Just as Christopher and Victoria disappeared around the corner, my stepbrother, Daniel Brooks, stormed into the hospital.

He had driven through the night from Houston, just missing a run-in with Christopher.

Dan gripped my cold hand. When he reached out to smooth my messy hair, his fingers brushed against my icy forehead, and the tears he’d been holding back finally broke free.

His voice trembled with a grief so raw it was painful to watch. “You silly fool. If you had just chosen me, things would have been so different. At least you wouldn't have died all alone!”

Seeing his weary, heartbroken face made my own nose sting. The moment I married Christopher, Dan had moved away, claiming there were better job opportunities in Houston.

He gave two reasons. First, he said a controlling man like Christopher would never tolerate him being around. Second, he said he had to leave for my own good, to avoid causing me any trouble.

I was an orphan. At sixteen, my stepmom married Dan’s dad, and we became a family.

At first, my new stepbrother and I were a bit awkward, but he grew to become the warmest, kindest person in my life.

I practically incinerated my relationship with my family to marry Christopher.

The reason was simple—they wanted me to marry Dan, a man they knew would treat me right. But I was stupidly, blindly in love.

Dan was the one who pushed the gurney, with its white-shrouded cargo, toward the morgue.

As he left, Christopher was just getting out of the elevator, holding a paper bag from Torchy’s Tacos.Victoria had mentioned a craving, so of course, he had rushed out to get it for her.

I’d asked him to do something similar once. I had a raging fever and all I wanted was some hot soup from the corner store downstairs. He’d complained it was too much trouble and told me to order delivery.

Dan and Christopher met head-on in the hallway. Dan, pushing my body. Their eyes locked, and a flicker of recognition passed between them.

“Get out of my way,” Dan said, his voice utterly devoid of warmth. I couldn't blame him. Who has time for pleasantries with the man who indirectly murdered your… well, me.

A complex expression crossed Christopher’s face. He stepped aside, probably out of some basic respect for the dead. But as Dan pushed the gurney past him, his gaze fell on the shape under the white sheet.

“Wait!” he called out, as if a sudden, awful thought had gripped him.

“Who… Who is that?”

My soul trembled. Part of me was terrified for Dan to tell him the truth, but another, darker part of me was morbidly curious to see his reaction.

Dan was silent for a long moment before he spoke three cold, clear words.

“My wife.”

I froze. So did Christopher. He knew my family situation and, more importantly, he knew about the feelings Dan had kept buried for me.

“When did you get married?” Christopher blurted out, then looked surprised at his own question.

Dan let out a bitter laugh. “I don’t think that’s any of your business, Mr. Mitchell.”

Christopher’s face flushed with anger, and he shot back with a sneer.

“You always claimed to love Elena so much. I guess your love wasn’t all that special after all.”

Dan stopped walking. He turned, his eyes like daggers.

“Compared to you, I suppose I fall short,” he said, his voice dripping with a hatred so thick I’m surprised Christopher didn’t choke on it. “After all, the things you did to her were far worse than anything I could imagine.”

I floated behind Dan, taking one last look at Christopher. That all-consuming love I once felt for him? I think it was finally starting to vanish.

A month later, Victoria was discharged. Christopher threw her a massive recovery party, right in the middle of the South by Southwest festival, when Austin was at its liveliest.

While I had only Dan by my side in the end, Victoria’s hospital room had been a revolving door of friends. Now, she was surrounded by a gaggle of fashion bloggers and adoring fans. The atmosphere hit a fever pitch the moment Christopher walked in.

“Chris, when are you finally going to make an honest woman out of our Tori?” one of the influencers shouted. “The way you dote on her, we’re all so happy for her!”

Victoria lowered her head shyly, leaning into Christopher.

“Don’t be ridiculous. Chris is already married. I don’t want Elena to get the wrong idea. And I don’t want to be the kind of woman who breaks up a home. If she found out, she’d probably attack me online again.”

One of her friends immediately jumped in, her tone sharp and nasty.

“Please. What’s so great about her? The only thing she knows how to do is stir up drama online for attention. The person Chris loves is you, not her. She’s the third wheel here! What she did was straight-up cyberbullying! If I were Chris, I would have divorced her ages ago!”

The irony was so suffocating I could have choked on it. So, I was the interloper. This was Victoria’s signature move—casting herself as the innocent victim with a few well-placed whispers, shifting all the blame onto me.

But the part that truly broke what was left of my heart was Christopher’s reaction.

He just stood there in silence, letting them tear me to shreds without a single word of defense. He eventually led Victoria away, back to his penthouse apartment in Downtown, a place I had never once set foot in. It was his sanctuary for whenever we fought.

I should have known all along. Victoria was the exception to his every rule.

Later, as he was helping her unpack, Victoria wrapped her arms around him from behind.

She pressed her chest against his back, her voice a seductive purr as her breath ghosted over his ear. “Chris, can you give me another chance? I didn’t mean to leave you all those years ago. If my mother hadn’t been sick, I never would have taken your father’s money.”

It was the oldest, most cliché story in the book, and yet he’d fallen for it, pining after her for years.

He laughed, but the sound was empty. “If you had just been honest with me, we wouldn’t be here. Did you think I couldn’t give you what my father could?”

Victoria was speechless for a moment. But she was clever. She knew I was his weak spot, and she immediately turned the tables.

“You hate me, don’t you? Is that why you just stood by and did nothing while Elena was bullying me? She posted my private photos online, she cyberbullied me, she even hired bots to attack me!”

“And when I needed a bone marrow transplant, she refused to even get tested. You just wanted to punish me through her, didn't you?”

Lies! All of it, a mountain of lies!

I was a simple project coordinator at a non-profit. How would I even have the resources to pull something like that off?

A five-minute investigation would have blown her story wide open. But Christopher believed her. And the most laughable part? Him doing “nothing” about it?

The moment he bought her story, he hired a PR firm to spread vicious rumors about me on every social media platform.

I was painted as a jealous, evil shrew who would do anything to marry into money. I remember curling up into a ball, shaking with despair as the anonymous hatred poured in.

Christopher watched it all happen. He once printed out a page of the most hateful comments and waved it in my face.

“If you so much as touch a hair on Tori’s head again, I’ll make sure you’re ruined in the entire state of Texas.”

I told him again and again that I hadn’t done anything. He never listened. He never believed me.

And now, here wasVictoria, pulling the same trick, while Christopher conveniently forgot how he had brutally tormented me because of her lies.

The whole thing was just absurd. I truly couldn’t understand: if he didn’t love me, why did he ever marry me in the first place?