The night before my wedding, a trending post from a local forum popped up on my feed.

"Tomorrow's my wedding. I swapped my fiancée's vitamins with sleeping pills. Her foster sister will take her place at the altar. How do I stop feeling guilty?"

The comments were tearing him apart, but the poster didn't care.

"The one I love has always been her foster sister. If it weren't for the fact that she's the real Pruitt heiress and marrying her is the only way to secure the investment, who'd want to marry that shrew?"

"She's head over heels for me anyway. Once it's a done deal, all I have to do is sweet-talk her a little, and she'll hand over every last cent."

Someone asked what he'd do if his fiancée refused to let it go.

His reply was casual, almost bored.

"Then I'll let my girl take the hit for now. Marry the shrew, get the money. Once I'm back on top, I'll engineer their family's bankruptcy and toss the shrew into the gutter as an apology to my girl."

The comments exploded with outrage, calling him an ungrateful snake.

Then a familiar profile picture appeared in the likes.

"She stole everything that was supposed to be mine. Once I pull off the switch, not only will her fiancé be mine, her billion-dollar dowry will be too!"

Her profile picture matched his—a pair of matching cartoon dolls, the exact same ones the fake heiress kept displayed in her room.

I picked up the vitamins from my nightstand and swallowed them without hesitation.

What they didn't know was that they'd counted their chickens far too early.

……

The next morning, the sun was already high in the sky by the time I woke. I pressed a hand to my forehead and stumbled out of my room.

I nearly walked straight into my mother.

Her eyes were still rimmed with tears. She froze for two full seconds when she saw me, then gasped. "Amber Pruitt! What are you doing here?"

My father rushed over at the sound of her voice. His gaze bounced between me and the wedding procession disappearing down the road below. "If you're here, then who just got into the Whitfield motorcade?"

I blinked, the picture of confusion. "How is that possible?"

"Catherine Pruitt gave me new vitamins yesterday. After I took them, I got so drowsy I slept straight through till now."

The festive atmosphere in the villa evaporated in an instant. Everyone exchanged uneasy glances.

My mother was the first to react. Her expression turned to ice as she seized Eudora Lawrence by the arm—the woman had been quietly inching toward the door.

"I kept wondering why a nanny was sobbing harder than the bride's own mother at the send-off. Now it makes sense. The one you sent away was the counterfeit daughter you gave birth to!"

Eudora flinched and tried to pull back. Her eyes darted around the room, and when she spoke, the words came out in stammering fragments.

"Ma'am, what are you talking about?"

"The young miss overslept on her own. How is that my fault?"

My father turned to the household staff, his voice sharp as a blade. "What are you standing around for? Go drag that wretched girl Catherine back here. Now!"

The words had barely left his mouth when the butler came rushing in, pale-faced.

"Sir—sir, the Whitfield estate just sent word. The ceremony is already done."

My mother let out a cold laugh. "So they exchanged vows. So what? A sparrow doesn't become a phoenix just because you put it in a cage. A fake is still a fake."

She turned on her heel and led the entire entourage straight toward the Whitfield estate.

I lowered my gaze and followed obediently behind my parents.

Inside, though, I was smiling.

The ceremony was the least of it.

When our two families had gotten engaged, Desmond Whitfield had insisted on a traditional wedding. A family with a hundred years of heritage, he'd said. Ancestral customs that had to be honored.

Now it all made sense. He'd been planning this from the start. The bride would be veiled the entire time, making it effortless for Catherine to slip in unnoticed.

And given the timing, the deed was almost certainly done by now. Far more than just vows had been exchanged.

Beside me, Eudora could barely contain the smirk tugging at the corners of her mouth.

That only confirmed what I already knew. What was done was done.

When I was still an infant, Eudora had deliberately swapped me with Catherine.

It wasn't until we were ten years old, when Catherine took a bad fall and a blood test revealed the truth, that the switch was finally exposed. She was no Pruitt at all.

