Beverley's fingers were like a vise around Hollis's wrist. She leaned in close, her voice a venomous whisper meant only for Hollis's ears.

"Clay Thorne's suite is 803. You're going to go up there right now and 'apologize' properly. Otherwise, you can prepare to find five hundred thousand dollars to compensate me for my loss."

Hollis stared at her, stunned. The audacity was breathtaking. Five hundred thousand dollars? She was a student. She didn't have that kind of money.

With a sudden surge of strength—more a frantic reflex than real power—she ripped her arm free and stumbled back, putting distance between them.

"You're insane! I'm not going!"

Beverley smoothed down her expensive silk robe, a cold smile playing on her lips. "No money? What about the trust fund your dear mother left you? You're almost old enough to access it. Or, you could always call the police. Let's see who they believe—a disgraced Buchanan girl with a ruined reputation, or me, a respected philanthropist."

Hollis's body trembled with rage. She pulled out her phone, her thumb hovering over the 9-1-1 icon. It was her only weapon.

Seeing the motion, Kyla shrieked. "Sister, don't do something stupid! Think of the family's reputation!"

Just then, the butler's voice echoed from the foyer. "Ma'am, Miss, Mr. Baird is here."

The name Aris Baird struck the room like a bolt of lightning. The three women froze. Hollis's finger remained suspended over her phone screen.

Aris. Her fiancé. What was he doing here at this hour?

A cold dread washed over her as she saw the matching, triumphant expressions on Beverley's and Kyla's faces. She understood instantly. This was part of their plan.

Aris Baird strode in, tall and impeccably dressed in an Armani suit. His handsome face was a blank mask, his deep blue eyes sweeping across the room before they landed on Hollis.

When his gaze fell on the wrinkled man's shirt she wore, her messy hair, and her pale, bruised face, his expression curdled into one of pure, undisguised disgust.

Hollis's heart felt like it was being squeezed by an invisible hand. The comfort and protection she had desperately hoped for were not there. Only judgment. Contempt.

He walked past her as if she were invisible, settling his attention instead on the two women who stood waiting—Beverley with her practiced smile, Kyla already drifting toward him with a familiar ease that made Hollis's stomach turn.

Beverley's voice cut through the air, smooth and deliberate. "Aris, dear, I'm so sorry you had to see this... unpleasantness. Some things are better left unseen."

Hollis watched them—the way Kyla's hand found its way to Aris's arm, the way Beverley positioned herself as the matriarch of a scene she had written herself. The three of them stood together, a closed circle that had no room for her.

Aris's gaze finally landed on her—cold, dismissive, as if she were a piece of trash he had just noticed on the floor.

Aris's looking down at her from his great height.

He reached into his suit pocket, pulling out a checkbook and a Montblanc pen. With a few swift strokes, he wrote, tore out the check, and tossed it down in front of her.

It fluttered to a stop near her feet.

"Take it. It's a breakup fee," Aris said, his voice devoid of any warmth. "We're over."

Hollis slowly lifted her head. Her bloodshot eyes stared at the man she had loved for three years.

She didn't look at the check. She just asked, "Why?"

Aris let out a cold laugh, as if she'd just told the world's most pathetic joke. "Why? Hollis, you have the nerve to ask me why? The future wife of a Baird cannot be a shameless woman who fools around with strange men."

"I wasn't!" Hollis scrambled to her feet, her voice rising with desperation. "I was set up!"

Kyla immediately shrank behind Aris, feigning fear. "Aris, she's scaring me..."

Aris shielded Kyla, his expression hardening with even more revulsion. "Shut up. Stop acting. It only makes me sicker. You're not a virgin anymore, are you? That's a fact!"

The cruel words struck Hollis's deepest wound, the raw, secret shame she was still grappling with.

"So"—Aris paused, delivering the final blow—"I've decided to cancel our engagement. My fiancée... will be Kyla."

The world stopped. Hollis stared at Aris, then at the triumphant, hypocritical face of her sister peeking out from behind his arm.

The world stopped. Hollis stared at Aris, then at Kyla's triumphant, hypocritical face peeking out from behind his arm.

Aris's words hung in the air like a death sentence. The silence in the room was absolute.

But then, something flickered in Hollis's chest. Not grief. Not more shock. A tiny, sharp spark of disbelief that refused to be extinguished.

She looked at Aris again—really looked. Not at the handsome face she had loved, but at the man standing before her, the man who had just pronounced her "used goods" and replaced her with her sister in the space of a single breath.

