My legs wobbled, my balance faltered, and my emotions felt like a chaotic storm, but I refused to turn back and leave without confronting the family that had betrayed me.

I knew it was time to stop avoiding the inevitable. Despite my determination to have nothing to do with this family ever again, I couldn't escape confronting them forever. Even though I understood deep down that it might not change anything, I needed closure, a resolution to the torment inside my mind.

Standing in front of my family home, a place I hadn't visited in three months and had sworn never to return to, I took a deep breath before walking through the gate and towards the front door. Every step felt like a challenge, a battle against the anger and humiliation I carried within.

Inside, my father's familiar voice greeted me, but the surprise in his expression suggested he wasn't thrilled to see me so suddenly.

"Scarlet!" he gasped.

"Hello, Dad," I replied, my voice devoid of any emotion. Despite the rush of emotions within me, I couldn't bring myself to be happy seeing my father again. The disappointment I felt toward him was immense; he had failed me when I needed his support the most.

"What are you doing here?" he asked, clearly caught off guard.

"What? Don't you want me here? Does my presence bother you?" I retorted, my words laced with bitterness. I had no intention of pretending I was okay. I was here to express everything that had been festering inside me.

"It's not that. I just wasn't expecting you so soon. But you know you're always welcome here, as long as you don't cause trouble," he replied, his words carrying a tinge of annoyance.

"Oh, please. Don't be pathetic. How dare you imply that I'm only welcome if I don't cause trouble? Does that mean I can't voice my grievances?" I shot back, my anger simmering beneath the surface. My father's lack of empathy fueled my frustration.

"I'm begging you, don't do this. This isn't the time or place to vent your anger. I can understand why you're upset, but you have to move past it and move on with your life. There's nothing you can do to change how things have turned out," he implored, his words leaving me speechless.

"You know what? I didn't come here to talk to you. The person I have a problem with is inside, and she's the one who deserves my wrath, not you. Now, get out of my way," I snapped, pushing past him and storming into the living room where the rest of the family sat.

"Scarlet?" My stepmother's voice called out, trying to diffuse the tension that had entered the room.

My eyes scanned the room, taking in the sight of my family gathered there, seemingly having a grand time. It struck me then that none of them truly cared about me, not one bit. They were content in their happiness while I suffered in silence, left to cope with the devastation on my own.

"Mother, Hannah, Sam," I greeted, pointedly leaving out Emily's name.

Emily, Hannah, and Sam were my stepmother's biological children, while I was the sole child of my late mother. My stepmother, Jane, had raised me, despite the numerous challenges our relationship had faced.

"Well, isn't this a surprise, my dear? We weren't expecting you to show up like this, but we're very happy to see you. It's perfect timing because we're having a celebration right now, and since you're part of the family, you should join us in celebrating," my stepmother said, her tone cheerful.

I nearly scoffed at her apparent obliviousness to the turmoil within me.

"What's the occasion?" I asked, my eyes falling on the invitation cards scattered on the table. I already knew the answer. The wedding between Henry and Emily was imminent.

"We're celebrating Emily's upcoming wedding to Henry," my stepmother announced, her words dripping with feigned happiness.

I couldn't hold back my disbelief. "I know you have no shame, but are you so shameless that you can't see anything wrong in what you just said? Were you so desperate to marry that you had to rush into a wedding with your sister's ex-husband? Are you that hungry to be someone's wife?" I lashed out, my voice resonating with my indignation.

"It's been three months, Scarlet. Three whole months, and you still haven't moved on? Are you obsessed?" Emily retorted, her words slicing through the room like a knife.

"You make it sound like three months is equivalent to three years. Were you expecting me to get over the fact that my sister and ex-husband were sleeping with each other in just three months? And now, all of a sudden, you two are getting married as if nothing ever happened? How thoughtless of you, little sister," I countered, my words sharp with anger.

Emily, undeterred, mocked me. "Oh, well, I won't apologize to you for choosing my happiness over yours. Besides, you keep pretending like your marriage with Henry was a love story, but it never was. You two were in an arranged marriage. He could never bring himself to love you; he fell for me instead. Be a big girl and get over it!" Emily sneered, her satisfaction evident.

Emily's mother jumped in, defending Emily's actions. "This wedding won't be a happy occasion for you, but you must let go of your anger. Your sister made a choice, and it's time for you to accept it and move forward. You can't keep tormenting yourself over something you can't change. Besides, you can't stress your pregnant sister; it's bad for the baby."

