If he didn't love her, why did he still wear it?

I didn't understand him. I never had.

"Ronald, perfect timing!"

"Tell me the truth. Have you and Marianne slept together?"

Ronald looked at the tear tracks on Marianne's face and said nothing. He simply walked over, pulled out a tissue, and wiped her cheeks.

Every movement gentle. His face soft as water.

That gentleness had once been mine. I'd thought he saved it only for me. It had never occurred to me he could give it to another woman.

Back then my mother had been driven to her death, because my father insisted on keeping Marianne's mother as a mistress on the side.

In those days Marianne wasn't a Henson at all. She was only a Locke.

I was small then. My parents fought, and the one who suffered was the child.

I'd hidden outside, too afraid to go in, the rain soaking me through until I shook with cold.

Ronald held an umbrella over my head. I couldn't tell if it was rain or tears running down my face, but it left me looking like a wreck.

He crouched down and wrapped me in his coat.

"Janie, don't be scared. Ronnie will always protect you."

Even our engagement was something he'd knelt before his elders to ask for. He'd said he would marry only one woman in this life.

The past was too much to look back on. I only waited now to hear what he would say, what he would do.

"Sir, it's true, Marianne and I have slept together. The night she turned eighteen, someone got her drunk and nearly assaulted her. I was the one who saved her."

"She'd been drugged. If I hadn't stepped in, she would have died..."

"But I don't regret saving her. Her kindness changed something in me."

Their hands stayed locked together, the picture of a love nothing could break.

With things as they were, my father asked him only one last question.

"Then who will you marry, Jane or Marianne?"

"Marianne!"

Marianne laughed and threw her arms around his neck, burying her face against his chest.

My father didn't hesitate for a second. "Then marry Marianne. I'll handle Jane."

"Honey, what if she makes a scene?"

"Hmph. She wouldn't dare. She'll carry the Henson daughter's name her whole life. Who would dare bully her?"

"Marianne is different. She's had nothing. I'll do everything I can to make up for the father's love she never had!"

Outside the door, my heart fell from hope all the way to the bottom.

Ever since the stepmother and her family showed up, who exactly owed whom?

My mother had been driven to death. My father had been taken.

Even the company and my fiancé had all ended up in Marianne's hands. What was she still missing?

Did my father really not see it?

An empty title with no real power only makes you a target for mockery and cruelty.

I couldn't understand why he favored her like this, when I was his own flesh and blood, his blood in my veins.

Yet he loved another woman's child, a child who shared no blood with him at all.

The grief in me now wasn't over their love. It was over the way they played favorites and lied.

I walked out of the hospital with heavy steps. At the door, my aunt called.

"My darling Janie, you got into that Ivy League school, didn't you?"

I gripped the phone, a knot of hurt lodged in my throat.

No one would ever know why I'd worked so hard to get into that school.

I only wanted my father to look at me a little more, to care about me a little more, and to make the Gilberts pleased with me as their daughter-in-law.

"Auntie!"

The sob wouldn't stay down. It broke straight up out of me.

"What is it?"

"Are you just overwhelmed, or is someone bullying you?"

I told her the whole story from beginning to end, and by the time I finished she was furious.

"That vile old man. He's got the nerve to crawl all over me and treat my niece like garbage he can wipe his boots on? Every last one of them had better watch what's coming."

"Book me a flight. I want the next one home."

That was where the call ended.

It was late by the time I got home.

Several Rolls-Royces and Maybachs were parked at the gate.

The Gilbert matriarch had come in person.

"Since Marianne is the Henson heir, and since the two of them are already living as husband and wife, then we'll set the old rules aside and let them marry."

Ronald and Marianne were still fingers laced together, wrapped up in each other, kissing like they couldn't be happier.

Everyone watching gave satisfied nods.

"Here. These are all my engagement gifts for Marianne."

"The engagement gown was custom-made by hand with gold thread. The shoes, the jewelry, all of it too."

The moment she finished, the Gilbert matriarch turned to Ronald.

"And the Gilbert family's heirloom jade bracelet? It's time to bring that out for Marianne to wear too."

Her words had barely landed when one of the servants noticed me standing in the doorway.

"Miss, you're back."

Every head turned toward me. My stepmother curled her lip in a cold little smile. Marianne looked smug, though she was careful not to let it show.

Ronald and my father just sat there with clear consciences, watching me.

As I stepped inside, Ronald rose and came toward me.

The look on his face right then was nothing but cold.

Not a word of explanation, not even a greeting. He simply held out his hand and asked me to return the Gilbert heirloom bracelet.

The servants looked at me with pity in their eyes.

In that moment, everything I'd called family, everything I'd called love, turned to ash all at once.

"Before I give it back, there's one thing I want to know."

"If you never loved me, why did you get engaged to me first?"

"Is it true, then, that no heart can hold up under a test?"

Ronald's expression darkened.

"So do you know why I changed my mind and got engaged to Marianne instead?"

How was I supposed to know that? He read my silence as fear of speaking.

"Ha. Don't dare say it out loud in front of everyone, is that it?"

"So you're afraid of people finding out what you did too?"

What I did?

I had never wronged a single person, and I meant to get to the bottom of this.

"You say I did something. Then tell me. What exactly did I do?"