And she heard it.

Not what he had said—but how he had said it.

"You're not a virgin anymore, are you?"

Not "Did you sleep with someone else?" Not "What happened to you?" Not even "Who was that man?"

He had stated it as fact. As if he already knew the outcome. As if he had expected it.

Hollis's blood turned cold.

Her voice came out slow, barely more than a whisper. "How did you know?"

Aris frowned. "Know what?"

"That I wasn't a virgin anymore." She held his gaze. "I never told you that. I never said a word about what happened last night. You walked in, saw the shirt, and you didn't ask—you just knew. How?"

A flash of something crossed his face—too quick to read, but it was there. His jaw tightened almost imperceptibly.

"It's obvious," he said, but his voice had lost some of its edge. "You're wearing a strange man's clothes. Your hair is a mess. You look like—"

"Like someone who was drugged and dragged to a hotel room," Hollis cut him off. Her voice was rising now, a tremor running through it, but not from weakness. "Like someone who doesn't remember half of what happened because her drink was tampered with. Like a victim, Aris. Not a cheater."

She stepped closer to him. He did not step back, but his eyes darted away for a fraction of a second.

"You didn't ask me what happened. You didn't give me a chance to explain. You just pronounced me guilty. Because—"

She stopped. The words formed in her mind like ice crystallizing.

Because you already knew what was supposed to happen.

The phone call. The wrong room. Clay Thorne's furious voice demanding the girl he was promised.

And Aris, her fiancé, standing here in the early morning, acting as if he had been waiting for this exact moment.

"You knew," Hollis said. Her voice was flat now. Empty. "You knew about the drink. You knew about the plan. You knew they were going to send me to someone else's bed—and you let it happen."

Kyla's face went pale behind Aris's shoulder. "That's ridiculous—"

"Shut up," Hollis snapped, her eyes never leaving Aris. "I'm talking to him."

Aris's composure cracked. Just a hairline fracture, barely visible—but she saw it. The way his lips pressed together. The way his hand, the one not holding Kyla's, curled into a fist at his side.

"You're hysterical," he said, but it came out too fast. "You have no proof of anything."

"I have you," Hollis said, and her voice was ice. "I have the way you just answered me. You didn't say 'I didn't know.' You said 'You have no proof.' That's not a denial, Aris. That's an admission."

He opened his mouth, but no words came out.

And in that silence, everything clicked into place.

Her stepmother's scheme. Her sister's eager complicity. And her fiancé—the man who had kissed her goodnight a hundred times, who had promised to love her forever—standing here, waiting for her to fall so he could catch Kyla instead.

He had not been betrayed by her.

He had been waiting to betray her.

Hollis let out a breath. It came out shaky, but she did not break.

She reached into her pocket and pulled out the check he had thrown at her. She had picked it up without thinking, an instinct to not leave anything of his lying on her family's floor.

She unfolded it slowly, looked at the number, and then let it fall from her fingers.

It drifted down and landed at his feet.

"That," Hollis said, her voice as cold as a tombstone, "was for my dead love."

"Keep your filthy money," she spat. "Buy your new fiancée some candy."

She threw the confetti of paper into their faces, then turned and ran out of the house without a backward glance.

Hollis ran blindly through the New York streets. The cold wind whipped at her face, but it couldn't cool the fire of rage and despair in her heart. She was homeless.

The next day, exhausted and numb, she made her way back to her dorm at New York University, seeking a moment of peace.

She was stopped by her academic advisor before she even reached the building entrance. The advisor's face was etched with pity and discomfort.

She was told that her stepmother, Beverley, had come to the university that morning. Acting as Hollis's "guardian," she had filed the paperwork for a mandatory withdrawal.

The news hit Hollis like a physical blow. NYU was her escape. The one thing she had earned all by herself.

She ran to the registrar's office, but the answer was the same. The withdrawal was processed. It could not be reversed without her guardian's consent.

Hollis called Beverley. Her stepmother's voice was smug and victorious on the other end of the line.

"I gave you a chance, Hollis. Now, you only have one path left."

The threat was clear.

"Eight o'clock tonight. The St. Regis, suite 803. Mr. Clay Thorne is waiting for you. If you're not there, photos of you with your 'wild man' will be on the front page of every gossip magazine tomorrow morning."

Beverley hung up.

Hollis listened to the dead tone, feeling as if the entire world had gone dark.