Chapter 2

The next few weeks were a blur of cheap coffee and sleepless nights. I left the city where I had lost everything and moved to a small, nameless town a hundred miles away. I found a tiny, one-room apartment above a noisy bar. The paint was peeling, and the floorboards creaked with every step, but it was mine.

I had dropped out of medical school. The dream of being a doctor felt like it belonged to another person, someone who had died along with my mother. To pay the rent, I took a job as a night-shift cleaner at a local research facility. I would mop the floors and empty the trash cans in the labs, surrounded by the ghosts of my old ambitions. It was a quiet, lonely existence, and that's exactly what I wanted. I needed the silence to forget.

One night, while wiping down a counter in an empty lab, I saw a discarded magazine in the trash. On the cover were Scarlett and Liam Hayes, smiling for the cameras at some charity gala. The headline read, "Power Couple's Perfect Romance." I pulled it out, my hands feeling numb.

I looked at Liam's face. The same jawline, the same color eyes. The face Scarlett had tried to carve onto mine. For a year, I had been her project, her live-in doll. When she touched me, she was touching him. When she looked at me with that strange, possessive glimmer in her eyes, she was seeing him. I was a replacement, a substitute, a ghost she used to pretend she had the one thing she could never possess. The realization wasn't a shock anymore, just a dull, heavy fact. The relationship had never been about me at all. It was a sick fantasy, and I was just a prop.

I crumpled the magazine and threw it back into the trash with force. I would not think about them. I would not let them exist in my world anymore.

But the past wasn't done with me yet.

A few days later, my phone rang. It was an unknown number, but I answered it anyway, thinking it might be a job offer for something better.

"Ethan Miller?" a gruff, familiar voice asked.

My blood ran cold. It was Mr. Hayes Sr., Scarlett's grandfather.

"Yes," I said cautiously.

"I've been trying to reach you," he said, his tone commanding. "You disappeared. That wasn't part of our agreement."

"Our agreement ended when my mother died," I said, my voice flat. "There's nothing left to discuss."

"Don't be a fool, boy," he snapped. "I still have plans for you. Scarlett is... unstable. She's been worse since you left. You were a good influence. I need you to come to a family dinner tonight. We're going to sort this out."

I wanted to hang up, to scream that I would rather die than ever see any of them again. But a small, foolish part of me felt a flicker of obligation. The old man had, at one point, saved my mother's life, even if it was just a move in his chess game. He didn't know the whole truth. He didn't know what Scarlett had done.

"I'm not coming," I said.

"That's not a request," he said, and then he named a sum of money that would solve all my immediate problems. "A fee for your time. Be at the estate at seven." He hung up before I could refuse again.

Against my better judgment, I went. I wore my only clean, decent clothes, which still felt cheap and out of place as I walked up the long driveway to the Hayes mansion. The place looked exactly the same, a monument to a life I had escaped.

The dinner was a nightmare. I was seated at the far end of the long dining table, like an afterthought. Scarlett was there, sitting next to Liam. She didn't even look at me. All her attention, all her energy, was focused on him. She laughed too loudly at his jokes, touched his arm constantly, her eyes shining with a desperate, obsessive light. Liam looked deeply uncomfortable, shifting in his seat and giving short, polite answers. He was trapped, and seeing him, I felt a strange, bitter pity. I knew what that felt like.

Mr. Hayes Sr. sat at the head of the table, watching everyone with his sharp, calculating eyes. He watched Scarlett's fawning behavior and Liam's discomfort. He watched me sitting in silence, a ghost at the feast.

Finally, after the plates were cleared, he cleared his throat. The room fell silent.

"This family needs stability," he announced, his voice booming in the quiet room. "Scarlett's behavior has been a disgrace to the Hayes name."

Scarlett shot him a look of pure hatred but said nothing.

"I thought bringing Ethan into our lives would help," he continued, his gaze falling on me. "And for a time, it did. I've made a decision. The arrangement will be made permanent."

I stared at him, my mind blank with confusion. What was he talking about?

Mr. Hayes Sr. looked from me to his granddaughter. "You and Ethan will be married. The wedding will be in three months."

The silence in the room was shattered by Scarlett's shriek of laughter. It was a high, unhinged sound. "Married? To him?" She pointed a finger at me, her face a mask of contempt. "Grandfather, have you lost your mind? I would never marry that... that pathetic charity case."

I felt the blood drain from my face. The other family members around the table just stared at their plates, refusing to get involved. This was the Hayes family way: cold, brutal, and everyone for themselves.