The mention of Emily's pregnancy hit me like a blow to the stomach. "You're expecting a child with Henry?" I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.

"Yes. Henry and I are having a baby. It's time you accept this and move on," Emily replied, her tone cold and final.

I felt my legs weaken for a moment, but I forced myself to stand tall. "Today may be a happy day for you, but it's a day of betrayal for me."

"If you can't be happy for us, please leave and come back when you've accepted the new reality," my father's voice said, a note of finality in his tone.

I said nothing, my heart heavy with the weight of their betrayal. Turning away, I made my way to the door, determined to leave this house and the family that had turned their backs on me.

A hand grasped my shoulder, halting me in my tracks. When I turned, I found Emily standing there, a sly smirk on her face.

"This may seem extreme, but I still hope you'll attend my wedding. It would be my pleasure to have you by my side on such a joyous occasion," Emily whispered, extending an invitation.

"I curse the days I considered you my sister. You'll pay dearly for this humiliation. I swear it to you," I whispered back, my voice laced with determination.

"Good luck with that," Emily responded, her smirk widening, before patting my shoulder and stepping back.

With that, I left, determined to confront my family's betrayal and make Emily pay for the pain she had caused me.

Scarlet used to think that she was someone who couldn't be angry for too long, but after the situation with Emily and Henry, she had come to realize that she had just never been in a situation where she needed to be angry for a long time.

Currently, she was watching Emily walk down the altar to where Henry stood with a massive smile on his face, and every fiber of her being was boiling with so much anger that she felt like she could explode at any moment.

She wanted to avoid standing out too much, so she made sure to wear something casual that wouldn't draw any attention to her because the last thing she wanted was to get caught in this place. She didn't even want to imagine the look people would have on their faces when they saw her there, attending her sister's and her ex-husband's wedding.

She knew she was already a laughingstock to many people, but she certainly wasn't ready to get caught and watch them laugh in her face.

The fact that nobody seemed to see anything wrong with what was happening here made her even more upset because it was public knowledge that he and she had just divorced four months ago.

Now all of a sudden, he was marrying her sister, and the typical moral police that usually saw a problem with anything and everything were quiet and supportive.

The hypocrisy!

When Henry and she first got married, she saw several news outlets and articles questioning her character and claiming that she simply married him because of his money, even when they had no idea how they got married in the first place. Their marriage happened so suddenly because neither one of them had expected that they were going to be getting married to each other. Because of this, everybody else assumed that she rushed the marriage because she was a gold digger who wanted to cement herself into his family and have a taste of his family fortune.

It was very upsetting at first because she didn't even want to marry him of her own free will, and yet, she was getting dragged by people who had no idea who she was over something that she had no control over.

She hadn't seen any article, not one, criticize the fact that these two people were getting married, and for every article that she had read in the last few days, they kept praising Emily and indirectly shaming her by writing that she was nothing like her because she was a genuine person who fell in love and helped Henry get out of his previously loveless and forced marriage.

How ridiculous, right?

So, right now, her father, who had walked her down the aisle about a year ago, to marry Henry, was walking her younger sister down the aisle to marry the same man that his first daughter had married not too long ago.

She was seated way behind, but she could see every one of her family members staring at Emily with massive smiles on their faces, and it reminded her of the day she was getting married and how they all had similar smiles on their faces like they were genuinely happy for her.

The situation just made her realize that they weren't happy that she was getting married; they were just happy because of who she was getting married to and how her marriage to him was going to elevate their status in society. It took her a while to realize it, but now she knew that the only thing they wanted was to keep Henry Jones as their son-in-law, even if he had to divorce one daughter to shamelessly marry the other daughter.

They didn't care what people thought, and people also weren't concerned with the weird situation because Henry's family was a big-shot family in the country, and no one would want to get on their bad side simply because of their unsolicited opinion.

Emily and her dad continued making their way down the aisle, and she just kept watching them with the feeling of emptiness and hurt growing inside her. After what felt like a decade, Emily finally arrived at the altar, and she watched her dad place her hand on Henry's with the same smile he had on his face on her wedding day.

"Dearly beloved," the priest started, "we're gathered here today to witness the lovely union of two wonderful people who are about to be joined in holy matrimony."

