Emily grabbed my hand and started pulling me excitedly toward the brightly lit stage. “Come on, Victoria! The ring exchange is over. You have to come say congratulations!”

My stomach twisted violently. I didn’t want to go anywhere near that stage, but I couldn’t refuse without raising suspicion. Every step felt like walking toward my own execution.

As we climbed the few steps, my eyes immediately found him.

Alexander Sterling.

This was the first time I was seeing him since that night. He stood tall and devastatingly handsome in his perfectly tailored black suit, holding Vanessa’s hand. My heart clenched so hard it hurt.

He didn’t remember me. Not the way I remembered him.

A part of me felt relieved… but another part broke even more.

Emily pulled me forward with a bright smile. “Brother, meet my best friend, Victoria Morgan. You remember her from school days, right? The cute girl with the bob cut who used to bake you sweets?”

Alexander’s sharp gaze shifted to me. For a second, something flickered in his eyes. Then his expression turned cold. His lips curled slightly in clear distaste.

“Emily,” he said, his voice laced with disappointment, “I expected you to have better taste in friends. Are you still hanging around opportunists like her?”

My face crumpled.

Opportunist?

I stood there frozen, confused and hurt. What was he talking about?

Emily blinked in shock. “What are you talking about, Alex?”

Alexander’s cold eyes locked onto mine. “Look at her. Aren’t you the girl from the bar that night?” His voice was low but sharp enough for those nearby to hear. “The one seducing my business partner just for a few drinks? Pathetic.”

My heart almost dropped to my stomach.

He saw me that night at the bar…

The night I was drunk and desperate, trying to get a stranger to pay my bill. He must have been there. And now he thought I was some cheap, desperate girl who threw herself at men.

Vanessa’s hand loosened around Alexander’s arm, and her face relaxed. A satisfied smirk played on her lips.

Emily immediately let go of her brother’s arm. “Alexander! Apologize right now! You can’t say things like that to her!”

Tears burned my eyes. I couldn’t breathe. The pain in my chest was suffocating. I turned to Emily, forcing my voice to stay steady even though it was breaking.

“I… I have to leave. You enjoy the party.”

I turned away quickly, desperate to escape. But my eyes met an even more terrifying sight.

My grandfather.

He was sitting in the front row of VIP seats, watching me like a hawk. The moment our eyes locked, I felt ice run down my spine. His cold, calculating stare pierced through me, warning me without words.

Stay in line. Don’t cause trouble.

Alexander was still watching me. Emily looked furious as she glared at her brother. “I didn’t expect something so horrible from you, Alex. Victoria is my best friend. I will never forgive you for speaking to her like this.”

Vanessa let out a cold laugh. “Why are you overreacting, Emily? Alexander didn’t say anything wrong. She’s just a mistress’s daughter. What else would you expect from her?”

Alexander looked at Vanessa, slightly confused. “What do you mean?”

Vanessa smiled sweetly, but her words were venomous. “Her mother seduced my father and had her out of wedlock. She’s my half-sister. Just like her mother, she loves throwing herself at powerful men for favors. It’s in her blood.”

The words hit me like sharp knives.

Emily’s face turned red with anger. “Vanessa, shut up. Don’t you dare speak about my friend like that again.”

I couldn’t take it anymore. My vision blurred with tears as I turned and hurried down the steps, desperate to disappear from their sight. My hands instinctively moved to my stomach for a brief second.

I had barely taken a few steps away from the stage when my grandfather slowly rose from his seat. My body froze. The entire hall seemed to grow colder as he walked toward me with measured, powerful steps, leaning on his elegant black walking stick.

Instinctively, my hand moved to wrap protectively around my stomach. I felt the slight tremble in my fingers as I tried to hide it.

He stopped right in front of me, his sharp eyes studying my face like a predator.

“Victoria,” he said calmly, his voice carrying quiet authority. “May I speak with you for a moment?”

My legs felt shaky, but I forced myself to nod. “Yes, Grandpa.”

