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.

"Mom! Catherine and I grew up together. We've been in love for years. If Amber hadn't clung to me and insisted on this marriage, we would've been together a long time ago."

He shot me a sidelong glance, dripping with contempt.

"Amber is arrogant and selfish. She's not fit to stand beside the CEO of Whitfield Corp as his wife. I've already promised that her child will have the status of an heir. What more does she want? And she still has the nerve to bring all these people here to cause a scene, humiliating both our families?"

Looking at his shameless face, my stomach churned with disgust and regret.

How had I ever been so devoted to a man like this?

I stared coldly at the despicable pair in front of me and ripped away the last shred of cover they were hiding behind.

"So let me get this straight. The two of you conspired to swap out my vitamin pills with sedatives, causing me to oversleep and miss the ceremony, and somehow that was a favor to both families."

"And I, who simply came with my parents to put an end to this farce, am the one dragging our families' names through the mud?"

I leaned forward, locking eyes with both of them, and spoke loud enough for every single person in the room to hear. "If you two were truly in love, why didn't you just say so from the start?"

"Was it because you wanted to trample both families' reputations underfoot? Or because what you were really after wasn't just a wedding, but the entire Pruitt fortune?"

The color drained from both their faces in an instant.

Desmond's eyes darted away. He stammered, "You... what are you talking about?"

Catherine's tears fell faster, her voice trembling. "Just because you can't have the man you want, you'd lash out and slander me? I genuinely love Desmond!"

I tapped my phone once. Instantly, the link to last night's viral post was sent to every guest's phone.

People opened the link, and there was nothing left to misunderstand.

"A cheating scumbag and his scheming mistress, clawing their way up with dirty tricks, then planning to toss aside the person who got them there. Absolutely disgusting!"

"They pulled something this vile and still had the gall to brag about it online. If that were my child, I'd have strangled them with a rope before they could drag the whole family down."

Some turned their fire directly on Desmond.

"The Whitfield heir really has no shame. If he fancied the Pruitts' adopted daughter, he should've just married her."

"This whole scheme was obviously about the Pruitt fortune. Steal their wealth and then force the real Pruitt heiress into being some dirty little secret on the side? Does he think the Pruitt family and every prominent family in Kingsharbor are fools?"

Margaret was shaking with fury. Her palm connected with Desmond's face in a vicious slap.

The blow snapped his head to the side, but even then, his first instinct was to shield Catherine.

Margaret saw this and nearly doubled over, clutching her chest, rage and heartbreak warring on her face.

"You ungrateful wretch! How long has this been going on? And you still refuse to repent!"

"Get on your knees in front of your future in-laws and beg for forgiveness this instant! Throw that shameless woman out and complete your marriage to Amber, properly!"

With that, she turned toward me, plastering on a warm smile, and reached for my hand.

I stepped back without a flicker of expression, neatly avoiding her grasp.

Margaret's smile froze. A beat later, she forced it back into place, even wider than before.

"Amber, this is all the Whitfield family's fault. I failed to discipline my own son."

"As his mother, I'm apologizing to you on Desmond's behalf. Whatever you want, the Whitfield family will agree to it."

"I promise you, nothing like this will ever happen again."

That was when Desmond straightened his spine, jaw set with stubborn defiance.

"Mom! The woman I love is Catherine. In this lifetime, the only Mrs. Whitfield will be her!"

"We're not even married yet and Amber is already this overbearing, this disrespectful to the Whitfield name."

"If you force me to marry a woman like that, it'll be the death of me!"