Hearing him use the words 'lovely' and 'matrimony' made her have the sudden urge to puke.

He kept going on and on about how God had brought them together and blah blah blah, and her eyes kept rolling continuously. She was pretty certain that anyone who saw her right now would think that she was a bitter witch who wasn't happy for them, and even though it was true that she was the farthest from being happy for them, she had very valid reasons not to be.

The more she heard him speak and the more she saw the reaction on people's faces, the more it dawned on her that everybody in this hall except herself was a bloody hypocrite because about 80% of the people here right now were also present for her wedding, and they were simply repeating the same reaction they had when Henry and she were getting married.

The fake smile, the fake gasp, the teary eyes, and the most common one of them all, the showering of comments on how they envy you, how they wish to be in your shoes, how beautiful you look, and how happy they are for you. The comments and the lies were just never-ending.

Bloody hypocrites!

"Now, you shall recite your vows to each other, promising before God and man what your partner will always mean to you," the priest encouraged, and her heart clenched a bit when she realized that she would have to hear him making vows to her sister, just a year after vowing to always be with her.

"I, Henry Jones, take you, Emily Parker, to be my lawfully wedded wife, my best friend, my companion, and the love of my life from this day forward. In the presence of God, our family, and friends, I vow to be a faithful partner to you, to love and to cherish you in sickness and good health, in the good times and the bad, to love and support you unconditionally and to respect you for as long as we both shall live," Henry recited and hearing it directly from his lips broke her heart even more.

It made her sad, but even more than that, she was mad because he didn't even put any effort into his vows. He repeated almost the same things that he said to her when they got married, and it pissed her off to realize just how much he didn't regard her or their wedding, that he even went ahead and repeated the same vows he made to her, to her sister.

"I, Emily Parker, take you, Henry Jones, to be my lawfully wedded husband. To love and to cherish you, to be with you through the good and the bad times, to support and encourage you in everything you do, and to respect and honor you for as long as we both shall live," Emily said in her vows, and she couldn't help but scoff at both of them.

Two liars, cheats, bastards, fools, idiots, and betrayers, that deserved to rot in hell were getting married, and she was unfortunate enough to witness such a disgusting event.

She could feel herself getting angrier and angrier, and she knew that was her cue to leave so that she didn't end up reacting in a way that would expose her because the last thing she wanted was for everybody there to find out that she also attended this sham of a wedding.

She stood up quietly after a while and proceeded to walk out of the hall. She bowed her head, carefully covering her face with the scarf over her head while walking briskly out of the place.

She had successfully managed to leave the wedding hall, but just when she was about to heave a sigh of relief that she didn't get caught, a hand grabbed her arm suddenly, and when she looked up to see who it was, she was met with the face of a man that literally almost took her breath away.

So angel-like humans exist? She wondered internally, momentarily forgetting that she was supposed to be bolting out of there at full speed.

"Who-" she was about to ask after snapping out of it, but he cut her off before she could say anything else.

"Forgive my audacity, beautiful, but I'm going to have to ask you to come with me," he said in the most calm and respectful tone ever, and before she knew what was happening, she was getting pulled away by some strange guy.

Sadly, she couldn't scream for help because that would only call attention to her, and she'd get caught, so she had no choice but to allow herself to get dragged to heaven knows where.

Scarlet had been at the wedding hall just a few minutes ago, and now she found herself seated in the backseat of a black Mercedes-Benz SUV, with an unbelievably beautiful yet unfamiliar man seated right next to her.

She would have focused on how crazily attractive he was if she wasn't so scared of getting kidnapped at this moment.

"You better have a very good explanation for bringing me here, or else, I won't hesitate to report you to the authorities for dragging me against my will and forcefully making me sit in your car," she hissed, reminding herself that he was a stranger and that she might be getting kidnapped right now. "In case you don't know what that means, it means that I'll have you arrested for kidnapping," she snapped, watching him with curious eyes.

The car was parked in a space with dim lighting, so she couldn't make out his features as clearly as she wanted to. She could only pick up on the fact that he had short black hair and pretty green eyes, which she noticed when he dragged her from the hall earlier.

'Snap out of it, Scarlet! He's a kidnapper,' she reminded herself, still wondering why she was in this car with this strange man and why in the world he had brought her here.

He had a small smile tugging on his lips, and she didn't need anyone to tell her what that smile meant; it couldn't be anything else but confidence and top-notch cockiness.

