Chapter 2

I wore a simple dress.

Leo had bought it for me, from a small boutique, his eyes shining with pride.

It had been our most extravagant purchase.

At the gala, surrounded by diamonds and disdain, it felt like a costume of another life.

Isabelle' s friends, Tiffany and Chad, were like well-dressed vultures.

Their laughter, their whispered comments about me being "out of place," "the charity case," followed me.

Isabelle, all feigned innocence and designer silk, "accidentally" tripped near me.

A server, trying to avoid her, stumbled.

A tray of champagne flutes crashed.

Not onto the marble floor.

Onto my art portfolio.

My only copies. My art school application pieces. Soaked. Ruined.

Glass shards glittered on the wet, spoiled paper.

My dreams, literally bleeding color.

Ethan rushed. Not to me.

To Isabelle.

"Are you alright, Isabelle?" he asked, all concern.

He glanced at me, at the mess.

"It was an accident, Sarah," he said, his voice curt, dismissive. "Let's not make a scene."

A scene. My future was lying in a puddle of champagne and broken glass, and he was worried about a scene.

In the chaos, my locket was gone.

Ripped from my neck.

The antique silver locket. My grandmother' s. My last tangible piece of her.

My hand flew to my throat, feeling the empty space. Panic clawed at me.

I searched frantically, but it was lost in the shuffle of expensive shoes and feigned apologies.

Isabelle was dabbing at a non-existent spot on her dress, looking aggrieved.

Ethan was by her side, a protective shield.

He didn' t even look at my ruined portfolio.

He didn' t look at my face, which I knew must have been a mask of despair.

The Leo who would have raged, who would have comforted, was truly gone.

Only Ethan Vanderbilt remained.

And he had made his choice.

That night, the pain was a physical thing.

My small studio apartment felt like a tomb.

The silence was deafening, broken only by my own ragged breaths.

I picked up the cheap ring Leo had given me. A simple silver band.

He' d slipped it on my finger one evening, after a shared meal of instant noodles, his eyes full of promises.

"It' s not much, Sarah," he' d said, "but it' s everything I have right now. One day, I' ll give you the world."

He had. And then he' d taken it all away.

I couldn't sleep.

My fingers kept going to my empty neck.

The locket.

I mindlessly scrolled through social media, a habit born of sleepless nights.

And there it was.

Isabelle Harrington' s latest post.

A picture of her, smiling triumphantly, a familiar silver locket nestled against her expensive dress.

My locket.

The caption read: "A new pretty trinket. Some things just find their way to their rightful owner. 😉"

Rage, cold and sharp, cut through the heartbreak.

A trinket.

My grandmother' s legacy. Her love. Reduced to a "pretty trinket" for Isabelle' s amusement.

And Ethan... Ethan let it happen. He stood by.

That was the final cut.

There was nothing left of Leo. Nothing left to save.

I looked at Victoria Vanderbilt' s check, still tucked away in my drawer.

Two million dollars.

The price of my dignity. The price of Leo' s love.

It felt like blood money.

But it was also a way out. A way to rebuild.

I packed my few belongings. My art supplies, now a painful reminder. The simple dress Leo bought.

I left the silver band on the small, worn table.

Next to it, a short note.

"Leo is gone. So am I."

I took the check.

And I walked out, leaving New York and Ethan Vanderbilt behind.

California. A new canvas. A blank slate.

Or so I hoped.

The bus ride west was a blur of desolate landscapes and inner turmoil.

Each mile put physical distance between me and the wreckage of my New York life.

But the emotional distance? That would take years.

The two million dollars felt heavy in my bag, a constant, shameful reminder.

But it was also survival.

Los Angeles was sprawling, indifferent.

The ruined portfolio meant rejections. Doors slammed shut.

"Come back when you have something to show us," they said.

So I started again. Painstakingly.

I rented a small, bare room. I bought new supplies.

Part of Victoria' s money went to that. To surviving. To rebuilding.

I recreated my lost pieces, each brushstroke infused with a new layer of pain, of resilience.

The themes were still there, but darker now, more nuanced.

Hope was a more fragile thing.

Eventually, one door opened. A prestigious art institute.

A scholarship, surprisingly. My new, raw work had struck a chord.

It was there I met Liam Chen.

He was a guest lecturer in architectural design.

Intelligent, kind, with a quiet strength that drew me in.

He saw the shadows in my work, in my eyes.

He didn' t push. He listened.

He became a mentor. Then a friend.

And slowly, painstakingly, love began to bloom again.

A different kind of love.

Not the wild, desperate fire of Leo.

This was a gentle warmth, built on respect, on shared understanding, on healing.

Liam knew my past. Not all the brutal details, but enough.

He knew I' d been hurt. He helped me mend.

My art began to change again. The darkness remained, but it was shot through with light.

Critics called it "hauntingly hopeful."

I started to gain recognition. Small shows, then larger ones.

The pain was still a part of me, but it no longer defined me.

It fueled me.

Meanwhile, Ethan.

He found my note. He found the ring.

The check, he would have discovered, was cashed.

Guilt. Regret.

Those were the words his private investigator, years later, used when he finally, briefly, found a trace of me before I vanished again.

A trace I didn't know he'd found until much later.

His relationship with Isabelle, the PI had hinted, was a façade.

Purely transactional. The merger. Status.

He became colder, more ruthless in business.

His personal life, a void.

He never stopped looking for Sarah Miller.

The girl from the Brooklyn studio. The girl he' d loved as Leo.

He kept the tattoo. "S.M." Over his heart.

A constant, burning reminder.

His version of justice was twisted.

He started to dismantle the lives of those who had hurt me at that gala.

Chad, Isabelle' s snide friend. Financial ruin. Orchestrated by Ethan.

Tiffany, the other one. Social ostracization. Engineered by Ethan.

He even subtly sabotaged parts of the Harrington merger.

Targeting Isabelle' s father' s more vulnerable assets.

A warped desire to "clear the way" for my imagined return.

To punish everyone. Including, indirectly, himself.

He thought it was atonement.

It was obsession. Control. Power.

The same forces that had driven him to abandon Leo, to abandon me.

He never understood.