Instinctively, I thought of Seth.

Just one more time. I'd trust him one last time.

Clinging to that thought, I called him.

The call hadn't even connected before one of the thugs ripped the phone from my hand and smashed it against the pavement.

It wasn't until the ringtone on the other end died on its own that he finally deigned to send a text.

"Don't bother me unless it's important."

"Annoying."

The light in my eyes dimmed, word by word.

Seeing that, the thugs' gazes turned darker, their movements bolder. One of them tore open my blouse.

"Looks like whoever you called for help doesn't plan on saving you, sweetheart."

"I heard she used to go for a dollar a night. Now she's playing the virtuous maiden?"

When the coins hit my body again, the memories came flooding back, impossible to stop.

When Seth had spent a fortune tracking me down, I'd still been on my knees begging for a waitressing job.

After my birth parents took me home, the family love I'd craved shattered like a soap bubble at the first touch.

My father was a gambler. When he drank, he took a belt to me until my skin split open and bled.

My mother had cancer. She died not long after.

So I was passed around, sold from one person to the next. I never finished high school. I survived on odd jobs.

I was working at a diner when my father tracked me down. Said he'd turned over a new leaf. Instead, he drugged me and hung a degrading sign around my neck advertising me for a dollar a night.

Coins pelted my skin. A vagrant dragged me onto a filthy mattress by force.

And in that moment, when I had no one and nothing left, Seth appeared.

He pulled me into his arms, shielding me completely, and his voice cut through the air like a blade.

"She is my one and only fiancée. Anyone who touches her answers to the entire Vance family."

After that, he taught me taekwondo.

He said that once I could defend myself, I'd never have to be afraid again. Even when he wasn't by my side, I could protect myself.

I replayed every move Seth had taught me, pacing my energy, and put every last one of them on the ground.

They scrambled away like rats.

Memory and reality blurred together, and the truth settled over me like cold water. Seth wasn't here anymore.

I laughed bitterly and bent down to pick up the coins scattered across the pavement from the fight.

The man who used to ache at the slightest hint of my suffering, who would have taken every bruise onto his own body if he could—where had he gone?

Two people who had loved each other that deeply. How had it come to this?

Only in that moment did it finally hit me. Cinderella was never meant to become a princess.

When I opened my eyes again, I was in a hospital bed. Someone had cleaned and dressed the cuts on my face.

Seth spooned oatmeal to my lips, and the concern in his eyes was impossible to hide.

Something in my chest softened without warning. But before the feeling could take root, Zoe called, and just like that, he left.

My repaired phone sat on the nightstand. The screen lit up again. It was a message from the international firm I'd interviewed with.

"Congratulations. After careful review, you have been selected for the position. We sincerely invite you to join our team."

I typed back that I accepted the offer but needed a little time to handle some personal matters.

They agreed without hesitation.

Back at the house, I started packing, exhaustion weighing down every movement.

When I finished, I realized everything I owned fit into a single suitcase.

As expected, Seth didn't come home that night. For once, I slept soundly.

My phone lit up again. A notification that the birthday gift I'd ordered in advance had been delivered to the villa.

There was no reason to give it anymore.

I hesitated for a moment, then went to the front door to collect the package anyway.

I didn't expect what I found when I opened it. Zoe and Seth stood on the doorstep together, and I caught the tail end of their conversation—they were discussing wedding details.

When he saw the red marks on my neck, he frowned instinctively, a flash of something like concern crossing his eyes.

"I didn't come pick you up from the hospital because something came up."

"Don't take those banquet hall jobs anymore. Haven't you embarrassed me enough?"

"I was just teaching you a lesson. After all these years, how have you still not shaken off that cheap, desperate look?"

So he had recognized me that night after all. He'd just pretended not to know me.

Because he was afraid I'd embarrass him.

He'd rattled off all those sentences, and not a single one asked if I was okay.

Even though I'd already let go of any expectations I had of him, the ache in my chest was impossible to ignore.

Maybe because he thought everything was settled between us, he felt even more free to say whatever he wanted.

I nodded, shifting aside without much care to let them in.

But the next second, my phone rang. It was the hospital.

"Your grandfather's treatment requires an additional payment. Please settle the balance as soon as possible."

Zoe saw her chance. She hooked her arm through Seth's and grabbed the crystal ball from the delivery box, hurling it to the floor.

"You should know by now that Seth and I are getting married. Did you really think a cheap little gift like this would help you cling to him any longer?"

"Your marriage to Seth was never anything more than a scheme to repay a debt."

