Chapter 2

Britteny POV:

Staring at Beau's face in that photo dragged me back to the day I first met him four years ago.

Back then, my mother had just been diagnosed with end-stage renal failure. Dialysis bills piled up on our kitchen table like snowdrifts. I sold the small apartment my father left us and sold my car, but I was still tens of thousands of dollars short.

At my breaking point, I spotted a handwritten card pinned to the hospital bulletin board. It offered full upfront medical coverage in exchange for private live-in care. Knowing it was likely a trap, I was desperate enough to take the gamble and followed the address to the iron gates of the Reynolds estate.

Panicking at the sight of the massive mansion, I turned to leave, but a woman's voice stopped me.

Eleanor Reynolds, the matriarch of the family, stood under the portico in a dark gray cashmere shawl.

"I will pay all of your mother's medical bills," she said, looking me up and down. "In return, you will make my son stand on his feet again."

She led me inside, and I saw Beau for the first time. He sat in a wheelchair by the window, staring blankly outside. Sunlight fell across his pale profile, making him look so fragile he might vanish into the glare.

Eleanor explained that Beau and Kamilah Castillo had grown up together and dated for five years starting at eighteen. Kamilah had wanted marriage, but Beau kept putting it off to build his business empire. On their fifth anniversary, Kamilah left without a word. Beau sped after her in the rain and slammed into a semi-truck.

Losing Kamilah and the use of his legs plunged him into severe depression and rage. He had already driven away over thirty private nurses. Eleanor needed someone who would take his abuse without walking out, and she knew I would endure anything to keep my mother alive.

I signed her private care agreement.

For a full year, I took his screaming fits and smashed plates. I flew with him to seven countries and visited nineteen specialists. When he finally stood up from that wheelchair, our contract was fulfilled, and I packed my bags to leave.

Instead, Beau cornered me in the hallway and pulled me into his arms for the very first time.

"Britteny, I can't get used to life without you," he whispered, the rims of his eyes red. "Stay with me. Be my wife."

He sounded so desperate that my heart softened. I nodded and turned down a job offer from a top architecture firm in Europe. On the day we were supposed to sign the papers, he told me he hated waiting in line at the Marriage Bureau and had his assistant, Colin Foster, handle the paperwork. I actually believed him, never questioning how a marriage license could be processed without the bride showing up.

Months later, I found out that on the exact day he proposed to me, Kamilah had broken a year of silence by posting photos of her own marriage certificate on social media. He hadn't wanted a wife. He had wanted a photograph — something to prove to Kamilah that he had moved on, without ever closing the door he was still holding open for her. That was why Colin Foster filed the papers instead of the two of us standing in line at the Marriage Bureau.

During our first year, we lived like polite roommates, never going past a brief hug. In the second year, Kamilah called him crying, claiming she had only gone abroad to treat an illness and married her attending doctor out of gratitude. Beau boarded a private jet to Europe that same night. At first, he used business trips as an excuse to stay with her for weeks; later, he stopped lying altogether, disappearing without a single phone call.

This year, he brought Kamilah back to New York. His circle of wealthy friends toasted to their reunion, acting as if I were invisible. Since the woman he nearly died for was finally back, I decided to leave with whatever dignity I had left.

Yet the clerk at the Marriage Bureau had shattered even that, telling me the marriage never existed.

I blinked, pulling myself out of the memory, and closed the fake certificate. Opening my laptop on the desk, I found the email from the European architecture firm that I had left unread for four years. My fingers flew across the keyboard.

"I confirm my acceptance of the offer."

The second I hit send, the bedroom door banged open against the wall. Beau stood in the doorway, his chest heaving and his eyes bloodshot with rage.

"What the hell did you say to Kamilah?"