### Chapter 7

His voice was cold, like a blade dipped in poison.

"Where I go is none of your business."

I had no intention of arguing with him, but Cyril yanked my car door open and dragged me into his Cayenne.

"What the hell is wrong with you? Let me out!"

He didn't react. He floored the gas and drove straight for Weiss Hospital.

"Just because you can't have children, you want to destroy Melanie and her baby? How can you be this vicious?"

"If I hadn't gotten there in time, her whole life would have been ruined!"

He dragged me into the hospital room.

Melanie lay in the bed, her face white as paper. The moment she saw me she scrambled off the bed, dropped to her knees in front of me, and pressed her forehead to the floor, again and again.

"It was my fault, sister. Punish me however you want, just please let my baby live. Please?"

Listening to her, the numbness started in my fingertips and spread through my whole body.

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

Cyril seemed to have expected the denial. His voice came out hard and cold. "The kidnappers confessed everything. You hired them to take Melanie, you told them to do whatever they wanted with her, to get rid of the baby. And you've got the nerve to deny it?"

He pulled Melanie up off the floor and into his arms, kissing the tears from her face with great tenderness.

"Don't be afraid. I'm here. I'll make this right for you."

From inside his embrace, Melanie stole a glance at me, her eyes full of malice and triumph.

Another play, written and performed by her.

I didn't waste another word. I grabbed Melanie by the wrist.

"You say you were kidnapped? Then let's go to the police and report it. The truth will come out on its own."

Melanie shrank back into Cyril's arms in terror, the tears coming harder, her whole body trembling. "Cyril, I'm scared..."

His face dark, Cyril knocked my hand away.

"Melanie was nearly violated, and you want to put her through it all over again in front of everyone?!"

"Julie Henson, apologize. And swear you'll never hurt Melanie again."

I screamed at the two of them. "Apologize to her? She isn't worth it!"

Crack.

Cyril slapped me with everything he had.

He looked at Melanie's swollen, red-rimmed eyes, then turned to me, and his gaze had never been so vicious.

"So you feel no remorse at all. Someone take Mrs. Weiss to the morgue. Let her reflect down there."

The bodyguards hauled me off at once and threw me into the hospital morgue.

The door slammed shut. A wave of freezing air hit me, cold enough to set my whole body shaking.

There was a time when I scraped a little skin and he came apart with worry.

Now I'd just lost a child, the wound he'd given me still on my belly, my leg festering, and he locked me in a place full of the dead.

I curled up on the icy floor and thought of seven years ago, my adoptive mother holding my hand as she warned me:

"Sweetheart, always love yourself first. Never pin your hopes on a man."

I hadn't understood her then.

Now, frozen nearly stiff, my mind blurring, the words came back clearer than they ever had.

On the third morning, the bodyguards finally opened the door.

I dragged my body, heavy as iron, out of the hospital and went back to that house to get my things.

The master bedroom door stood ajar. From inside came the violent creak of the bed, and a woman's high, rising moans. The sound drove through my eardrums and rang around inside my skull, and I almost threw up.

### Chapter 8

I don't know how long I stood outside that door. Dawn came and washed the sky pale, and somewhere in there my heart went numb. When I finally dragged my body, spent past the point of feeling, into the living room, every step was borrowed.

I sat on the sofa and waited. Half-conscious, I felt a shadow fall across the light in front of me.

Cyril stood there in nothing but a robe, the scent of another woman still clinging to his skin.

He took in my purple lips, my stiff, frozen body, and something flickered in his eyes—pity, guilt. Then he remembered I was the jealous one who'd tried to hurt Melanie and her baby, and his face hardened again.

"Do you understand what you did wrong?"

I kept my eyes down, looking at the fingernail I'd torn loose hammering on that door all night, and said quietly, "I was wrong."

Wrong to make love my whole life.

Wrong to keep hoping, like a fool, for something from people who only shared my blood.

Cyril caught sight of the blood seeping down my legs, and something twisted in his chest. He reached for me, ready to pull me in before I dropped. "Julie—"

"Help! Miss Melanie's trying to kill herself!"

The maid's terrified scream tore down from upstairs. Cyril's hand clamped onto my arm and he hauled me up the stairs with him.

Melanie was clinging to the window. He shoved me away and crushed her against him.

She broke into loud, theatrical sobs. "She'll never let me live! If there's a next time, I'd rather die now and give you back to her—"

The warmth drained out of his eyes. He turned and looked at me.

"There won't be a next time. She's here to get on her knees and apologize to you."

"What? I will not—" The words burst out of me before I could stop them.

He only nodded to the bodyguards. They pinned me down and forced me to the floor.

"Do something wrong, you pay for it," he said coldly. "Help your mistress."

A bodyguard fisted his hand in my hair and slammed my forehead into the cold floor. Once. Again. Harder.

Blood blurred everything in front of me. Beside me, Melanie's fake mercy floated down. "Let it go, Cyril. It's our wedding day. Spare her. She's still my sister, after all."

"All right. You always were the kind one. The guests are here. Let's go."

He swept her up into his arms. Her tears turned to a smile, and she let him carry her out without a backward glance.

From start to finish, he never once looked back at me.

I lay crumpled on the floor while my phone buzzed and buzzed.

First, my birth mother: Today is Melanie and Cyril's wedding. Be smart and stay away. Don't come ruin it.

Then my brother, Lucas: Swear you'll never fight Melanie for anything again, and I'll let you come for the family portrait.

The last one was from Cyril: Julie, after the wedding I have a surprise for you. You're going to love it.

A family portrait? A surprise?

Disgusting.

No. I don't need any of it anymore.

There's no bigger surprise than watching every one of you get what you deserve.

I started to laugh, and laughed until it broke into coughing I couldn't stop.

Then I forced myself up off the floor and pressed a file folder into Fiona's hands, telling her to put it into Cyril's own hands at the height of the wedding.

The dark closed in at the edges of my sight, and just as I fell, a man came running toward me.

"Julie!"

He caught me clean and lifted me into his arms. His chest was warm and solid.

"Sweetheart, I'm here to take you home."

I grabbed his sleeve and held on with both hands, gripping hard, biting out each word through my teeth:

"I want Cyril to never find me. Ever."

Edwin laid me down in the car and carefully wiped the blood from the corner of my eye. "Don't worry. Julie Henson is already gone. From now on, there's only Julie Delgado in this world."

"The people who hurt you—I'll see to it none of them ever die in peace."

The car carried us racing toward the airport.

On a giant billboard screen by the road, a lavish wedding was streaming live.

I looked at the screen, and the corner of my mouth curved into something cruel.

Cyril. I can't wait for the most "memorable" moment of your wedding to arrive.

Goodbye, for good.

I hope you like the wedding gift I left you.