"I sincerely apologize if I startled you, but please relax and be rest assured that I'm not kidnapping you. I just wanted to have a private conversation with you, and that is why I escorted you out myself so we could speak privately without any sort of interruptions," he explained, leaving her confused.

"What exactly do we need to talk about in private? Do you even know who I am? Have we ever met before, because I don't remember ever meeting someone like you, and I'm certainly not interested in having a private conversation with somebody that I don't know?" she retorted, folding her arms across her chest instinctively.

She could tell that he wasn't someone ordinary, which made it all the more surprising that he wanted to have a conversation with her. She was also quite surprised that he even recognized who she was.

"I just want to speak to you for a short while. I promise that I won't take up too much of your time," he responded, and she scoffed.

"If you wanted to speak to me, you should have used the right means instead of kidnapping me and forcing me here. You didn't make a good impression, so I'm not interested in speaking to you," she told him sternly.

She was carefully watching the expression on his face, waiting to see if he would look in any way aggressive at any point, just in case he was a dangerous person. Surprisingly, the expression on his face remained the same, and she suddenly started to feel a sense of superiority from him.

"Once again, I'm deeply apologetic for bringing you here without your permission and leaving a bad first impression. The truth is, I've wanted to speak to you for a while now, and I was planning to visit you much later, but after seeing you here, I decided it would be best to just speak to you now that I have the chance," he explained, worsening her confusion.

"You know who I am?" she asked.

"Yes. Scarlet Parker, isn't it?" he replied, and she was startled.

"How did you recognize me? Was it that obvious that I was the one behind the scarf?" she asked, horrified at the thought that everyone else had recognized her, and she was only fooling herself by thinking she was slick enough.

"Don't worry, you weren't obvious at all. The only reason I recognized you was because I had seen you earlier without the scarf when you arrived," he answered, and she let out a relieved sigh.

Her dignity was already so fragile, and it would have been completely shattered if it turned out that everybody in there knew who she was and that they were only watching her try to hide while mocking how much she'd hit rock bottom.

"So, if you know who I am, what do you want with me? I would have assumed you were a reporter looking to exploit my sad story for an interesting exclusive. But considering how expensive this car is and how you look, I'm pretty sure you're not a reporter, am I wrong?" she asked, sizing him up.

He didn't look like a reporter to her because he had this classy and expensive aura around him that just screamed that he was a rich individual.

He chuckled. "Your story is sad, isn't it?" he responded, taking her aback with his remark.

"I know that I mentioned that my story was sad, but I certainly didn't need you to repeat it to me," she hissed sharply, feeling slightly embarrassed by his remark.

She had never really spoken to anyone, except Isabella, about what happened with Emily and Henry because it was an embarrassing story for her. The fact that he just threw it back in her face that her story was sad made her feel embarrassed and annoyed.

"I apologize if how I said it offended you, but well, your story is one of the reasons I'm here today. But before I explain anything else, allow me to introduce myself. You may or may not have heard of me, but my name's Ryan Marchetti and I am the CEO of Marchetti Construction," he introduced himself, leaving her momentarily speechless.

For the first few seconds after he introduced himself, she couldn't say anything because she was in complete shock. She may not have recognized the face, but there wasn't anybody in the country who wouldn't recognize that name.

Ryan Marchetti of Marchetti Construction was a very famous man, known for his anonymous nature and his business ethics.

She had formerly worked as a project manager for an advertising company, and that was when she was first introduced to the name. She was later introduced to the name again after she married Henry because Marchetti Construction was like the powerhouse construction company in the country, putting Henry's company in second place, and Ryan Marchetti was Henry's worst nightmare.

"If you're really Ryan Marchetti, that's all the more reason for me not to want to talk to you. I mean, why would you, of all people, want to have a conversation with me? What business do we have with each other?" she asked, genuinely confused.

He chuckled. "I know you don't think we have anything to say to each other, but contrary to what you're thinking, we do have something in common currently, and I have a proposal for you that you might be genuinely interested in," he answered.

"A proposal? What do you mean?" she questioned, not sure if it was a good idea to keep asking questions. She should be refusing to say anything else to him instead of questioning him, but for some reason, she couldn't help her curiosity.

"It's simple, Scarlet. I want us to use each other. I'll use you for my plans, and you'll use me for your revenge. How does that sound?" he responded, leaving her even more bewildered.