Chapter 1

My father, Robert, always said he knew what was best for me.

He was a powerful man in finance, old money, used to getting his way.

He saw Liam, ambitious and driven, and decided Liam was the man I should marry.

I had loved Liam quietly for over a decade, a secret I kept close.

So when Dad used a critical business deal, a career opportunity Liam couldn' t refuse, to pressure him into marrying me, a small, foolish part of me hoped.

Liam saw it differently.

A gilded cage, he called it later, a blow to his self-made image.

He agreed, but the bitterness was there from day one, a cold wall between us.

He believed I was in on it, a willing participant in my father' s manipulation.

He was wrong.

The wedding was a lavish affair, a testament to my father' s influence, not our love.

Liam' s smile never reached his eyes.

He went through the motions, a perfect, resentful groom.

I stood beside him, a hopeful bride, already sensing the chill.

"You got what you wanted, Ava," he' d said on our wedding night, his voice flat, before turning his back to me.

That was the start.

He barely spoke to me unless necessary.

Our vast New York apartment felt empty, filled only with his unspoken resentment and my fading hope.

He was a stranger I shared a last name with.

My father thought he was securing my happiness.

He couldn' t have been more wrong.

But he also, unknowingly, set me on a path I never imagined.

A path that would eventually lead me away from the woman I was, the woman who loved Liam, to someone stronger.