Chapter 2

Three months later, I ran into them. It was at a charity auction, a high-profile event my family was sponsoring. I was trying to reclaim my life, to show the world and myself that I was more than a jilted bride. I was mingling, forcing a smile, when I saw him across the room.

Liam. He was holding Chloe' s hand, pointing something out to her on a display. And next to them, clinging to his other arm, was Sarah. She was wearing a dress that was too tight, looking a little out of place but defiant. They looked like a family. The sight of it was a physical blow, knocking the air from my lungs.

I tried to turn away, to retreat into the crowd, but it was too late. Sarah saw me. She whispered something to Liam, and he looked up. Our eyes met. There was no apology in his gaze, no shame. Just a cold, hard defensiveness.

He walked towards me, dragging his new family with him.

"Ava," he said, his tone clipped.

"Liam," I replied, matching his coolness.

"I think it' s best if you just leave," he said, his voice low but sharp. "You' re making Sarah uncomfortable."

I almost laughed. I was making her uncomfortable? The woman who conspired to ruin my wedding? The woman who was now living in my home, with my ex-fiancé?

"I' m not the one who brought a child to a black-tie event, Liam. And I' m certainly not the one who should be leaving. My family' s name is on the invitation."

"Always about your family, isn' t it?" he sneered. "Always about your money and your name. You never understood what it was like for me, to build something on my own."

"And you think she does?" I shot back, glancing at Sarah, who was trying to look like a victim.

Before I could say another word, my younger cousin, a hot-headed law student named Leo, pushed his way to my side.

"What the hell is this, Liam?" Leo demanded, his eyes blazing. "You have some nerve showing your face here, let alone telling Ava to leave. You' re the one who cheated. You' re the one who abandoned her at the altar. Everyone here knows it. You think parading your mistress and your love child around makes you look like a family man? It makes you look pathetic."

Liam' s face tightened with fury. "This is none of your business, Leo."

"Ava is my business," Leo snapped.

Liam' s gaze returned to me, and it was filled with pure, undiluted contempt. He looked at me as if I were something he had scraped off his shoe. That look hurt more than the abandonment. It told me that every moment of our five years together had been erased, replaced by this ugly new reality.

Then, the little girl, Chloe, tugged on Sarah' s dress and pointed at me.

"Mommy, is that the mean lady?" she asked in a voice that carried. "The one who made Daddy sad and wanted to send us away?"

The words hung in the air. The small circle of people around us fell silent. Sarah had been poisoning her daughter' s mind against me, painting me as the villain in a story she had orchestrated.

I stared at Sarah. I knew a little about her. She had been a junior marketing assistant at Liam' s startup. Ambitious, but not particularly talented. She came from a family with no connections, no money. She saw Liam as her ticket to a different life, and she had played her hand perfectly.

I looked from Sarah's smug face to Liam's cold one, and then to the child who was being used as a pawn. The pity I might have felt was burned away by a cold, clarifying anger. They had humiliated me. Now, they were trying to rewrite history at my expense.