Chapter 1
I fell in love with my father's adoptive younger brother, Julian Hawthorne, a man fifteen years older than me.
On the night of my twentieth birthday, he lured me into his room. And for the first time, I had tasted the forbidden fruit.
He coaxed me in that low, seductive whisper, "Be good. Give yourself to me."
Blushing furiously, I tangled with him all through the night.
To be wanted by the man I had secretly loved all along—what more could I ever ask for?
After that, we carried on a secret affair for seven years.
However, when I finally mustered the courage to tell the world about our relationship, I overheard his friends mocking me outside the door of a private booth at a bar.
"Julian, your first love is back from overseas. What are you going to do about that niece of yours? You know, the one who's basically just your bed warmer."
The words sent the whole room erupting into laughter.
Another friend piled on right after. "Julian really is something else, isn't he? Sleeping with his niece, and then using the whole uncle-niece relationship as an excuse to keep her quiet and keep it all under wraps."
The group dissolved into raucous amusement.
I stumbled back from the bar in a daze, my head still ringing with every word Julian's friends had said.
Dad was in the middle of talking about our family dinner plans for the weekend. I nodded along the surface, but inside, my heart was a tangled, chaotic mess.
"Julian specifically asked me to set up an extra place. He said he's bringing a friend."
On the other end of the line, Mom chimed in with a teasing lilt. "A 'friend'! Obviously it's his girlfriend!"
At Mom's words, the glass in my hand slipped and shattered against the floor.
Dad rushed over to check on me. I could only force down the bitterness clawing at my chest and pull the corners of my mouth up into a smile for him. "I'm fine. I was just surprised to hear that Uncle Julian has a girlfriend."
Julian was fifteen years older than me. He was the adopted son my grandfather had taken in years ago. By seniority, I was always supposed to call him Uncle.
Far from growing suspicious, my dad lit up with gleeful gossip at my words. "You were too young to remember, but Julian's first love was a huge deal back in school. A real campus celebrity.
Too bad that after he hid his background and pretended to be some poor kid, the girl just took off and went abroad to study. Julian was a wreck for a long time after that. Later, he made everyone swear never to mention that girl again. My guess is, he's still not over her even now."
I listened as I crouched down to gather the broken shards of glass, terrified that if I delayed even a second longer, my dad would see my red-rimmed eyes.
When Julian was with his first love, I had been far too young to pay much attention.
Later, after we started dating, I'd heard about that first love of his. I pressed him for details now and then, but every time, he'd brush it off with a few vague words and change the subject. I never expected their entanglement to run this deep—that they had even come close to getting married.
And me? Every time I brought up marriage to him, he'd either say that our uncle-niece relationship made it inappropriate, or that I was still too young. He always had countless excuses at the ready.
I thought of Grayson Shaw, the man who had once proposed to me with a seven-hundred-million-dollar fortune, and I asked my dad. "Dad, is Grayson Shaw married now?"
"That guy?" My dad thought for a moment, then answered, "Nope. Still single after all these years. He once put the word out that if it wasn't you, he wouldn't marry anyone. Remember? That drove Julian absolutely mad—he snatched several major deals from him out of spite."
Grayson was about the same age as Julian, and he was Julian's archrival in business. When he pursued me a few years ago, their two companies were roughly the same size. But in the years since, Grayson's company has broken into the world's top one hundred, leaving Julian's far behind.
Grayson knew privately that I was in love with Julian, which only made their relationship even more combustible. After I explicitly turned him down, he finally backed off. But according to my parents, he still asked after me constantly and never stopped seeking their blessing to marry me.
"Dad, could you set up a meeting for me with him? I'd like to try... seeing where things go with him."
My dad froze for a second, then feigned a jealous pout and called out teasingly to my mom on the phone,"Our sweetie is finally all grown up! She actually wants to date and get married!"
I rose to my feet and forced a stiff smile onto my face.
"Yeah. Any man will do. Won't make any difference, might as well make it next week."
With that, I fled to the kitchen, tears streaming hopelessly down my face.
That night, Julian called me again and again. I didn't pick up a single one. He then sent message after message, and I ignored every last one of them.
As the hours crawled past midnight, I lay in bed tossing and turning, unable to sleep.
My mind replayed, on an endless loop, the words Julian's friends had spoken outside that private booth in the afternoon.
"Julian, your first love, Vivian Ashford, is back from overseas. What are you going to do about that niece of yours? You know, the one who's basically just your bed warmer."
"Julian really is something else, isn't he? Sleeping with his own niece, and then using the whole uncle-niece relationship as an excuse to keep her quiet and keep it all under wraps."
All the sweet, cherished moments I had shared with Julian over the years shattered into nothing but a cruel joke in that single instant.
'Julian Hawthorne, you really do take me for the world's biggest fool.'
