No matter how strongly I expressed my desire to go back to his hometown with him, he always found a hundred reasons to refuse.

"The family graves are all up in the hills. It rains every Memorial Day, so you'd have to slog through mud the whole way. The only bathrooms are pit latrines. Could you really handle that?"

I thought about it, swallowed my disgust, and said yes.

Then he tried again.

"There's nothing out there. Mom's too sentimental to tear down the old house. At night, rats run across the ceiling. You're terrified of rats. You'd never make it."

I would have had to be a fool not to see he was making excuses.

At the time, I told myself he was just embarrassed for me to see how poor he'd grown up.

But the villagers said he'd done well for himself. He'd renovated the family home into a three-story mansion.

There were no pit latrines. Every bathroom had a smart toilet.

He'd even hired two housekeepers, one to cook and one to clean. Rats running around? Not a chance.

And Spencer had known what the house really looked like all along. He'd been lying to me right alongside his father.

I stepped back, pulling free of my mother-in-law's grasp.

The rage I'd been holding down broke loose.

"What is this about you two being husband and wife?"

I pointed at the villager, my voice shaking with fury.

"Why do the people here say you two are the married couple?"

"The person who married you—wasn't that me?"

"Calvin, how much have you been hiding from me?"

Seeing that the situation was spiraling out of control, Lola dropped to her knees in front of me with a heavy thud.

Her eyes brimmed with fragile, wounded innocence.

"This is all my fault."

"Corinne, you're from the city. You don't understand how hard it is for women like us in the countryside."

"After I became a widow, my own family wouldn't even take me back. They wouldn't so much as save me a burial plot. Calvin only held that wedding reception in the village to keep people from bullying me."

Still lying. Every last one of them.

I looked at this family, and for the first time, the sheer absurdity of my marriage hit me full force.

Spencer suddenly lunged at me, fists swinging.

"You're a bad person!"

I caught his wrist, but he bared his teeth and sank them into my arm.

Blood ran down my wrist in a thin red line.

Lola dabbed at her tears, but behind her hand, the corner of her mouth curled upward.

Calvin yanked Spencer away and snapped at him, brow furrowed.

"You can't just bite people!"

Lola pulled the boy into her arms and turned to me with an apologetic look.

"Corinne, please don't be angry. Spencer just cares about me too much."

At a glance, they looked like the real family of three.

I stared at Spencer's defiant little face, and the pain in my chest was sharp as a needle.

The clothes on his body—I had compared every fabric, every material, one by one, before buying them.

The knitted bag hanging from his shoulder—I had followed the tutorial, unraveled it, and started over several times before I got it right.

But those familiar features, the ones I'd memorized by heart, now looked exactly like Lola's no matter how I tried to see them differently.

I steadied my breathing and turned to Calvin.

"Spencer isn't my child. Is he."

"Give me back my real child. And give me a divorce."

Calvin's brow knotted tight.

"Have you lost your mind? Someone throws out a piece of gossip and you just believe it?"

"Mom already told you—it's local custom here to call your uncle and aunt 'Dad' and 'Mom.' Spencer's just closer to his aunt than most kids, so he calls her that. That's all."

"She's a widow with no one to depend on. Spencer learned to look out for her from the time he was small. What exactly did he do wrong?"

Isabella chimed in from the side.

"Corinne, you've always been generous. Can't you just make a little room in your heart for your poor sister-in-law?"

"It's only here in the village that Lola counts as the second son's wife."

"Plenty of families around here have one man carry on two family lines. I never once entertained that idea. When all's said and done, you're the one I think of as my second son's wife."

I couldn't help but laugh. Cold and hollow.

No matter what she said, they had an excuse ready.

Eventually, Isabella dropped the pretense of politeness altogether, her patience visibly fraying.

"Without my Calvin, your father's company would never have made half that money."

"Six years of marriage, and you never once cooked me a meal. Lola is ten times the daughter-in-law you ever were."

"Stop making a fuss over nothing. Having one more person love Spencer is a good thing, isn't it? Obsessing over some old grave like this is just morbid."

She shot Calvin a reproachful look.

"Don't bring her next time. My jaw aches from all this explaining."

Calvin pinched the bridge of his nose, irritation plain on his face.

"Corinne, quit acting insane."

I was shaking with rage. I pulled out my phone and dialed 911.

"Fine. Then let the police come."

"I want to see how the Guardian Locket I bought for my baby ended up in a grave hundreds of miles away."

The moment Isabella spotted the locket in my hand, the color drained from her face.

The officers arrived quickly.

But Isabella dug in immediately, insisting I was deranged.

"She's out of her mind! She grabbed my son and started calling him her husband!"

Lola dabbed at her tears, voice trembling.

"This woman has been going around the village asking questions, claiming I stole her husband."

I hadn't expected them to be this shameless. First they'd tried to cover it up. Then they'd begged. And now they were turning the whole thing around on me.

I pulled out our marriage certificate.

"Officer, we are legally married."

"I have reason to believe my husband conspired with his family to swap my child at birth and murder her. I'm requesting a DNA test on the remains."

I thought one marriage certificate would be enough to shatter their lies.

But the officer's brow slowly furrowed.

"Ma'am, this certificate is forged."

"The embossed seal at the bottom is clearly wrong."

"That's impossible!"

I snatched it back, turning it over and over in my hands.

Lola smiled softly and produced her own marriage certificate.

"Officer, this is the real one. My husband and I have been legally married for years. Everything we told you is the truth."

"The grave she's talking about belongs to the child I lost with my late first husband. Everyone in this village knows that."

I stared at the date on the certificate, and the ground shifted beneath me.

It was dated seven years ago.

So the wedding back then hadn't just been a reception for the village. It had been real.

"Calvin, why?"

A high-pitched ringing filled my ears. Fury and disbelief crashed over me in waves.

Calvin didn't even glance in my direction. His voice was cold as ice.

"Officer, this woman has a history of mental instability. Nothing she says should be taken at face value."

"Feel free to ask around. If we'd really been married for six years, wouldn't someone in this village recognize her?"

Spencer chimed in right on cue.

"She's a bad lady, mister."

I had already guessed Spencer wasn't my biological child. But hearing those words come out of his mouth still cut deep.

They had been scheming against me from the very beginning of this so-called marriage.

The officer turned to me, his expression serious.

"Do you have any concrete evidence?"

Isabella jumped in before I could answer.

"Evidence of what? She's mentally ill!"

"She saw my son get promoted to CEO of the Simmons Group and came crawling over here, playing crazy to latch on!"

So that was why Calvin could stand there and lie about me without flinching. He believed he'd already seized control of my father's company. The sham marriage had served its purpose. He didn't need it anymore.

And now that I'd stumbled onto the truth, he'd decided to drop the act entirely.

At that exact moment, the roar of an engine tore through the air behind me.

My father's voice carried over, deep and steady as bedrock.

"I have evidence."

I turned and saw the familiar figures stepping out of the car. The tears I'd been holding back finally broke free.

Mom pulled me into her arms, murmuring softly against my hair.

"It's okay. We're here now. No one is going to hurt you."

Calvin panicked. He rushed forward, plastering on a smile.

"Mr. Simm—"

The word barely left his mouth before the bodyguards blocked his path.

The secretary at my father's side handed over a thick stack of documents without a word.

I scanned the contents, and my blood ran cold.

What Calvin had done went far beyond what I'd already uncovered.