Chapter 2

Serena Whitmore smiled coyly, the sleeves of Adrian Blackwood's designer jacket swallowing her delicate wrists as they walked away together, fingers intertwined.

Vivian Hartley's phone screen burned the image into her retinas.

There he stood - Adrian Blackwood in all his arrogant glory.

That unmistakable jacket hanging off Serena's shoulders was like a knife twisting in Vivian's gut.

Every stitch of Adrian's wardrobe came from an exclusive Milanese tailor - a fact Vivian knew intimately from two years of marriage.

Her fingers turned bone-white around the phone, nails biting into the case. A corrosive ache spread through her chest, more acidic than the smoke she'd just escaped.

When death had breathed down her neck, Adrian had chosen Serena. Again.

What had their marriage even meant?

Hot tears breached their dam, streaking down her soot-smudged cheeks.

Tilting her head back only made them slide faster, tracing the hollows of her throat.

Everyone knew Serena Whitmore had been Adrian's first love. The society pages never let anyone forget.

The Blackwoods had deemed the middle-class art student unworthy of their golden heir.

Though Serena had been the one to walk away, the past clearly hadn't stayed buried.

Adrian had clawed his way to control of Blackwood Group, fueled by dreams of reclaiming his lost love.

By the time he seized power, Serena had already married some French winemaker.

In defiance - or perhaps spite - Adrian had chosen Vivian, another "unworthy" woman, as his bride. A human shield against his family's matchmaking.

Vivian had her own reasons for saying yes. Her father Richard Dawson's threats. Her grandmother Eleanor's mounting medical bills. A shotgun wedding to some playboy heir.

Two desperate people. One transactional marriage.

Originally contracted for twelve months, their arrangement had stretched into a second year through unspoken mutual agreement.

Somewhere along the way, Vivian had started believing their fiction.

Tonight's fire had burned away those illusions.

When death came knocking, Adrian had been too busy playing knight to Serena to answer his wife's call.

There was no marriage. Only Vivian's pathetic delusion.

She wasn't even a consolation prize. Just a pawn in Adrian's lifelong game of familial rebellion.