On the night of my wedding, the big screen suddenly played a video of me wrapped around a strange man, kissing him.

There was nothing I could say to defend myself, and my mother-in-law dragged me out to demand an explanation.

By the time I'd proven the video had been fabricated with AI, my new husband had already carried out his revenge, consummating his marriage with the adopted daughter.

My father sighed, his face perfectly composed.

"What's done is done. What happened has happened. You'll just have to accept it, and I won't hear another word about this."

After that night, something in me recoiled from Bartholomew Gilbert. Every time he tried to touch me, I found a reason to push him away.

He grieved over it for a long stretch, and I couldn't stand watching him tear up, so I steeled myself and got ready to accept him again.

Then, outside the private room, through the crack in the door, I heard the conversation between him and his friends with my own ears.

"Anita Harding, you could give a relationship expert a run for his money."

"You saw Julie Finch come back home wanting to make up for the regret from all those years ago, so you had them use AI to make a video of Sonia Henson cheating and frame her, so your mother could drag her out, and the two of you would have your chance to reconnect!"

"Impressive!"

"Your whole family was in on it, including her father. Only that fool Sonia had no idea about any of it."

Bartholomew looked at the screen of his phone and sighed. "Now Julie's carrying my kid, too. I don't even know how to tell Sonia."

——

Maybe he hadn't been sleeping well. There were dark shadows under his eyes.

Julie's sudden pregnancy was something even he hadn't seen coming.

His good buddy Greg Delgado came over and threw an arm around his shoulder. "Bartholomew, you've only got two options right now."

"One, you split from Sonia. Two, you make Julie get rid of the kid and keep your distance from her for good."

Somehow those two choices stumped Bartholomew, a man who'd always been quick and clean about everything, who'd never wavered like this.

He hesitated a long while. Then his phone lit up with a coy photo Julie had sent showing off the pregnancy, and he couldn't bring himself to let her go.

"No. I don't want her to get rid of the baby."

"That baby is the last thing Julie and I have left of what we couldn't have. I can't be her husband, so I'll at least give her a child, something to hold on to."

Outside the door, every drop of blood in me seemed to freeze solid.

So the cheating video that framed me was Bartholomew's doing all along, made just to give him an excuse to get me out of the way, so he and Julie could patch over their old regret.

Was their regret about the two of them ending up together? A bleak little smile crossed my lips. What I never expected was that my in-laws, and my own father, all knew. They'd banded together to deceive me.

I thought back to when the video of me "cheating" played on the screen. My father-in-law slapped me across the face, and my mother-in-law grabbed a fistful of my hair and hauled me out.

My father apologized to everyone, choking on his shame, and called me a shameless slut.

Bartholomew cried and said I'd wronged him, said he was going to make me pay.

My nails dug into my flesh. Something clogged my chest, aching and airless.

My back slammed hard against the wall, and I slumped there sideways, hollowed out.

Bartholomew had already made his choice. "I'm not splitting from Sonia, because I know love and marriage are two separate accounts."

"She loves me, she goes along with everything I want, and she never drags things out. She's the most suitable one to be my wife."

"Tch, and Julie isn't?"

Bartholomew picked up his juice and took a sip.

"She's a little overbearing, arrogant and full of herself. She'll do as a mistress, but not as a wife."

The private room burst into laughter.

"So you're basically saying Sonia's an easy pushover!"

"Who bullies someone like that?"

"Haha! !"

Greg abruptly dropped the joking, his tone dead serious.

"Then let me ask you something I've started to wonder about."

Greg's sudden gravity caught everyone's interest.

“There's no way you and Julie got her pregnant in a single night!”

“It had to be more than once!”

Bartholomew's face flushed red in an instant, like some naive boy who'd only just stepped out into the world.

The moment they saw that look on him, every one of them sat up straight to listen.

“Way more than once.”

“Every time Sonia was out of the house, we'd do it in every corner of the place……”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!?”

“You're a goddamn legend!”

“I gotta ask you something. What the hell have you been taking to have that kind of stamina?”

“No wonder Julie's looking so well taken care of. Sonia really is the sucker here, kept completely in the dark!”

Bartholomew's friends were all sneering and mocking me in an instant, yet not one of them thought Bartholomew and Julie were the shameless ones.

Birds of a feather, exactly. Like attracts like.

Even without him spelling out every battle he'd fought with Julie, I already knew.

They'd been in my wedding suite, leaving traces of their little affair in every corner.

In front of everyone, Bartholomew would put on his guilty, self-reproaching face, but behind closed doors he'd already been drained dry by Julie and dropped straight off to sleep, without the slightest sign of wanting to apologize or make things right.

A dull ache rolled through my chest in wave after wave, almost enough to break me apart on the spot.

In the end I walked out on heavy feet, without tearing off the mask and having it out with him face to face.

Out of the bar, the cold wind outside cut right through me.

And it was right then that my partner called me.

“Sonia, you jerk, does Bartholomew get you the way I do? Is he as brilliant and good-looking as I am?”

“Is he even richer than me? Ugh, you have no heart. GC's cracked the Fortune 500, and you just dropped us and ran back home to marry him.”

