreaming of a future far away from the stifling expectations of my adoptive parents. We fell in love, a secret, fervent love forged in rebellion and shared dreams.

"I'll join the service," he told me one night, his eyes shining with determination. "Get some experience, make a name for myself. Then I'll come back for you, Chandler. We'll build our own empire, away from all this." He promised me the moon, and I believed him.

Before he left, I wove him this bracelet. A symbol of our bond, our future. He wore it always, he swore. A constant reminder.

My adoptive father, in his quiet way, pulled some strings. Jake was fast-tracked, given opportunities others could only dream of. He excelled, rising through the ranks with astonishing speed. He was brilliant, charismatic, ruthless when he needed to be. Everything I had always seen in him.

When he returned, a decorated officer, I was ecstatic. Our future was finally within reach.

Then, the world tilted. The truth of my birth, a cruel twist of fate. I wasn't a Robbins by blood. I had been switched at birth, a biological error, a social embarrassment. Corina, their real daughter, was found. She was brought into our lives, a stranger, a ghost from a past I never knew.

My adoptive parents, Eunice and Richard Robbins, were consumed by guilt. They insisted my place in the family was secure. They embraced Corina with an equal, if not greater, fervor. Alon, always seeking his parents' approval, quickly fell into line, showering his biological sister with affection.

Jake, my rock, my love, reiterated his promise. "It changes nothing, Chandler," he whispered, holding me tight. "I'll always protect you. This just means we have to fight harder for our own life together."

I tried to be welcoming, to embrace Corina. I felt guilty too, for living her life, even unknowingly. I introduced her to my friends, my world. I even brought her along on my dates with Jake. She was so sweet, so innocent, or so I thought. A naive girl who had been deprived of her rightful family. I wanted to compensate her, to make her feel loved. I was so stupid.

Jake, my Jake, began to change. His eyes lingered on Corina a beat too long. His touch, when he held my hand, felt... distracted. I brushed it off, told myself it was my imagination, my insecurity after the revelation of my adoption.

Then came New Year's Eve. The accident. A drunk driver, a blur of headlights. Jake swerved. In that split second, I saw his choice. He shielded Corina, pulling her close, protecting her body with his. I was pushed aside, hitting the dashboard, glass shattering around me.

I lay there, dazed, blood seeping from a gash on my forehead. My head throbbed. My vision swam. But I saw them. Jake, holding Corina, checking her for injuries, his face etched with concern. He didn't even glance my way.

The cold, hard truth slammed into me. It wasn't my imagination. It was real. The love, the promises, the protection – it had all shifted. I was no longer his priority. I was no longer his. I was alone, bleeding, and utterly, irrevocably betrayed.