Chapter 1
“I spent three years believing they abandoned me.”
My voice sounded calm.
It wasn’t.
The entire wedding ballroom had gone silent around me. Isla’s smartwatch was still raised near her small wrist, and Vivienne’s recorded voice seemed to linger in the room even after the speaker stopped.
Tell Elena Cassian rejected the baby.
Elena stood several feet away with tears on her face.
My aunt stood between us.
The same woman who had watched me search for Elena for three years.
The same woman who sat beside me when I stopped sleeping. The same woman who told me some people were better left unfound. The same woman who convinced me that if Elena wanted me, she would have come back.
I looked at her.
Vivienne recovered first.
“It’s not what you think.”
That sentence almost made me laugh.
Behind her, Tristan was dragging himself out of the collapsed lantern stand. Ribbons and lightweight frames were scattered across the marble. He had attacked me the moment I stopped his mother from taking Isla.
Not Elena.
Not some rival.
My own cousin.
I looked at Elena.
“Did you ever believe I rejected her?”
Her mouth trembled.
“For three years.”
Something inside my chest turned cold.
Isla was hiding partly behind Elena now, but she kept looking at me as if she had already decided I belonged to her.
Maybe I did.
I crouched slowly.
“Sweetheart, who recorded that?”
Isla looked at her watch.
“Mommy didn’t.”
Vivienne’s face changed.
I saw it.
“Who did?”
Isla pointed.
Not at Vivienne.
At Tristan.
The ballroom shifted.
Tristan stopped moving.
Elena stared at him.
I rose.
“You recorded your mother.”
He said nothing.
Vivienne snapped, “Do not answer him.”
I looked at her.
Then him.
The recording was not merely proof that Vivienne lied.
It was proof that someone inside her own side had been collecting what she said.
“Why?” I asked.
Tristan’s jaw tightened.
I stepped closer.
“Why were you recording her?”
He looked at his mother.
Then at me.
And for the first time that night, fear appeared in the wrong person.
Not Vivienne.
Tristan.
May you like
Because whatever the smartwatch had exposed—
he had been afraid of his mother long before I knew I had a daughter.
