Chapter 7

Adrian played his part beautifully.

A different bouquet every morning. Surprise gifts at random hours. At the office, long, loaded looks in my direction whenever coworkers could see.

I played mine just as well. The soft gasp when I opened the flowers. The shy smile under his gaze. The pretty blush whenever our eyes met.

We looked like the sweetest engaged couple in the building.

Honestly — if I hadn't overheard him at Mercer Club that night, his gentleness these past few weeks might have been enough to make me fall.

Pity.

The wall I'd built against him was thicker than a fortress.

I was taking notes on every document I handled. Every instruction he gave me, I recorded. Every meeting, archived.

Sienna couldn't sit still once my Instagram started filling up with flower posts and date photos.

I pulled the voice recorder back and, past all the sickening pet names and flirting she was spitting into the mic, I heard her almost break.

"Adrian! I won't — I won't let her show you off like that — I'm pregnant, okay? Come home. Tell my parents the one you really want to marry is me! Please?"

I stared at the GPS dot on my phone. Adrian's car had stopped at the Harrington Estate.

My hands trembled. I wasn't sure if it was the cold, or something else.

Mom and Dad didn't actually have the authority to break the Sterling engagement on their own. If they had, they wouldn't have bothered dragging me back from Wickham just to pressure me into giving Adrian up to Sienna.

So in the middle of all this — while Adrian and I were still publicly engaged — Sienna was sleeping with him behind both families' backs. Did our parents know?

And the two of them were planning to blow up my life in front of the entire Ashford elite at our engagement. Did our parents know that too?

When I burst into the estate, my parents' faces were a mess — guilty, panicked, thrown.

No sign of Adrian. No sign of Sienna.

I looked at them, calm.

"I'm here to see Sienna."

My mother shot up like a mother hen.

"Hazel, why do you need to see Sienna all of a sudden?"

"Something of mine ended up with her. I want it back."

The loaded words drained the color from her face. Breaking off an engagement required cause. If it came out that I'd broken off the Sterling engagement because Sienna was sleeping with my fiancé and was pregnant with his child — her name in Ashford would be finished.

She scrambled.

"That's absurd! What of yours could possibly be with Sienna? She has everything! Why would she take something from you?"

"You're just trying to hurt her! Get out!"

Watching her face, raw with panic on Sienna's behalf, something in me cooled another inch.

I'd been told that after I disappeared as a toddler, my mother had been completely destroyed. Hollow. Inconsolable.

And then my father had brought home a child who looked enough like me to patch the hole. And every bit of love she had came pouring out onto that replacement.

Seven years later, when the Sienna she'd mourned actually came home, she looked right through her.

I'll never forget the day I first stepped into this house. Her face matched the fuzzy, half-remembered one in my head, and I'd walked forward, desperate to call her "Mom" —

She'd frozen. Shock and disbelief written all over her face at the sight of me — too thin, too plain. And then she'd turned her back on me and scooped up the pretty, sobbing Sienna, who was throwing slippers at me, and held her close. "Mommy's here, sweetheart. Mommy's here."

And so the word I'd rehearsed in my sleep for years — "Mom" — I'd never said aloud. Not once.

A whole year in this house. Uneven chunks hacked out of my hair. Cuts on my hands that wouldn't heal. Graffiti scrawled across my backpack. She saw all of it.

She just didn't ask.

The only child in her eyes was the one carrying the seven years of mothering she'd missed out on.

I looked up at the staircase.

If I forced my way up now, I could catch Adrian and Sienna in the act. With that, I could break off the engagement, stand on solid ground, and Adrian wouldn't dare sabotage my internship anymore.

But they'd close ranks. My family would protect Sienna. They'd find a way to marry her into the Sterlings anyway. Every twisted lie about the "bullying," every secret they'd kept about using me — all of it would disappear into the past, unnoticed, unpunished.

Why should I let them walk away clean? They'd tried to drag me through the mud in front of all of Ashford. Why should they get to keep their hands clean?

If nobody in this family was going to get me justice, I'd get it for myself.