Chapter 3

The year I was thirteen, my mother died of an illness.

My father's other women and their children began circling like wolves.

To keep me out of the family's fight for power, my brother quietly sent me away from Harbor City to study in Pearl City.

I was too young then. I thought he found me a burden, that he didn't want me anymore.

I resented him for it, and I refused to tell anyone who I really was.

Later our father died too, and my brother became head of the family, so busy clearing out those other branches that he had even less time for me.

Then in college I met Logan Henson. He made me feel cared for, wanted, and I fell headfirst into it.

But because I was injured saving him, my brother would never agree to let me be with him. We had a violent fight over it.

I never went back to Harbor City again.

Even so, my brother was still afraid I wasn't living well.

So from the moment Logan started his own company, he was secretly funneling our family's resources to him.

Through third parties he brought in capital, steered projects Logan's way, planted elite talent on his staff, and let it all happen.

He said, "The little princess of the Carringtons can't marry down. Her future husband can't be some second-rate man dragging her down."

The funny part is, everyone on the outside thought I was dragging Logan down. Even he thought so.

My ID and a few other important things were still at the marital home.

The next day, instead of waiting for Logan to come get me, I took a cab back myself.

The moment I walked in, I saw Debbie standing in front of the full-length mirror in a pale moonlight embroidered gown.

"Logan, do I look pretty?"

Logan had one arm around her waist, doting.

"You're beautiful. You look good in anything."

My eyes went cold. That was the gown my mother had embroidered for me by hand before she died.

Through her illness she had imagined the woman I would grow into and cut it to her own measurements from when she was young.

She wanted me to wear it after I married, on the day I came home to visit. It was the last gift she ever gave me.

I had kept it carefully for over ten years and never once brought myself to wear it.

"That's mine. Take it off."

My voice came out of nowhere, and it startled them both.

Logan said, surprised, "Vivi, how did you get here by yourself—"

He didn't finish. Something in my eyes must have registered, because his own went wide.

"When did you get your sight back? Why didn't you tell me?!"

His face was a tangle of things, but not one of them was pure happiness.

I looked at him with contempt. "Yesterday. Right when you dumped me at an abandoned factory and held a wedding with another woman. You must be so disappointed."

For a moment Logan couldn't get a word out.

It was Debbie who came over instead, her eyes rimming red. "Vivi, don't blame Logan. He just has too strong a sense of responsibility. He didn't want people gossiping about me and the baby, that's all. Once you and he register the marriage, you'll be the real Mrs. Henson."

"I haven't been back to my hometown in so long. When my parents heard we'd had a wedding, they told us to come home for the after-wedding dinner. The baby's already a year old. She should meet her grandparents."

"Logan saw I didn't have anything decent to wear at the moment, so he let me put on this gown. I'll give it right back to you—"

She made a show of starting to take it off, and the tears fell in strings down her face.

As if she were the one being humiliated.

Logan pressed his hand over hers and turned to me, displeased. "Your parents are long dead. Where would you go home to, if not to my side? She may as well wear it. No sense letting it sit there going to waste."

"Since you've seen it all now, we might as well lay it out plainly. Debbie gave me a son. There's no way I'm leaving her and the child to fend for themselves."

"But that doesn't mean I'm abandoning you, Vivi. From now on, you and Debbie get along. She'll handle the social side with me, and you'll take care of the child at home. You were never suited to those occasions anyway."

I couldn't spare a thought for how absurd his words were, or the faint distaste under his tone.

One thought kept circling in my head.

Their child was a year old?

Then the time Debbie got pregnant was exactly when my own daughter died.

Logan and I once had a daughter too.

I'd worried a wedding dress wouldn't look good over a pregnancy, so we decided to hold the ceremony after the baby was born.

But she died of a congenital heart defect before she even turned one.

It broke me completely. If Logan hadn't stayed by my side, I probably would have jumped off a building.

So all that time he was playing the devoted man in front of me, he was cheating?

Before I could speak, a baby's cry broke out from the nursery.

My heart lurched.

I rushed in ahead of them both.

The scene inside left me frozen where I stood.

In the crib that had once belonged only to my daughter now lay Logan and Debbie's child.

And the photo wall I had built for my daughter piece by piece, with Audrey's help.

It had all been replaced with pictures of the three of them, their little family.

I turned to them, lost. "Where are the photos of my daughter?"