He turned without another word and started walking toward the exit. I followed him obediently, glancing back one last time. Alexander’s cold gaze was fixed on my back, filled with heavy disgust. The look made my chest tighten painfully.

It’s better this way, I told myself. Let him hate me. At least he’ll stay far away.

We stepped outside into the cool night air. A black luxury car was already waiting. Grandpa entered first, and I slid in after him. The door closed with a heavy click, sealing us inside.

For a long moment, there was only silence.

“I’ve seen you hanging around the Sterlings quite often these past weeks,” he finally spoke, his tone dangerously low. “Did you forget what I specifically ordered you to do?”

I gulped, my throat dry. “I never did anything wrong, Grandpa. I did exactly what you asked me to do that night at the masquerade party. I haven’t crossed paths with him since then. I swear.”

He didn’t reply immediately. Instead, he lifted his walking stick and tapped the top of it firmly against my shaking knee. I flinched.

“You seem very nervous,” he said coldly. “Why is that?”

“It’s… it’s nothing like that,” I whispered, my voice trembling.

His eyes narrowed. “On stage just now, you were looking at him with those eyes. You better not let anyone know what you did two months ago at that party. Do I make myself clear?”

My heart hammered wildly in my chest. I remembered that night so clearly the night I had pretended to be Vanessa, seduced Alexander while wearing a mask.

“I won’t tell anyone,” I said shakily, my voice barely holding together. “I’ll stay away from Alexander. He will never know that it was me that night. Please… just let me live in peace from now on.”

Grandpa stared at me for a long moment before he reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a cream-colored envelope. He tossed it onto my lap.

“This is your acceptance letter,” he said flatly. “Assistant Designer position at Chen Studios. Your money has already been transferred to your account.”

My eyes widened in disbelief. He had actually kept his promise.

“Don’t show your face in this city again,” he continued. “There’s no need for you to attend the wedding, even if your little friend begs you to come. Do you understand what will happen if you disobey me?”

The threat hung heavy in the air. I knew exactly what he meant. My mother had disappeared the same way erased completely when she became inconvenient.

I nodded quickly, clutching the envelope tightly. “I understand.”

As long as he never found out I had slept with Alexander… as long as no one knew about the baby growing inside me… I could endure anything.

Grandpa had used me to make Alexander agree to marry Vanessa that night at the masquerade ball. Alexander already hated me. There was no need to add fuel to that fire by revealing the truth.

The car stopped. I stepped out without another word, the cool night air hitting my tear-streaked face.

This was my life now.

Carrying the child of the man who despised me, while pretending everything was fine.

After the engagement party finally began winding down, Emily Sterling stepped out of the grand hall, her heels clicking sharply against the marble stairs. She was still fuming, her hands clenched into fists at her sides.

Alexander was standing near the entrance, talking on his phone. The moment he saw his younger sister walking down the stairs, he ended the call abruptly and slid his phone into his pocket.

“Emily,” he called out. “I’m heading home. Let’s go together.”

Emily stopped on the stairs and glared at him. “I don’t want to go home with you. I’m still mad at you.”

Alexander let out a tired sigh and walked toward her. “Are you still holding onto that little comment I made about Victoria?”

Emily’s eyes widened in disbelief. “Little comment? You humiliated my best friend in front of everyone! You have no idea how hurt she was.”

“I only said what was true,” Alexander replied coldly. “She’s an opportunistic person. I’ve seen her throwing herself at men for money and favors. You should be more careful. She might only be friends with you because of our family’s status and wealth.”

Emily stared at her brother, completely shocked. “I don’t understand you at all, Alexander. You’re marrying Vanessa for a massive business deal. The entire family is benefiting from this marriage. So when you do it, it’s smart strategy. But when someone else does something similar, they’re suddenly disgusting opportunists?”

Alexander’s jaw tightened. “It’s different.”

“Sure it is,” Emily said sarcastically, folding her arms. “You don’t know Victoria at all. You don’t know what kind of person she really is. So stop making assumptions about her.”

