Chapter 1

It was the first day Yara and I returned to our rightful places.

Quentin, my childhood sweetheart and the man I was supposed to marry, gripped my hand in front of our parents.

"It's you I want, Valerie," he said, his voice firm. "I don't care about your title or your bloodline."

Yara hugged me through her tears, her voice trembling.

"Sister, we will always be family. I would never dream of taking anything that belongs to you."

Everyone told me I was lucky.

I had lost my status as the Vance heiress, but I had gained a devoted lover and a saint-like sister.

But fate had a twisted way of balancing the scales.

Three years after that day, a photo went viral on social media.

It showed my fiancé, Quentin, carefully escorting Yara to her prenatal checkup.

When I confronted him, he just sat there, calmly exhaling a cloud of cigarette smoke.

"Yara is the one the contract was actually meant for," he said coldly. "We are just putting things back where they belong. Why are you so hysterical?"

He grabbed my wrist and twisted it until the bone snapped.

Then, using the engagement ring he had once engraved with our names, he sliced a jagged line across the back of my hand.

"Let this scar remind you of the truth," he hissed. "The twenty years of life you stole, including me, belong to their rightful owner now."

1

I stayed silent as I forced my own wrist back into place.

The white-hot flare of pain only made my mind sharper.

Three years ago, these same hands had trembled with joy while putting that ring on Quentin Shaw.

Under the moonlight, he had sworn to protect me forever.

"Quentin," I whispered, my voice sounding like broken glass. "We are done."

He let out a sharp, mocking laugh.

He pulled out a silk handkerchief and slowly wiped the blood off his ring.

"Done? The engagement should have always been between Yara and me. You were just a squatter in her life."

"You're only clinging to me because you want one last payout from the Vance family, aren't you?"

He reached out and violently ripped the pearl necklace from my throat.

"If I didn't pity you, the Vances would have tossed you to the curb years ago. Don't think I don't know about your biological mother in that trailer park. Even she didn't want you back."

I let out a dry, bitter laugh.

I remembered how he had insisted I stay with the Vances three years ago.

"Val," he had told me back then. "Don't feel guilty. We'll make it up to Yara together."

Oh, he made it up to her, alright.

He spent every night and every ounce of his energy on her.

The first time I caught them together, Quentin had knelt at my feet.

He slapped himself across the face three times, hard.

"Val, it was Yara's mother!" he had sobbed. "She spiked our drinks! She forced us into that bed!"

I was a fool back then. I believed him.

I helped him up, made him soup to sober up, and went to my adoptive mother to demand an explanation.

Marilyn Vance had only smirked at me.

"I want to see how long you two lovebirds can actually last," she said.

I stubbornly believed Quentin and I would prove her wrong.

But reality was just a series of betrayals, each one worse than the last.

Every time he cheated, he would cry and beg, even pressing a knife into my hand.

He would pull my hand toward his chest, daring me to stab him just to earn my forgiveness.

I softened every single time, but he only grew more bold.

Eventually, he stopped even trying to hide it.

He would toss me his jackets reeking of another woman's perfume for me to wash.

He started showing up with bite marks and hickies on his neck, staring me right in the eye.

And now, he was finally on the front page of the tabloids with my sister.

I stepped over the scattered pearls on the floor and looked at him with pure disgust.

"I don't need your pity, Quentin."

"You're so filthy that looking at you makes me want to vomit."