Five days before my wedding, Marcus sat across from me at our kitchen table and told me he was going to marry someone else instead.
He called off our wedding and told me the date was already set, his date with his new bride, three days after what was supposed to be mine. I laughed, because it had to be a joke. But it wasn't a joke. He said I would understand eventually.
The fact Marcus married another woman wasn't the actual betrayal, it was the fact that this other woman was Ivy Coleman. My best friend since we were twelve years old. The girl who helped me pick the wedding dress and helped me plan my wedding.
I told myself it couldn't be true until I stood outside that chapel and watched her walk down the aisle in ivory, and Marcus never once looked back at the doors like a man who'd made a mistake.
I couldn't take it anymore.
I called her a betrayer in front of two hundred guests. She cried on cue and tried to make everything look like it was my fault. I was the villain of my own love story.
What none of them knew was that I had a name they'd never asked about, and a fortune none of them had ever bothered to find. I stopped hiding both the day I left that parking lot.
Two years later, I run a company Marcus's family is quietly terrified of. Ivy is desperate to be my friend again. And Marcus, married and miserable, has finally figured out exactly what he threw away and exactly who orchestrated the whole thing.
He wants a second chance.
I want to know how far I can make him fall before I decide if he deserves one.