Chapter 1

The first sign was a text message that glowed on Liam' s phone screen late one night. It was from a woman named Sarah.

I miss you. When can I see you again?

I was sitting on the edge of our bed, waiting for him to get out of the shower. We had been together for five years, a stretch of time that felt both solid and fragile. I picked up his phone. My hands didn' t even shake. I already knew, in the way you know a storm is coming long before you feel the first drop of rain. There were more messages, a whole history of them, filled with a secret intimacy that didn't belong to me.

When he walked out, a towel slung low on his hips, I didn't scream. I didn't cry. I just held the phone up.

"Her or me, Liam."

His face went pale. He was an ambitious man, a self-made tech entrepreneur who had clawed his way up from nothing. He saw the world in terms of gains and losses, and in that moment, I could see the calculation in his eyes. He chose me. He deleted her number in front of me, promised it was over, a stupid mistake.

A heavy, suffocating peace settled over our apartment after that. On the surface, things went back to normal. He came home, he kissed me, we ate dinner together. But the silence between us grew louder every day. I' d spend hours cooking his favorite meals, only for him to push the food around his plate, his mind a million miles away. I would leave the lights on for him, a warm beacon in our high-rise apartment, but he would walk in and the space would immediately feel cold and empty.

I felt him slipping away. His touch became a habit, not a desire. His eyes would look at me, but they wouldn't see me. He was a ghost in our life, and the loneliness was a constant weight in my chest. I was the sole heir to my family' s real estate empire, a successful architect in my own right, yet I felt desperate, pathetic.

So I did something a younger, prouder version of myself would have scorned. I proposed to him.

We were at a gala for one of my family' s charities. I was wearing a crimson dress, and he looked handsome in his tuxedo. I thought maybe, in this public space, surrounded by the life he wanted, he would remember what he was choosing.

"Let' s get married, Liam," I said, my voice barely a whisper.

He looked surprised, then trapped. A flicker of something-annoyance? regret?-crossed his face before he smoothed it over.

"Okay, Ava," he said, forcing a smile. "Let' s get married."

The answer didn't feel like a victory. It felt like a concession.

The wedding preparations were a blur of activity, orchestrated almost entirely by me and my mother. I chose the venue, a historic estate with sprawling gardens. I tasted cakes, selected flowers, and agonized over invitation fonts. Liam was conspicuously absent from it all. He was always busy with a last-minute meeting, a critical deadline for his burgeoning startup. He' d show up at the end of the day, exhausted and distant, offering a vague, "Whatever you think is best, honey." It was my wedding. Ours, in name only.

My friends saw it. My family saw it. They would look at me with pity in their eyes, but I refused to see it myself. I pushed forward, believing that the ceremony, the vows, the public declaration would be the final seal on our relationship, the thing that would finally banish Sarah' s ghost for good.

The wedding day arrived, bright and painfully beautiful. I stood in my white gown, a creation of lace and silk, feeling like an actress in a play I no longer understood. I walked down the aisle, my father' s arm linked with mine. I saw Liam waiting at the altar. For a fleeting second, when his eyes met mine, I saw the man I first fell in love with. Hope, stupid and stubborn, fluttered in my chest.

We made it through the vows. His voice was steady, but his hands were cold and clammy in mine. The officiant smiled.

"I now pronounce you..."

"Daddy?"

The voice was small, but it cut through the hushed reverence of the crowd like a shard of glass. Everyone turned. Standing at the entrance of the aisle was a little girl, maybe four or five years old, with big, tearful brown eyes. Her gaze was fixed on Liam.

Liam froze. The color drained from his face, leaving behind a mask of pure horror. He dropped my hands as if they were burning him.

Without a single word to me, without a backward glance, he turned and ran. He ran down the aisle, away from me, away from our vows, and scooped the little girl into his arms. Sarah stood a few feet behind her, a triumphant, sorrowful look on her face.

He abandoned me at the altar.

The crowd erupted in shocked whispers. The cameras flashed, capturing my humiliation for the world to see. My father moved to my side, his face a thunderous mask of rage. But I didn't break down. I didn't fall apart.

Deep down, a cold, clear part of me had known this was a possibility. I had hoped I was wrong, but I hadn't been foolish enough to be unprepared.

I took the microphone from the stunned officiant. My voice was calm, devoid of the storm raging inside me.

"I apologize to all our guests for this... interruption," I said, my eyes scanning the crowd. "It seems the groom has a prior commitment he forgot to mention. Please, enjoy the food and the champagne. The party is still on. Consider it a celebration of my newfound freedom."

I turned to my father.

"Call security," I said, my voice like ice. "And get my lawyer on the phone."