Chapter 1

The Montgomery family had a rule, an unbreakable one.

The heir, Ethan Astor Montgomery III, had to marry someone from their world.

Someone rich, someone powerful, someone who understood their legacy.

I was none of those things.

I was Sarah Jenkins, a baker from rural Pennsylvania. My hands smelled of cinnamon and yeast, not expensive perfume.

Ethan loved me anyway.

He told me so, his eyes bright with a fire I'd never seen in anyone else.

We met at a fall festival. He bought a whole tray of my grandmother's apple pies, then came back the next day for more, and the day after that.

He said my baking tasted like honesty.

His family, Charles and Eleanor Montgomery, tasted betrayal.

When they found out about us, about our secret meetings, our stolen weekends, the city apartment he'd rented for me, they were horrified.

"This is unacceptable, Ethan," Charles Montgomery's voice boomed through the grand living room of their New York mansion. I stood beside Ethan, my hand clutching his, my heart a trapped bird against my ribs.

Eleanor Montgomery, a woman carved from ice, looked at me as if I were something she'd scraped off her shoe. "This... girl... will ruin everything."

"I love her, Father," Ethan said, his voice shaking but firm. "I'm going to be with Sarah."

Charles's face turned a dangerous shade of purple. "You will do no such thing. You will end this vulgar affair immediately. You will marry Victoria Davenport, as planned."

"No," Ethan said.

"Then you are no son of mine," Charles roared. "You will be disinherited. Every penny, every connection, gone. You will be a nobody."

The threat hung in the air, thick and suffocating. I saw the fear in Ethan's eyes, the flicker of doubt. He looked at me, then back at his father.

His mother, Eleanor, stepped forward, her voice a silken trap. "Perhaps there's a compromise, Charles."

All eyes turned to her.

"Ethan has duties," she said, her gaze fixed on her son. "A primary duty. To secure the Montgomery lineage. An heir, from an appropriate match."

Victoria Davenport. The name was a cold weight in my stomach.

"Once that duty is fulfilled," Eleanor continued, her eyes flicking to me with disdain, "perhaps... arrangements can be made for... other interests."

It was Thorne, the family lawyer, who later explained the "compromise" in plainer terms, after Charles had stormed out and Eleanor had dismissed me with a wave of her hand.

Ethan was to marry Victoria. He was to give them an heir.

"After that," Thorne said, his face unreadable, "Mr. Montgomery Senior might be... more amenable."

Ethan seized on it. He was desperate, his face pale, his hands trembling as he held mine later in the small, sterile office Thorne had put us in.

"It's temporary, Sarah," he pleaded, his eyes searching mine. "A necessary evil. We have to play their game for a little while. Just to get them off our backs."

My heart was breaking. A piece of paper, a ceremony, a child with another woman. How could that be temporary?

"Wait for me, Sarah," he whispered, his voice raw. "It's the only way. I swear to you, it's the only way we can be together. Please, just wait."

He looked so tormented, so lost. He believed it. He truly believed he could outsmart them, that this was a strategic move.

And I, fool that I was, loved him enough to try and believe him too.

"Wait," I whispered back, the word tasting like ash in my mouth.

That was the first "wait." The first crack in the foundation of everything I thought we had.

He promised it was a small sacrifice, a short delay.

He said his love for me was the only real thing in his life.

He swore he would suffer every moment he was forced to be with Victoria.

He painted a picture of our future, free from his family, built on our love.

I clung to those words.

The engagement to Victoria Davenport was announced a week later. A small, tasteful notice in the society pages.

Ethan told me it meant nothing.

"It's just for show, Sarah. For my father."

His parents, Charles and Eleanor, looked triumphant in the accompanying photographs. Victoria looked smug.

I started to feel the weight of their world, a world I didn't belong in, pressing down on me.

Ethan insisted I keep the apartment he'd rented for me, a tiny place in a less fashionable part of the city. He said it was our sanctuary.

But it began to feel like my cage.

He would visit, his eyes shadowed, his touch almost desperate.

He'd hold me and tell me he was counting the seconds until this charade was over.

"Just wait, Sarah. Just a little longer."

The words became a bitter refrain.