The words had barely left my mouth when Marianne rushed over and threw her arms around Ronald.

"Ronnie, don't say it."

"Sis has her reasons for doing all this. She's afraid I'll steal Dad's love away, that's all."

She was crying again. What did she have to feel so wronged about?

Then she turned to me and dropped straight to her knees.

"Sis, please don't be angry."

"No matter what you've done to me, I won't hold it against you."

"And I won't take Dad from you either. As for control of the company and Ronnie, if you won't give them up, then I won't dare press it any further."

"All I want is for me and my mother to live out our lives here in the Henson house, simply and quietly. That's all!"

With that, she started to kowtow to me. Ronald quickly stopped her.

"Marianne, don't kneel to a woman with a heart as black as hers. And you don't need her permission to have happiness or power."

"As long as I, Ronald Gilbert, am alive, I'll protect you. One day, one lifetime, however long I live."

Those words felt so familiar. He'd once said the very same thing to me, back when he was protecting me.

How things had changed.

"Are you two done with the performance? If you're finished, then tell me. What did I do?"

Ronald started to speak, but Marianne shook her head hard.

On the surface it looked like she was shielding me. In truth, the more pitiful she looked down there on her knees, the more Ronald would do anything for her.

"Marianne, this time I'll interrogate her if it kills me."

He stared at me, his eyes full of fury.

“You already have everything. Why would you pay someone to rape Marianne?”

“Do you have any idea how much a girl's reputation matters? You nearly got her killed.

Every one of them rose from their seats at that.

They looked at me with nothing but contempt and righteous fury.

My father left the couch and came straight at me.

“Did you really pay someone to do that to Marianne?”

The stepmother rushed over too, jabbing a finger at me. “Whatever you did to us before, fine. But now you'd go this far to ruin her? Thank God Ronald saved her in time.”

Before I could get a word out to deny it, a slap landed across my face.

It was hard. I lost my footing. My cheek burned, and blood ran from the corner of my mouth.

“You animal, say something!”

“Exactly like your mother. Back then she sent someone to beat her until she lost the baby. Two of a kind, mother and daughter, both vicious in the same way.”

The Gilberts said nothing, but they had already despised me in their hearts.

“Didn't I tell you not to speak? Why wouldn't you listen?”

“Losing her mother already made my sister pitiful enough. Even if she did something worse to me, I wouldn't be angry.”

“People always say stepmothers and stepsisters are wicked, but not every stepmother and stepsister is wicked!”

I stood up and wiped the blood from my mouth. My heart went cold, bit by bit.

“You only listened to what you wanted to hear. Not one of you ever asked me whether I did it.”

“I have one answer, and it's no.”

“Your mother was the one who hired someone to cause her own miscarriage, then pinned it on my mother. Now you've learned her trick and you're using it on me.”

“We didn't do it. If you insist on saying we did, then I'll prove myself with my own death.”

With that, Marianne threw herself at the wall.

Ronald lunged after her and caught her.

With Ronald there, how could she ever have died?

But no one in that room could see it.

“Let me die, let go of me!”

“No. The one who deserves to die isn't you. It's her!”

Ronald had someone hold Marianne back, then stalked over to me, shaking with rage.

“There's nothing left to say between us.”

“Hand over the bracelet.”

I smiled, a bleak, hollow thing. I lifted my hand to slide the jade bracelet off.

But the band was tight, and without something to grease it, it wouldn't come.

Ronald lost his patience, thinking I was stalling on purpose.

He grabbed my arm and wrenched at the bracelet with brute force, not caring whether it hurt.

The pain scraped down to the bone, and I couldn't hold back a cry.

He didn't soften, as if he wouldn't stop until it was off.

When I heard the jade grind the bones in my hand apart, my tears splashed onto his wrist, and only then did the bracelet come free.

Everyone around me watched with open scorn, and my father, to protect Marianne, ordered me thrown out.

“Don't think that being my daughter lets you do whatever you want to Marianne and her mother.”

“Someone throw her out of the Henson house, so she can work that rotten nature out of her.”

“Once you've suffered enough to give up your spite, I'll take you back.”

But the stepmother stepped forward to stop him.

“Darling, if you throw her out like this, what will people think of me and Marianne? They'll assume the two of us bullied her.”

“For your sake, I won't hold any of it against her, everything she's done to us.”

“All she has to do is kneel down right now and apologize to us herself, and we'll treat it as if none of it happened.”

My father nodded, moved, then turned and gave me the order coldly.

“You animal, did you hear that?”

“Get over here and kneel down and apologize to your mother and your sister!”

I stood facing them, one person against the whole room.

“I never did those things, and I will never apologize!”

“And let me remind you of one thing. My mother is dead. Where would I get a mother on the cheap?”

Seeing that I not only refused to apologize but had thrown it back in their faces,

my father flew into a rage and gave the order on the spot. “You've turned on me. You dare defy me.”

“Someone break her legs. Let's see if she still has the nerve to talk back!”

Several bodyguards rushed over and pinned me down, and just as everyone fixed their eyes on the show, the front doors were kicked open from outside.

A crowd of well-trained, cold-faced bodyguards poured in.

“You think the Rogers family has no one left? A mere live-in son-in-law dares lay a hand on my Janie……