Chapter 3

3

After Zachary and Lana entered the suite, a man came sprinting down the hallway. He brushed past Zachary without a second glance.

It was Sawyer Cross. He rushed to my side and grabbed my hand. His voice was thick with a grief so deep it shook his entire frame.

He reached out to touch my hair, but when his fingers met my cold skin, tears flooded his eyes.

"You idiot. If you had just married me back then, you wouldn't be lying here alone. You wouldn't have died with no one to care."

Looking at Sawyer's disheveled appearance, I felt a pang of sorrow. He must have raced back from out of state. He had left the city the moment I got married.

Back then, his reason was that Zachary couldn't stand him. He didn't want to cause trouble for me, so he thought it was better to just stay away.

I was an orphan. The Cross family had adopted me when I was seven. Sawyer was my brother in name, but his feelings for me had changed as we grew older.

I had eventually broken ties with our adoptive parents because of Zachary. They wanted me to enter an arranged marriage with a business partner. I knew they only took me in to use me as a bargaining chip.

Sawyer was the one who helped me escape. I had known about his feelings for a long time.

But compared to Zachary, marrying Sawyer felt impossible. My adoptive parents would have never allowed it anyway.

Sawyer began the process of taking my body away. At the same time, Zachary was heading out to get food for Lana. She had mentioned a craving for a specific cake from a bakery thirty miles away, and he didn't hesitate for a second.

I remembered when I just wanted a simple rice ball from the shop downstairs. I asked him to grab it on his way home from work, and he told me it was too much of a detour.

Sawyer and Zachary came face to face in the hallway. My body was hidden under a white sheet on the gurney. The two men locked eyes. Zachary definitely recognized him.

"Move."

Sawyer didn't bother being polite. Why would he be nice to the man who essentially killed me?

Zachary's eyes darkened with a complex emotion. He stepped back out of respect for the dead, though he had no idea who was under the sheet.

As Sawyer turned to wheel me away, Zachary's eyes snagged on my exposed ankle.

"Wait!"

Zachary seemed to remember something. He chased after the gurney. "The person who died... who were they to you?"