Alexander rolled his eyes. “Are you really going to fight with your older brother for some random woman?”

“She is not ‘some woman’!” Emily snapped, her voice rising. “She has been my best friend for the past fifteen years. So yes I will fight you if you hurt her again. I hate you right now. I can’t even reach her phone. She must be so heartbroken because of what you said.”

Alexander was about to respond when Vanessa walked out of the hall, holding her heels in one hand, looking elegant even in her exhaustion.

“Darling,” Vanessa said sweetly, walking straight to Alexander and linking her arm with his. “Could you drop me off at the mansion? My driver is stuck in traffic.”

Alexander glanced at her and nodded. “Sure, why not.”

He turned to Emily and gave her a warning look. “Be nice to Vanessa,” he mouthed silently before guiding Vanessa toward the waiting car.

Emily stood there frozen, watching them leave together. As the car drove away, her eyes filled with quiet fury and sadness.

If only you knew, she thought bitterly. If only you knew how amazing Victoria actually is… how much she has suffered… and how deeply she loved you all these years.

If only Alexander knew how horrible Vanessa truly was behind her perfect smile.

If only he knew how much Victoria’s life had already been ruined partly because of this very engagement.

Emily wiped a stray tear from her cheek and whispered to herself, “You have no idea what you’re doing, brother.”

The city lights blurred past the windows as Alexander drove smoothly through the quiet streets. Vanessa sat in the passenger seat, one hand resting on his thigh, trying to appear affectionate.

“So…” she asked playfully, tilting her head. “What were you and Emily talking about earlier? You both looked so serious.”

Alexander kept his eyes on the road. “Nothing important. Just some sibling things.”

Vanessa’s smile faltered slightly. She looked at him from the side. “Was it about Victoria again?”

There was a faint bitter undertone in her voice, though she tried to hide it.

Alexander glanced at her briefly. “Emily is her friend, so she didn’t like the comment I made about her on stage. She was fighting with me over it. If it bothers you, I can apologize to Victoria for your sake.”

Vanessa chuckled softly and leaned closer, locking her arm with his even though he was driving. She rested her head on his shoulder. “You don’t have to. She’s not worth your time.”

Alexander was quiet for a moment before speaking again, his voice softening. “I still can’t believe this is an arranged marriage by our families. We didn’t even meet properly… but I did fall for you, didn’t I?”

Vanessa’s body tensed.

“I was completely mesmerized by you that night at the masquerade ball,” Alexander continued, a small smile playing on his lips. “I couldn’t think straight for weeks after that. Of course I would do anything for you, my love.”

Vanessa’s hand loosened slightly around his arm. She gulped nervously and pulled back a little, giving a weak, forced laugh.

“Y-Yeah… That night was truly special,” she said, her voice sounding rehearsed.

Alexander continued, completely unaware of her discomfort. “The way you spoke to me that night… I had never seen or felt another woman like you. Before that party, I wasn’t even planning to agree to this marriage. My mother was against it because she believed I should marry for love. Honestly, I never believed in love until I met you that day.”

Vanessa gave a dry response, her hands twisting nervously in her lap.

Alexander looked at her sideways. “When are you going to fulfill the promise you made me that day?”

Vanessa froze. “P-Promise?”

“Yeah,” he chuckled. “Don’t you remember?”

“I… uh…”

He laughed lightly. “You’re the first woman I’ve seen who forgot something like this. I don’t know how I should feel about that.” He slowed the car and pulled over to the side of the road, turning off the engine before removing his seatbelt.

He turned to face her fully. “You told me that after our engagement, we would book a room and you would show me what the best night of my life looked like.”

Vanessa’s eyes widened in shock. Her heart started racing. That bitch didn’t mention anything like this! she thought furiously, cursing Victoria in her mind.

“Oh! Of course… How could I forget something like that,” she said quickly, forcing a smile while sweat began forming on her forehead.