Elijah Sanchez must have been drunk, because he was always the quiet, sparing type, cool and never good with words.

If he weren't hurting so badly, he'd never let himself sound like this.

“Elijah, wait for me to come back!”

“I'll cut Bartholomew off for good as soon as I can, and once I settle things with my family, I'll come back to you.”

The drunk man sobered up in a heartbeat.

After a few hurried words we hung up, and I walked along the side of the road.

A bright red Ferrari came tearing past me.

That was Julie's beloved car. From the look of it, she was on her way to Bartholomew.

I no longer cared about any of them. Whatever the two of them did from now on, it would never stir a single feeling in me again.

I'd just gotten home when I found my father waiting for me in the living room.

“Sonia, where were the two of you off to so late?”

I looked coldly at my father's kindly face, and thinking of what Bartholomew had said in that private room, the last scrap of family feeling I had for him turned to ash.

I was the one who was his own flesh and blood, yet he always favored Julie a little more.

The year our family was poorest, I wore old clothes stitched and patched over, while Julie always had something new.

On her birthday there was a cake. On mine there were only two boiled eggs.

I never imagined that even now, grown, he'd still take Julie's side and join with outsiders to deceive me.

Knowing all of this, there was no way I could keep my temper with him.

“Hurry up and drink it!”

“I thought Bartholomew would be home, so I made some chicken soup. Since he's not here, you can drink it in his place.”

I smashed the soup to pieces.

My father stared at me, stunned, unable to understand why I was so furious.

“What's gotten into you? Are you still upset about last time……”

“Did you already know Julie is carrying Bartholomew's child? Is that why you were so kind as to bring chicken soup over to help her recover, and when she wasn't home, you turned around and handed it to me as a leftover charity?”

I cut off her unfinished words.

My father went pale with panic, staring at me as if he couldn't believe his ears.

“How do you know about that?”

I said nothing, only pressing closer, every step burning with rage.

“Ever since I was a child I couldn't understand your favoritism. I'm the one who's actually your blood, yet you always doted on the adopted daughter who shares none of it. Later I found out why.”

“It turned out Julie is the daughter of your first love, so your love for her mother spilled onto her.”

“Even knowing it would hurt your own daughter, you didn't care.”

The secret he'd buried deep was dragged into the open, and for a moment my father was choked into silence.

“Sonia, I hope you can understand the good intentions behind everything I've done.”

“You and Julie are both my good children. You're both my own flesh and blood, and I would never favor one over the other.”

“Get out!”

Because I truly didn't want to listen to any more nonsense. It would only waste my time.

Julie was the only child he cradled in his palm. Where was there ever any place for me?

But my father made no move to leave, wearing the look of a man with something hard to say.

“Out with it!”

He only ever came to me when he wanted something; otherwise he'd never show up at my door. I figured it was about Julie again.

“Sonia, Dad needs a favor.”

“Julie's business failed. She wants to start over, but she has no capital.”

“Dad can see you're doing well for yourself. And besides, she's your sister! Could you put up a million dollars……”

“The door's right there. Don't let me keep you!!”

I'd shown him out. I had no interest in discussing this with him any further.

I didn't expect it, but just then Bartholomew came back in, supporting Julie on his arm.

They must have overheard our conversation.

“Sonia, how could you talk to Dad like that? He's only worried about Julie!”

The words had barely left his mouth when my father crossed over to stand beside them.

The three of them together looked exactly like a family.

From beginning to end, I was the outsider.

“If he's so worried about Julie, he can go borrow the money from a bank.”

“Sonia, that's your sister……”

“Sister? Ha. How ironic.”

“If she really thought of me as her sister, how could she have slept with your fiancé?”

“Even my own father always takes her side.”

“So tell me, how much bigger a person am I supposed to be?”

In an instant, not one of them dared say a word.

This house suffocated me. Just as I was about to leave, my father ground out through clenched teeth,

“Wasn't that whole business last time just a misunderstanding?”

“They're both innocent. Why won't you just let it go? Why do you have to twist the knife in everyone's heart?”

I turned back and looked coldly at the three of them, and the retort caught in my throat lost all its appeal.

One mouth was no match for three.

In the end it was Julie who rushed in to play the peacemaker and smooth things over.

“Sis, I'm sorry!”

“That night I was so drunk I didn't know what I was doing. That's how I committed such an unforgivable sin.”

“I'm apologizing to you. I'm begging you to forgive me, please?”

“This is your home. If anyone should leave, it's us!”

My father and Bartholomew watched Julie's earnest, pleading apology, their hearts aching for her.

Seeing that I still hadn't spoken up to accept Julie's apology, Anita's face darkened at once.

“Julie apologized to you herself. What more do you want?”

“I don't want anything. I just want them to leave and get out of my sight.”

Hearing that, Julie lowered her head, her face crumpling with hurt.

My father stepped in to defend her and shot me a glare.

Just as he was about to speak, Julie went rushing out, the picture of grief.

She ran too fast, and the next thing anyone knew, she'd tumbled down the stairs.

“Julie!”

“Julie!”