Chapter 9: Ghosts And Backstabbers

Later that afternoon, I was alone in the west wing, walking the perimeter of the courtyard. The air smelled faintly of lavender and stone. A breeze teased the hem of my skirt as I crossed toward the fountain. And I saw her again.

Sera.

She stood in the archway in a blue sundress, her hair held back in place by designer sunglasses. It took every shred of restraint in me not to turn around and walk the other way. But I didn’t. I approached her instead.

“Sera,” I said quietly.

She turned. A smile was on her lips, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “Amara,” she replied smoothly. “Enjoying the estate?”

I stepped forward, chin lifted. “What are you doing here? Really?”

Her brows lifted in mock surprise. “I told you. I’m Zane’s fiancée.”

“No. What’s your real plan?”

“Getting married to the man I love.” She shrugged. “Sorry of you can’t relate.”

My stomach churned. “You were never part of this story. Not until after.”

A flicker of something dark passed over her expression. “You mean after you left him? How… considerate of you to run away, especially when he needed you the most.”

“I didn’t leave him,” I hissed. “You know what happened. You were there. You—”

Her face snapped into something cold and cruel. “I was always there, Amara. You just never saw me.”

“Because you were my friend,” I shot back. “Not his.”

She smiled again, and this time it was all venom. “And now I’m both.”

Ew, I thought. I don’t associate with backstabbers.

I stared at her, chest heaving. “Does he even know who you are? Who you were? What you’ve done?”

“Of course he does,” she said easily. “We met in college. We loved each other. You were the obstacle in our way. Don’t you remember?”

My throat went dry. The rewriting of history nearly made me sick. “You are a snake and a manipulator. How can you do all that? And worse yet, you’ve made that man believe he’s in love with you.”

“He’s a man like you said. Zane’s not a kid. You can’t manipulate someone into loving you. It’s obvious he made a choice and it isn’t you. That’s why you’re so butt hurt.”

“So that’s why I was hired to plan your wedding? ‘Let her not watch the fire from afar. Let her burn in it.’ You think I’ll let you get away with this?” I asked, voice low and shaking. “Pretending you were always the one by his side?”

Her smile widened. “Why not? He doesn’t remember you anyway.”

She turned and walked away, her heels clicking on the ground.

I stood there long after she left. My whole body was shaking with rage… and fear.

I knew Sera. She was intelligent and ruthless. I should’ve known that she would stop at nothing to get what she wanted. What had Sera done throughout these years? What else was she planning to do? What if she was rewriting everything we had, price by piece, until I was something less than a footnote in her and Zane’s lives?

##

By the time I got to my room that night, my fingers were shaking. I poured myself a glass of wine, stared at the wedding plans laid out on my bed, and felt the weight of five years pressing down on me like a heavy load.

He didn’t remember me.

He didn’t remember me.

But the internet… surely there had to be proof of our relationship.

I sat at the desk of my hotel room, fingers typing on the keyboard of my laptop. I did what any desperate woman with a Wi-Fi connection and a half-dead laptop would do. It began with a simple question. One that desperation pushed me to type into the search bar: Zane Blackwood engagement history.

Then I Googled him.

And then I Googled myself.

“Zane Blackwood fiancée.” “Zane Blackwood engagement.” “Blackwood family scandal.” “Amara Ibe wedding planner.” “Amara Ibe whistleblower.”

What I found (or rather, what I didn’t find) made my stomach turn. There was no articles. No photos. No scandal. No trace of the engagement that once consumed my world. Page after page. Click after click.

And nothing.

No mention of the exposé that had blown the lid off the Blackwood corporate empire. No sign of the girl who’d risked everything to do the right thing. No hint of the press conference, the interviews, the death threats that came after. It was like I never existed in his life.

All I found was a clean, surgically prepared list of curated content: interviews about Zane’s recovery, charity events hosted by the Blackwoods, and a heart-tugging feature on his “struggle to piece his life back together” after the accident. There was even a touching quote from his supposed university sweetheart: Sera.

I stared at the screen, heart hammering. Five years wiped out like they’d never happened. Like I had never happened.

I typed my own name into a dozen search engines. My name. Zane Blackwood. Blackwood Pharma. Whistleblower.

Nothing.

Every article that had once torn through the internet like wildfire was gone. Scrubbed clean. Removed from history. What was left was a list of headlines about Zane’s mysterious accident and memory loss. There were carefully worded tributes and strategically vague interviews.

They’d erased me from his past like I never existed.

My heart sank to my belly.

The erasure wasn’t just digital. At the estate, even the staff played their roles perfectly. Smiles too bright. Voices too careful. Always watching me like I might say the wrong thing and unlock a truth no one wanted Zane to remember.

I searched every possible combination of our names.

Every event. Every year. Every headline.

Nothing.

Then I clicked on a forgotten link buried three pages deep in an outdated blog. The site loaded painfully slow, full of broken image icons and old formatting. But finally, a blurry photo appeared. It was cropped at the sides, but I would recognize the angle of his jaw, the shape of his mouth, the curve of my hand on his arm anywhere.

Zane was in a black tux. I was in a red dress with beaded sleeves. The Ashcroft Foundation gala, five years ago.

We were smiling.

At least I was.

The caption underneath read: Blackwood heir Zane photographed with a disgraced former employee during the 2020 Ashcroft Foundation event. Sources say the woman was later involved in leaking sensitive company data.

No name. No mention of our relationship. No engagement. No betrayal. No heartbreak. Just a whisper of scandal like I was a footnote in his story.

I stared at the screen, my breath caught in my throat, the weight of it pressing into my lungs like concrete.

Disgraced former employee.

My vision grew blurry. My head was spinning. “Why would they erase me?” I whispered, my voice breaking in the silence.

The only answer I got was the hum of the laptop fan echoing in the silence.

The next morning, I headed straight to the physical archives to check on the old planning files from when Zane and I were together. That’s where we kept our venue sketches, menu notes, a draft of our vows.

All of it was gone and replaced with perfectly labeled binders featuring Sera’s name in gold print.

I laughed in disbelief. Sera was buying me alive under her fairytale. And just when I thought I couldn’t sink deeper, I looked up to see him

Zane.

He was watching me from the end of the corridor. His expression was blank and unreadable, even when our eyes met.

Then he tilted his head, slowly. And he smiled.