He Humiliated Me for His Ex,Now He's Begging Me to StayChapter 1
The night before we were supposed to register the marriage, there was a singles' party.
My fiancé had two drinks, then suddenly buried his face in his hands and broke down.
"I still can't forget her. What am I supposed to do?"
The girl he meant—I knew exactly who she was.
His ex-girlfriend. The one who'd stuck by him through three years of hardship when he was pretending to be poor.
The festive atmosphere in the room froze solid in an instant.
Everyone stared at me, squirming with secondhand embarrassment.
They expected me to do what I'd always done—grab him by the collar and smash a bottle over his head to snap him out of it.
But all I did was drain a bottle of wine.
Then I called the girl and told her to come pick him up.
My friends said I'd lost my mind.
I'd been crazy about this man for years, pining down to the marrow of my bones, and now that an old engagement was finally giving me my chance, I was throwing it away.
I didn't explain.
Instead, I found his mother, took the oversized check she owed me, and left without looking back.
What they didn't know was this:
My feelings for him had died the day his cover was blown—the day he destroyed my family's finances just to prove to that girl that his love was real.
The only reason I'd stayed was to hold up my end of the deal with his mother.
I was a decoy. A stand-in for the real bride his family had lined up through their alliance. A human shield, absorbing every round Victor Swanson fired in his war against the arranged marriage, against the expectations of marrying within his class.
Now their wedding date had arrived. My job was done.
——
When I walked back from making the call outside the private room, the sound of things shattering bled through the door, tangled with Victor's ragged, suffocated sobs.
I swallowed the bitterness rising in my throat and pushed the door open.
A bottle came hurtling past. It exploded against the doorframe, and a shard sliced across my forehead before I could flinch.
Something warm slid down from my brow.
Those striking eyes of his held a haze of liquor, but beneath it—far more than drunkenness—was a fury he was using the alcohol as an excuse to unleash. Fury and frustration, unchecked and vicious.