Chapter 1

When my fiancé, Damian, betrayed me with my sister, Seraphina, I never begged him for an explanation or shed a tear over losing him. Instead, I retaliated by sleeping with his two closest friends.

Rather than admitting what he had done, Damian turned the situation against me. He declared me mentally unstable and had me committed to a psychiatric hospital.

It took me far too long to understand that my supposed treatment had never been about protecting my mental health. Damian simply wanted me out of his way so he could spend the next two years playing devoted husband-to-be with Seraphina without having to worry about me interfering.

Now, after two years, he had finally come to collect me, behaving as though the past two years had been nothing more than an unfortunate misunderstanding.

At the reception desk, a nurse handed me the small bag containing the few belongings I had left. Her eyes traveled over me, and the look on her face shifted uneasily between sympathy and contempt.

“You’re really going back to him?” she whispered. “That man is the reason you ended up here. Don’t tell me you’re doing this because of his money. If you are, then maybe you really have lost your mind.”

I gave her no response. Two years ago, I would have desperately defended myself, trying to make someone understand how cruelly I had been wronged. Now, I simply accepted my bag and walked through the automatic glass doors without looking back.

Damian was waiting beside his car. The moment he noticed me, he straightened from where he had been leaning against the hood and approached with an enormous bouquet of pink peonies.

Seraphina's favorite flowers.

Not mine.

I didn't bother acknowledging them. Without slowing down, I walked past him and reached for the passenger door.

“Vivienne.” Damian's voice sharpened. He dropped the bouquet onto the pavement, caught me by the arm, and forcibly turned me toward him. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

My eyes fell to his fingers wrapped around my arm, but the sight stirred nothing inside me.

“Nothing,” I said quietly. “Why did you come?”

Damian stared at me as if my question were absurd. “Seriously? Are you still holding a grudge because I was with your sister? You slept with Nathaniel and Adrian and destroyed years of friendship between us. If anyone deserves an apology here, it's me.”

“You had me locked in a psychiatric hospital for two years.” My voice remained calm as I looked directly at him. “You put me behind barred windows because it was more convenient than hiding your affair with Seraphina.”

His expression hardened.

“You were completely out of control!” he snapped. “You destroyed my office, then deliberately went after Nathaniel and Adrian because you wanted to humiliate me. Do you have any idea what it was like having my own groomsmen betray me? I had to cut both of them out of my life because of what you did. You were sick, Vivienne. I spent a fortune getting you the treatment you needed.”

“No,” I said. “You needed me gone.”

His lips curled with contempt. “And where exactly would you have gone? You don't have a job, you don't have money, and even your own mother doesn't want anything to do with you.”

That part was true.

My mother had always preferred Seraphina, especially after marrying her wealthy stepfather. When Damian had me committed, she hadn't bothered visiting even once. Instead, she sent me a message saying I had become a disgrace to the family.

Over the years, Damian had carefully dismantled everything that once allowed me to stand on my own. He had taken away my career, my independence, and nearly every person I could have turned to until, eventually, he had made himself the only person left in my life.

There was a time when his words would have destroyed me. I would have panicked, clung to him, and begged him not to abandon me.

Now, they only made me tired.

I exhaled slowly. “What do you want from me?”

“I’m taking you home.” His voice softened, slipping into the polished, reassuring tone he used whenever he wanted people to obey him. “We have a wedding to arrange. The invitations have to be sent out next month.”

“I don't want the wedding,” I replied. “We should call it off.”

His expression immediately turned impatient. “We're not canceling anything, sweetheart. You've had two years to be angry. Get over it. We're getting married, and once you settle down, everything will return to the way it was.”

I didn't waste my breath arguing.

There was little point trying to reason with someone who had already decided that only his version of the truth mattered.

So I climbed into the car.

Neither of us said much during the drive back to the villa. When we arrived and I stepped through the front entrance, the house looked almost exactly as I remembered it from the day the orderlies had taken me away.

“I’ll ask the chef to prepare your favorite for dinner,” Damian called after me. He was already loosening his tie as he headed toward his study, apparently more interested in an incoming call than in whether I had anything to say.

I didn't respond.

Instead, I carried my small bag upstairs and went straight to my old bedroom. All I wanted was to close the door, lie down for a while, and finish arranging everything I needed to leave this city behind permanently.

Then I opened the door and stopped dead.

It wasn't the furniture that made me freeze.

It was the scent.

The room was saturated with the heavy sweetness of vanilla and roses, the unmistakable custom perfume Seraphina always wore.

My gaze moved slowly around the room.

The silk bedding had been replaced with another color, and the books I used to keep beside my bed were gone, replaced by piles of glossy fashion magazines.

Then I saw what was sitting in the middle of my vanity.

Beside the framed photograph of my late father, placed there with the casual confidence of someone who believed she belonged in my room, was a positive pregnancy test.