Alexander reached out and gently touched her face, caressing her cheek with his thumb. Vanessa closed her eyes, half expecting him to kiss her or do something more intimate right there in the car.

But instead, he leaned in and softly kissed the top of her head.

“I was kidding,” he chuckled, pulling back with an amused expression. “You must have been too drunk that night to remember. You actually promised that if I got engaged to you within three months, you would buy me my favorite ice cream. I’ve been waiting for that treat.”

Vanessa blinked, completely taken aback. A wave of embarrassment washed over her.

“Oh… hahaha,” she laughed awkwardly, her face flushing red. “Of course. I’ll get it for you soon.”

Alexander smirked and started the car again. “I’ll be waiting for my treat then.”

Vanessa smiled on the outside, but inside she was sweating profusely, her mind spinning with panic and resentment.

That damn Victoria… What exactly happened that night?

The airport was loud, too many people moving in too many directions, all of them somewhere urgent to be. Victoria stood near the departure gate with her carry-on bag hanging off one shoulder and her boarding pass folded between two fingers, trying to look like a person who had everything under control.

Emily was not making it easy.

"Emily."

"I'm just saying there are options."

"Emily." Victoria set her bag down and turned to face her properly. "You know I can't stay here."

Emily's jaw tightened. She looked away at the crowd moving past them and didn't say anything for a moment.

"This place is closing in on me," Victoria said, softer now. "Every time I step outside I feel it. Like the city itself has his name written into the pavement and I can't stop reading it." She shook her head. "That sounds insane. I know that."

"It doesn't," Emily said quietly.

"I need somewhere that doesn't have Alexander Sterling in it." Victoria picked her bag back up. "Aldenvale has that. And it has Lucas Chen."

Emily made a sound somewhere between a sigh and a scoff. "You and Lucas Chen."

"It has been my dream since my second year of university and you know it." Victoria managed a small smile. "Getting to work under someone like him, even as an assistant that is not a small thing. I would be an idiot to walk away from it just to stay here and watch your brother get married."

Emily flinched. She pressed her lips together and looked at the floor for a second before meeting Victoria's eyes again. "If only I could do something. There has to be something."

"There isn't." Victoria said it plainly, without bitterness. "He is in love with Vanessa. That much was clear. It would be stupid of me to think it could have gone any other way, and it would be even stupider to stick around hoping." She swallowed. "I want to move on, Emily. I actually want to. So let me go somewhere I can try."

Emily stared at her for a long second. Then she stepped forward and pulled her into a hug so tight it was almost painful.

Victoria hugged her back and said nothing. There was nothing left to say.

"Call me the second you land," Emily muttered into her shoulder. "And send pictures of the apartment. I want to see everything."

"I will."

"And if it is terrible, you are coming straight back and I don't care what you say."

"It won't be terrible."

Emily pulled back and pressed her lips together firmly, refusing to let the tears go further than the corners of her eyes. "You better not disappear on me."

"I won't."

Victoria picked up her bag, gave Emily's hand one last squeeze, and walked through the gate.

The flight to Aldenvale was three and a half hours. Victoria had the window seat, which she had been glad about until she was actually sitting in it, thirty thousand feet in the air, staring at a stretch of clouds and thinking thoughts she absolutely did not want to be thinking.

She kept her hands folded in her lap. Calm. Normal. Like a completely normal person flying to a new city for a new job with no complications whatsoever.

Except for the complication currently taking up permanent residence in her body.

She had not been able to do anything about it in Merrath. Grandpa's reach there stretched into every corner the clinics, the private practices, even the pharmacies where she might have tried to quietly figure something out on her own. There were eyes everywhere she turned, and the one thing she could not afford was for that information to travel back to him before she had made it out of the city. So she had waited. She had packed and smiled and hugged Emily and waited, and now she was in the air, and there was a strange, completely irrational fear crawling around in the back of her mind that had no business being there.

Was it safe to fly? In this condition?

She had no reason to worry. She wasn't even far along. It was barely a month. She didn't even she was going to take care of it the moment she landed. That was the plan. That had always been the plan.

