The Billionaire's Secret Sacrifice A Love She Never Knew

My fiancé Raymond James's first love was back in the country.

The welcome dinner was held at a members-only private club on the south side of the city. Raymond had bought the place out at a premium just to make me happy.

He'd always been hypersensitive to smells, a man with severe mysophobia who couldn't tolerate even the faintest trace of cigarette smoke.

But the moment I pushed open the door to the private room, the air was thick with it.

The woman plucked the glass right out of his hand, tipped her head back, and drank. Then she laughed, flicking ash onto his dress pants.

Raymond didn't push her away. He just shook his head with a helpless look, his voice carrying a kind of indulgence I had never once heard from him.

"All these years, and you're still this willful."

Someone nearby egged them on, joking that the young Mr. James had finally met his match, that even the stone-cold king had a soft spot after all.

Everyone laughed. The atmosphere was warm, electric, as if they were all part of the same world.

And I was the one standing in the shadows, the thermos of hangover soup in my hands suddenly feeling absurd.

The lid was hot against my fingers. The heat seared all the way to my chest.

So his rules weren't unbreakable after all.

...

"Raymond, your fiancée's standing right outside. You're not going to invite her in?"

The door cracked open, and Cedric Delgado, Raymond's close friend, poked his head out. His gaze landed on the thermos in my hands and lingered there for a beat.

I tightened my grip on the handle and shook my head.

"No, it's fine. You all have fun."

"What about the soup?"

"Could you take it in for me?"

I handed it over. Before he could say another word, I turned and walked away.

"Hold on, let me grab Raymond for you."

I looked back, smiled, and waved him off.

"Don't bother. I don't want to kill the mood."

Outside, the cold wind cut against the back of my neck, and only then did that scalding ache begin to ease.

My phone buzzed.

A message from Raymond's mother, my soon-to-be mother-in-law, Nora James.

"Dinner at the family estate tomorrow. Don't forget what you should and shouldn't do."

One command. Not a single wasted word.

Just like the woman herself. Always looking down from above, always convinced that everyone around her was desperate to claw their way into the James family.

I drove back to the home I shared with Raymond, a villa perched halfway up the hillside.

Spacious. Cold. Empty of any sign of life.

Raymond's work kept him busy, and I was the caged bird in this gilded house.

The only difference was that he had never restricted my freedom. He even encouraged me to pursue whatever made me happy.

But apart from him, nothing particularly did.

The smart tablet on the living room console was still glowing. He'd left it on that morning after checking the financial news.

I walked over to turn it off, but a photo filled the screen.

An automatic push from his cloud album.

Raymond and a girl at the beach. He was carrying her on his back, grinning wide and bright, radiating a kind of unguarded joy I had never seen from him.

The girl was Darlene Simmons.

They wore the simplest white T-shirts and jeans, yet the image was beautiful enough to be a painting.

The date on the photo was eight years ago.

The year Darlene left the country.

I'd never known that the cold, taciturn Raymond James had ever been so recklessly, brilliantly alive.

And I'd never known that somewhere in his private album, an entire youth had been preserved for another woman.

I tapped into the album. That single photo was the only one there.

At eleven that night, Raymond came home.

He shrugged off his jacket. The smell of cigarettes and perfume clung to it, heavy and unmistakable.

I stood at the foot of the stairs, watching him.

"You're back."

He gave a low "Mm," tugging at his tie, exhaustion etched between his brows.

"Did you drink? What about the soup?"

He didn't look up. "Cedric brought it over. I had some."