My parents had spent a fortune tracking me down and bringing me home.

After all, Catherine and her birth mother had lived under our roof for ten years. My parents were kind-hearted people, and they'd let them stay.

No one expected that kindness would breed such treachery.

Catherine had always believed it was my fault she'd lost her status as the Pruitt family's eldest daughter. That resentment had driven her to this underhanded scheme.

Even after I'd caught them, they'd banked on the fact that the Pruitts were one of the most prominent families in Kingsharbor. They were certain I'd swallow my humiliation to protect the family's reputation.

While I turned all of this over in my mind, our group had already arrived at the door of the bridal suite—the one Desmond had sworn up and down he'd decorated just for me.

The wedding guests trailed behind us, craning their necks for a better look.

The door was kicked open. Inside, Desmond scrambled off the bed in a state of undress, grabbing the suit jacket he'd tossed aside and throwing it over the woman beneath him.

His face darkened like a storm cloud. "What the hell are you doing? There's a limit to wedding-night pranks!"

My mother let out a cold laugh, strode forward, and ripped the jacket away from Catherine's half-hidden face.

"Wedding night? Open your eyes and take a good look—which one of us is the bride?!"

Desmond's hand trembled as he pointed at me, putting on a show of shock. "Catherine? What are you doing here?"

The moment the crowd got a clear look at Catherine's face, the room erupted.

"Isn't that the Pruitt family's fake heiress? What is she doing in the Whitfield heir's bed?"

My father's voice cut through the noise, dripping with contempt. "Apologies for the spectacle, everyone. The woman in that bed is the daughter of our former housekeeper. We raised her in our home for over twenty years, and this is how she repays us—stealing her sister's wedding out of sheer vanity and making a fool of herself for all to see."

Desmond yanked the comforter up to cover Catherine's exposed body, his brow furrowed tight.

"Amber! How long are you going to keep this up?!"

"You overslept and missed the ceremony. Catherine stepped in to save your family's face."

"I had too much to drink and didn't realize it wasn't you. But what's done is done. The wedding night has already happened. No matter what, I have to take responsibility for Catherine now."

"You're both Pruitt daughters anyway. It doesn't matter which one I marry—the partnership between our families won't be affected."

"I know you can't live without me. That's why you brought this whole crowd here, to force a switch."

"Don't worry. Even if I marry Catherine, I can guarantee that the Whitfield heir's position will always belong to our children. Yours and mine."

"There. Satisfied?"

My father's jaw clenched so hard the muscles in his cheek twitched. "Amber is the Pruitts' only daughter. You sleep with another woman on your wedding day, and now you have the audacity to humiliate her like this?!"

My eyes stung. Tears pooled along my lower lashes, threatening to spill.

My mother pulled me into her arms, her hand trembling against my back. My father stepped in front of us both, shielding us, and turned to me. "Amber, don't you worry. Your father will make this right."

Whispers rippled through the crowd. Every pair of eyes fixed on the couple in the bed was filled with undisguised disdain.

"Did I hear that correctly? The Pruitts are one of the most respected families in Kingsharbor, and the Whitfield heir wants their legitimate daughter to be his mistress?"

"The real Pruitt heiress is tall and striking. The fake one is small and slight. How drunk would someone have to be to mix up his own bride?"

The mockery washed over Desmond, and his frown deepened with displeasure. The look he gave me was the kind reserved for a hysterical woman throwing a tantrum over nothing.

"Amber, this is a minor issue. I've already promised our children the inheritance. If you want to move into the Whitfield estate later, I won't stop you."

"And yet you keep pushing it, dragging all these people here to watch the spectacle. You're being completely unreasonable!"

The sheer self-righteousness on his face was so absurd it startled a laugh out of me.

He'd trampled over me to stage a grand wedding with that fraud, and now he expected me to play the willing mistress. He wanted my future children born in the shadows, illegitimate from their very first breath.