So there was absolutely no reason to be sitting here with her hands pressed against her stomach like some kind of protective reflex that her body had developed entirely without her permission.

She moved her hands back to her lap and turned to look out the window.

The clouds looked soft from up here. She thought about nothing.

The air hostess came down the aisle with a cart, offering drinks and a tray of food. The smell reached Victoria half a second before the cart did and her stomach flipped immediately, a wave of nausea rolling through her so fast she had to press her fingers to her lips and breathe very carefully through her nose.

"Something to drink?" the hostess asked with a bright, practiced smile.

"Orange juice," Victoria said. "Please. Just the juice."

She left the food.

The juice helped. She sipped it slowly and watched the clouds and thought about Lucas Chen's studio, which she had only ever seen in photographs and one very long documentary she had watched twice during university. Clean lines. Natural light. The kind of interiors that felt like rooms that understood something about the people living in them.

That was what she was flying toward. That was what mattered.

She folded up the thought about the other thing and put it somewhere at the back of her mind and left it there for the rest of the flight.

Aldenvale announced itself through the airplane window as a wash of city lights spread wide and low across the evening dark, nothing like Merrath's tight, vertical skyline. It was bigger than she had expected. More spread out. Glass and steel and the soft orange glow of a city that ran on business and kept moving through the night.

She was through baggage claim and out of the main terminal doors before she remembered to breathe properly.

The air outside was different. That was the first thing she noticed. Cooler and sharper, carrying the particular smell of a city she had never been in before, all concrete and evening and something faintly green underneath it.

She pulled out her phone and recorded a voice message for Emily.

"I landed. I'm outside the airport, everything is fine, I'm getting a cab now." She looked around at the lit-up terminal entrance, the queue of taxis and rideshares, the stream of travelers pulling cases across the pavement. "It's bigger than I thought. I'll send pictures once I get to the apartment. Don't wait up." She paused. "Thank you for coming to see me off. I mean it."

She ended the message and flagged down a taxi.

The apartment building was in a part of the city called Halcyon Terrace, which sounded like something out of a property brochure and turned out to be accurate. The streets were clean. The buildings were the kind that had actual lobbies with actual lighting, not a single buzzing fluorescent in sight. Trees lined the pavement in neat rows.

The rent in this area would have eaten her salary whole and spat out the bones. She knew that without having to look it up.

Grandpa had arranged the apartment. Of course he had.

She stood on the pavement outside the building for a moment after the taxi pulled away, looking up at it. It was a nice building. Generous windows, good bones, the sort of place that felt like it had been maintained by people who took the work seriously. She should have felt grateful.

She did feel grateful. That was the complicated part.

Because it was a generous thing and a surveillance thing and both of those were true at the same time, and she had learned a long time ago that when Grandpa gave you something, it always came with the shape of a hand around your throat.

But the rent in this area would have been impossible. That was also true. And she was going to need money more of it than she had counted on, for reasons she was still sorting through and refusing to name directly. So at least this was something. At least she could save.

She pushed through the entrance doors.

The lobby had a marble floor and a front desk and a young man at it who looked up and gave her a professional nod. She gave her name. He found the key. Fourth floor, facing the street.

The elevator was quiet and clean and when she stepped into the apartment and turned on the lights, the first thing she saw was a window that took up most of one wall and showed her the Aldenvale skyline stretching out in every direction, lit up against the dark like a city that didn't intend to stop.

She set her bag down.

She took a picture and sent it to Emily with no caption.

Emily's reply came back in under thirty seconds: I hate you. It's gorgeous. Are you okay?

Victoria looked at the skyline for another moment.

I will be, she typed back.

She meant it, mostly.

She went to find the kitchen, filled a glass of water, and sat down on the floor of the empty apartment with her back against the wall and her knees drawn up and the glass balanced on her knee, and she let herself sit there quietly for a few minutes without thinking about anything at all.

New city. New job. New start.

That was enough for tonight.