Chapter 3

Overnight, I became a pariah. My name, once respected in the indie game community, was now synonymous with failure and fraud. My social media was a cesspool of hate. My phone rang constantly with reporters and former colleagues who now saw me as toxic.

Then came the call I was dreading. A summons from my mother-in-law, Joelle Richardson.

I drove to the sterile, imposing mansion she called home. The air inside was still and heavy, like a museum. I found her in the sunroom, and she wasn't alone. Brodie Potter was perched on a loveseat beside her, pouring tea, looking for all the world like the daughter Joelle never had.

"Calista, dear," Joelle said, her voice smooth but with an edge of steel. "We need to talk about this unfortunate situation."

Brodie gave me a small, pitying smile. It made my skin crawl.

"Gregory' s reputation is everything," Joelle continued, not waiting for my response. "The family' s reputation. You will stop this nonsense about a divorce. You will issue a public apology for your... confusion. And you will support Brodie. She is, after all, very important to Gregory now."

I stared at her, dumbfounded. "You want me to what? To pretend this is okay?"

"I' m not asking you, Calista. I' m telling you." Her voice dropped, losing all its polished charm. The formidable matriarch was now on full display. Two large men who worked as her security stepped closer, their presence a clear threat. I felt trapped.

"I won' t do it," I said, my voice shaking slightly.

Joelle smiled, a chilling, humorless expression. "Oh, you will. You see, you don' t seem to understand the terms of your marriage." She leaned forward. "Did you ever wonder why a family like ours was so eager to have Gregory marry a girl with no name and no money? Your parents. They were brilliant scientists, weren' t they? Working on a revolutionary patent."

My blood ran cold.

"That patent," she said, her eyes gleaming, "was the price of this marriage. Your parents signed it over to Gardner Industries to give you a foothold in this world. They gave up their life' s work for you. If you divorce Gregory, if you cause a scandal, you won' t just be ruining yourself. You' ll be throwing their sacrifice in the gutter."

The breath left my body. My parents had died years ago, telling me they' d sold their work to a larger company to secure my future. They never told me it was a trade. For him. For this. The weight of their sacrifice, the depth of this new betrayal, was crushing.

"So you see," Joelle said, sitting back, satisfied. "You will accept this. You will tolerate Brodie. You are a Gardner now, and you will act like one."

Just then, the door opened and Gregory walked in. He looked from his mother to me, a flicker of annoyance on his face. "Mother, I told you I would handle this."

"You weren' t handling it fast enough," she snapped back, her tone sharp. It was clear who was really in charge.

Joelle stood up, taking Brodie' s arm. "Come, dear. Let' s leave them to talk." They swept out of the room, leaving me alone with the man who had orchestrated my ruin.

"I didn' t want you to find out like that," he said, his voice softer now that his mother was gone.

"Why, Gregory? Why hide it?"

"Because I knew you wouldn' t have married me otherwise," he said with stunning honesty. "And I wanted you. And your parents' patent was... useful."

He looked at me, a confident smirk playing on his lips. "So, now that you know, you see you can' t leave, right? You wouldn' t want to dishonor their memory."

A volcanic rage erupted inside me. "Dishonor them?" I spat. "You dishonor them! You used them! You used me! You took everything from me-my work, my body, my family' s legacy-and you gave it to her!"

He flinched, his own anger rising. "Don' t be so dramatic! It was a good deal for everyone. You got a life you could only dream of!"

"This is not a life! This is a prison!"

"I have to go," he said abruptly, turning for the door. "Brodie isn' t feeling well. She needs me."

He left. Just like that. He left me standing in the ruins of my life, surrounded by the ghosts of my parents' sacrifice. I was trapped. Cornered. There was no legal way out, no way to fight back without destroying everything my parents had worked for.

As I stood there, utterly alone and broken, a wild, desperate thought sparked in the darkness. If Calista Galloway was trapped, then Calista Galloway had to die.

Instantly, the idea took root. I pulled out my phone, my hands steady for the first time in days, and began to make a plan.