The nerve of that man!

The Whitfield family had been illustrious once, generations ago. By now, the name was nothing but gilded rot, a hollow shell dressed up in old glory. If it hadn't been for the childhood betrothal tying them to the Pruitts, if not for the Pruitt family's financial lifeline, the Whitfield name would have vanished from Kingsharbor's elite circles long ago.

And yet Desmond still had the audacity to want it all. Both women. Both fortunes.

What a joke.

My father laughed, the kind of laugh that came from pure, white-hot fury. "The Whitfields have enjoyed a few good years and already forgotten who pulled them out of the gutter?"

Margaret Whitfield hurried forward through the crowd, her expression tight with forced composure.

"Now, now, let's not say things we don't mean," she said, her tone practiced and diplomatic. "There's so much to manage with a wedding. Desmond has been running himself ragged for weeks. He simply lost his head for a moment."

She spread her hands in a conciliatory gesture. "It's all a misunderstanding. We'll sort it out."

Our family had always been cautious when it came to marriage. A full month before the wedding, my parents had hired a private investigator to look into Desmond.

The night before the ceremony, the investigator delivered a stack of photographs. Desmond and Catherine. Together. Intimately.

I had been shocked. Furious. But more than anything, I couldn't believe it.

Then I stumbled across that viral post online.

The fog lifted. Desmond wasn't just cheating. He was planning to ride the Pruitt fortune to the top, and once he'd squeezed every last drop of value from us, he'd engineer our family's ruin.

I would never let that happen.

My mother let out a sharp, derisive laugh. "Mrs. Whitfield, do you take us for fools?"

"Amber has lived under the same roof as your son since she was ten years old. They've known each other for over a decade. You're telling me he was too tired to recognize his own bride?"

Catherine scrambled to throw on a robe and dropped to her knees in front of everyone, tears streaming down her face like rain on white petals.

"Mom, this is all my fault," she sobbed. "Amber overslept, and I was terrified our family would be humiliated, so I put on the wedding dress myself. I was only trying to help."

She turned to look at me, her voice cracking with every word.

"Amber, please. I was wrong. But it's done now. I've already married Desmond. If you keep making a scene, you'll only drag the Pruitt name through the mud. Even if you don't care about me, don't you care about the family that raised you?"

Her eyes were rimmed red, her expression the picture of wounded innocence, as if she were the one who'd been wronged. As if the filthy affair with her sister's fiance had nothing to do with her.

And somehow, I was the one threatening the family's reputation by demanding justice.

That was when the private investigator I'd already contacted arrived. He walked straight to my father and handed him a stack of photographs.

"Mr. Pruitt, I'm afraid this situation is more complicated than it appears."

My father opened the envelope. Inside were the same explicit photos I'd already seen.

Every single image showed them in some degrading position, shameless and brazen, without a shred of decency between them.

My father's face turned a deep, mottled red. He slammed the photographs down onto the bed.

"What does the Whitfield family have to say for itself now?"

"Mrs. Whitfield, if your son wanted the Pruitt family's adopted daughter, he could have said so outright. There was no need to humiliate my daughter on her wedding day!"

"The partnership is over. The Pruitts are pulling every cent out of Whitfield Corp."

The moment those words left his mouth, the color drained from Margaret's face.

Without Pruitt capital, Whitfield Corp's finances would collapse entirely. Nothing would be left but a mountain of debt.

Margaret whipped around and slapped Desmond hard across the face. "Look at what you've done!"

Then she jabbed a finger at Catherine. "Someone get this tramp out of my sight! Throw her out!"

Desmond pressed a hand to his stinging cheek. His gaze cut toward me, vicious and seething, as though he wanted to tear me apart.

In his eyes, I wasn't the victim. I was the villain who'd ruined his wedding and turned his mother against him.

He pulled Catherine behind his back and squared his jaw, staring his mother down with open defiance.