Chapter 1

They said our story was one for the ages. Olivia and Ethan. Ethan and Olivia. We were the kids who met in a sandbox and never looked back. I was the architect who designed the beautiful, efficient spaces where people lived and worked. He was the tech visionary who filled those spaces with the future. Together, we built an empire from nothing but a shared dream and a connection that felt elemental, like gravity.

Everyone celebrated when he proposed. Our families were overjoyed. Our friends said it was about time. Our company, Miller-Reed Tech, was soaring, and our marriage was meant to be the final, perfect brick in the foundation of the life we had constructed so carefully.

Then, a week before the wedding, he told me.

"Her name is Chloe," he said, not looking at me. "She's an intern. It was a mistake, Liv. It meant nothing."

The words didn't make sense. It was like hearing a sentence in a language I almost knew, but the grammar was all wrong. A mistake. Meant nothing. Yet it had happened. A bright, young woman had slipped into a crack in our perfect foundation.

My world tilted. The pain was sharp, a physical thing that stole my breath. But I looked at Ethan, at the man I had loved for two decades, and I saw his panic, his regret. I thought it was a test. A storm to be weathered. So I pushed my pain down, locked it away, and chose to believe him. I chose to believe us. We got married. I thought our love was strong enough to fix any crack.

For three years, it seemed I was right. I poured my broken heart into my work. My designs won awards. Our company became a titan in the industry. We were more successful than we had ever imagined. The memory of his confession faded, a scar I chose not to look at. I let myself believe the story was back on track.

Then came the fire.

It started in the server farm, a hot, acrid smell that turned into a blaring alarm. We were evacuating the main building, smoke thickening the air. People were screaming, running. I was helping an older employee when I saw Ethan struggling to get a door open near the engineering wing.

Suddenly, a sound like a freight train ripped through the chaos. I looked up. A massive support beam, weakened by the heat, was groaning, then breaking free from the ceiling. It was directly above him.

I didn't think. I just moved. I shoved him out of the way, a violent, desperate push.

The world exploded in pain.

The beam crashed down, not fully on me, but a heavy section of it caught my back and legs, pinning me to the floor. The force was immense, a crushing weight that I felt in my bones. I screamed, a raw sound torn from my lungs. Blood bloomed on the floor beneath me, warm and spreading fast.

"Ethan!" I choked out, my vision swimming in black spots.

He was safe. He was on his feet, staring. For a heartbeat, I thought he was coming for me.

But then, a small cry came from the other side of the corridor. "Ethan, my ankle!"

It was Chloe. She had stumbled in the panic and was sitting on the floor, clutching her foot. A twisted ankle.

I watched, my blood pooling around me, as Ethan's eyes left me. They locked onto her. His face, which had been a mask of shock, twisted into one of deep concern.

He ran.

He ran right past me, past his wife bleeding on the floor under a fallen beam. He didn't even glance down. He ran to Chloe, kneeling beside her, his voice a frantic comfort. "Chloe! Are you okay? Let me see."

I lay there, pinned and broken, and a cold, terrible clarity washed over me. The pain in my back was nothing compared to the agony that shattered my soul.

This was it. This was the truth. His confession wasn't a mistake he'd moved past. It was a choice he had already made.

And I was not the one he had chosen.