"You'd better start familiarizing yourself with the wedding program. Seth and I will need you to emcee the ceremony."

"Do this one thing right, and I'll make sure your grandfather gets the help he needs."

Seth instinctively pulled his arm, a half-hearted resistance, but he said nothing. He let it happen.

Zoe tossed a thick stack of wedding planning brochures into my arms.

I opened them. Every page was dripping with luxury, every detail meticulously planned. My fingertips went cold.

I thought of my own wedding to Seth.

A handful of guests. Bare-bones. Barely a ceremony at all.

Not a single one of Seth's friends or family had shown up. It had been just the two of us in that church, exchanging vows in a ceremony so simple it barely qualified as one.

Back then, I'd been naive enough to believe he truly loved me, that he was genuinely too busy with work to do more.

Even though I'd handled every detail of the wedding on my own, I'd still felt happy.

But now, staring at these pages, the realization cut through me with perfect clarity.

Seth had always been capable of patience. He'd simply never spent any of it on me.

I took the brochures with steady hands, my voice scraping out rough and dry.

"Fine. I understand."

"I hope you keep your word."

Then I turned to Seth and added one last thing.

"Since that's how things are, let's get a divorce. Make room for your new bride."

Seth looked at me with a flicker of surprise, as if my calm compliance had caught him off guard. But he didn't dwell on it. In his mind, this had been the arrangement all along. There was nothing left to explain.

"That's a good girl. Just do your job as Mrs. Vance."

"Once I've had my fill, I'll come back to you. Naturally."

"Use this time to learn how things work in high society. Stop embarrassing me."

Whether it was deliberate or simply instinct, Seth brushed right past what I'd said about the divorce.

He was so certain I couldn't leave him. So certain I loved him too much. He took everything I gave him as though it were owed, and he enjoyed it without a second thought.

So he ignored everything I felt.

It had always been like this. I loved him too much, and he'd turned my devotion into something he was entitled to.

But none of that mattered anymore.

Because I was about to leave him.

Zoe shot me a triumphant look, one eyebrow arched, and followed Seth into the bedroom. Within moments, muffled sounds drifted through the door, unmistakable and intimate.

Seth's voice came again, low and breathless, and my feet froze to the floor as if nailed there.

"Sandra, you should know what brand I like."

"Be a good girl and go buy them."

"Your grandfather's medical bills still need me to pay for them, remember?"

His threatening voice still rang in my ears. I could only limp my way to the convenience store and buy a box of condoms.

I slid them through the bedroom door. The scene inside made my stomach lurch.

The next morning, when I woke up, the bedroom was already empty. Only the lingering scent of intimacy still hung in the master suite, refusing to fade.

The hospital sent a message. My grandfather had died. Resuscitation had failed.

I rushed to the hospital and immediately pulled the security footage.

In the video, Zoe Winfield looked nothing like the gentle woman she pretended to be. She was arrogant, vicious, ripping the oxygen tube from my grandfather's face.

Her voice dripped with contempt.

"Do you know what your granddaughter is doing right now?"

"Out there selling herself for a dollar a night to pay your medical bills. And you have the nerve to stay in a room this nice."

My grandfather had been tormented to death. Right there on camera.

My fists clenched so hard my nails broke the skin. Tears hit the floor one by one.

I had been too naive back then, too foolish to understand what it meant to love someone from a different world. I had thrown myself into loving him year after year, blind and reckless, until there was nothing left of me but wounds.

We were never from the same world. The moon had once shone on me too, but that light was never meant to last.

I swallowed the bitterness and copied the surveillance footage onto a drive.

I had done everything they asked. Everything. Why wouldn't they leave me alone?

The last shred of hope I held for Seth died in my chest. I picked up my phone and booked a flight out of the country.

I sat there for what felt like hours. I sold every luxury item Seth had ever given me. Designer bags, jewelry, watches. All of it barely covered the cost of a simple funeral for my grandfather.

Now I truly had no one left.

Finally, in silence, I signed the divorce papers and placed them on the table.

When it was done, I grabbed my suitcase and walked out of that place of heartbreak for the last time.

Meanwhile, Seth sat in the car on the way to pick up his bride, and an inexplicable wave of panic surged through him.

He couldn't place where the feeling came from. He only knew, with sudden and suffocating certainty, that something vital was slipping through his fingers.

His assistant sent a message: the investigation into what happened years ago was complete. They had also uncovered something else.

Three years later, the hidden second half of that recording finally surfaced.