The night before my wedding,we played a couple’s challenge game. "Except me, who do you want to marry most?" My fiancé glanced at my younger sister, Zara, and called out her name with a smile. Friends and family at the table joined in the uproar. My mom even made the final call. "The venue and dinner have already been booked. If you say no now, Zara can take your place." The room fell silent. Everyone was waiting for me to give in. I took off my engagement ring and nodded. "Sure," I said. "She might as well marry for real."

"When the prince found Cinderella, he chopped off half her foot. Why?"   "Because they split the cost of the glass slipper! She only deserves to wear half of it, duh!"   My fiancé, Christopher Hernandez's buddy hooted and laughed in the crowd.   Everyone laughed at me in a mean way. I stood still and couldn't move, my face deathly pale.   Christopher thoughtfully took over a glass of water, smiling as he smoothed things over.   "Don't go scaring my wife Aria. It's crude, but it's not wrong."   Then he smoothly changed tack.   "For the wedding tomorrow, my mom prepared a gift worth 100 grand for you. Your mom has to give me 100 grand too. It has to be absolutely fair."   I held the water glass, my voice trembling.   "My mom is still in the ICU. There's no way she can come up with that kind of money."   He dabbed the corner of my mouth with a tissue, but his tone was cold and hard as iron.   "If you can't come up with it, we'll cut that part of the ceremony.   "Layla is the maid of honor tomorrow, and she's a stickler for propriety. I don't want her thinking I have no principles just because I'm getting married."   Layla Flores was his first love.   Just to maintain his image in front of her, he was willing to trample the dignity of my seriously ill mother underfoot.   I stared fixedly at the man in front of me.   Then I let go, and the glass hit the floor with a crash and shattered.   "You're right. Tomorrow, we'll each have our own wedding."

Engagement day, my fiancé, Julian Cross, eloped with his mistress, Elena Hart. The only things he'd left behind were a bank card with barely $70 on it and a tiny newborn boy bundled tightly in a swaddle. He'd also left me a note, barking out orders as if he had every right to dump his mess on me: This is my son with Elena. Take care of him for us for a while. Elena and I are busy building our company. Once the company goes public, I'll come back and marry you. Then you'll have the complete family you wanted. I read the note, tore it into pieces, and sent the baby straight to an orphanage. Then I turned around and accepted a marriage proposal from the Whitmore family, the most powerful tech family in Avermont City. Three years later, Julian sauntered back, glowing with the smug pride of a man whose company had just gone public. He stopped right outside my door. "Willa, I can give you everything you want now. I can marry you. But Elena went through hell for me. I can't just abandon her. Be the bigger person. Let Elena move in with us. We can finally be one happy family." I glanced past him at the luxury car parked behind him and let out a cold laugh. He had no idea that the public company he was so damn proud of? The investor behind it was actually a subsidiary of a subsidiary of my family's company.