They laughed together.}
And that was it.
I didn’t cry. I didn’t even feel anger. I felt emptiness.}
The five years I gave him. The loyalty. The silence. The sacrifices. The marriage. It was never love. Never real. I was just part of his long con. A pawn.
I walked away from the door, heart hollow. I refused to cry again.”
Later that afternoon, I visited my father.”
I sat beside his hospital bed, gently holding his hand, and whispered, “I’m sorry, Papa… I should’ve listened to those board meetings. I should’ve asked you more questions. Maybe if I had, you wouldn’t be here. Maybe I could’ve stopped all of this before it happened.“}
His chest rose and fell rhythmically, peacefully.
“I’m going to make things right,” I promised. “Even if I have to destroy everything to do it.“”
As if on cue, my phone buzzed.
A message from Niccolo.
Everything is ready for you and your father. See you in three days. You’re finally mine now, Amber. There’s no way I’m letting go.)
Niccolo. My sworn rival back in college, Ruthless. Brilliant. Obsessively interested in me. And the man I had called one week ago in desperation.
The man who had always told me that someday, I would need him. And now… I did.”
I went home, still feeling like I was sleepwalking through a nightmare. But the nightmare wasn’t done with me yet.
Because there, in the living room, was Summer. And a child. A little boy, barely three. Running around the house like it was his own. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen him. Summer once brought him over, casually saying, “He’s my friend’s son. I need to babysit him for a few days.”
And Treston… he’d started asking me to buy baby gifts a year ago.}
“For a client, he’d said. “I need to make a good impression on her son.“}
I believed him. God, I was such a fool.
Summer had disappeared abroad three years ago–right after our wedding. When she returned a year later, she never talked about where
‘she’d been. I never asked. I trusted her.
Chapte
33
120
ASC
8:57 AM
Now I knew. She had been carrying his child. And I had been buying gifts for their son.
My thoughts were spinning when the little boy ran
The urn fell.
My mother’s urn.
Shattered.
through the hallway, knocking into the altar at the center of the living room.
My scream echoed through the house. “What the hell did you just do?!”
The child stared at me, confused, then started crying.
He ran toward the stairs.
“Wait–no!”
