Chapter 2

I tightened my grip on the phone and remembered that I had already turned down this opportunity once because of Isaac.

Back then, he had wrapped both arms around me and coaxed me for what felt like forever.

"Rachel, if you leave the country, what am I supposed to do?

"We're about to get married. Can you really leave me here alone?"

I had agonized over it, but in the end I rejected an extraordinary career opportunity because I wanted to marry Isaac.

Remembering seven years I had once thought were happy, I looked at him through tears and asked one final question.

"If Serena was already back, why didn't you break up with me?

"In seven years, was there even one moment when you actually loved me?"

Isaac remained silent for a very long time.

Serena gave a helpless little laugh, her voice full of pity.

"He didn't leave you because I wouldn't let him.

"You had already made Isaac your entire world.

"I was afraid that if he left, you'd fall apart again."

She walked toward me slowly, like someone preparing to offer charity.

"Rachel, I left the person I loved most beside you for seven years.

"I watched him celebrate your birthdays, take engagement photos with you, and even help you plan a wedding.

"I've stepped aside for long enough.

"Now I only want the wedding that was supposed to be mine. Why can't you grant me that one thing?"

Then she rested one hand gently on her stomach.

"If it were only me, I could keep stepping aside.

"But I'm already three months pregnant.

"I can't let my child grow up calling their own father Uncle Isaac."

Isaac's face changed instantly, and his hand went to the small of her back to steady her.

"The doctor told you to avoid stress.

"Stop explaining yourself to her."

He looked at me, and his voice turned cold.

"Rachel, Serena has already sacrificed seven years for you.

"She's carrying my child now. I can't keep acting in this relationship with you."

A few sentences erased the seven years we had shared.

Yet the Isaac I remembered had once treated me as though nothing mattered more.

When acute gastritis put me in the hospital, he canceled meetings and stayed beside me for two nights.

When the Bancroft family opposed us, he gave up access to his family accounts and moved into my cramped apartment.

At our poorest, we split a single grilled cheese sandwich.

He gave me the bigger half and smiled.

"Rachel, just wait a little longer.

"One day I'll make everyone understand that you didn't choose the wrong man."

Later, his startup failed and left him buried in debt.

I worked during the day and took freelance design jobs at night, helping him survive the hardest two years of his life.

The day his first major investor signed, he held me and cried for a long time.

He promised he would never betray me.

Those embraces had been real.

So had those tears.

Yet now he stood beside a pregnant Serena and told me that seven years of love had only been an act.

The giant screen behind us suddenly came back to life.

The production team, apparently unaware that the ceremony had collapsed into chaos, continued playing the scheduled anniversary film.

Gold letters appeared across the screen.

[Isaac Bancroft + Serena Calloway: Ten Years Together]

Photographs began unfolding across a timeline.

On my twenty-fourth birthday, Isaac had told me his flight was delayed, leaving me alone with a cake that went cold on the table.

In the photograph, he stood below a snowy mountain wrapping a scarf around Serena and kissing the tip of her frozen nose.

Six months earlier, on the day I lost my first baby, Isaac had told me an emergency business trip kept him from the hospital.

Mom claimed her heart was acting up.

Dad and Andrew had both switched off their phones.

I had gone through the hospital procedure alone, shaking with pain and fear.

In the photographs, all of them were celebrating Serena's birthday on an island resort.

Mom held up a present, Dad cut the cake, and Andrew spent the entire night setting off fireworks along the beach.

Phoebe stood behind the camera documenting one big happy family.

Photograph after photograph filled in seven years I had never been allowed to see.

They also illuminated every crack hidden inside their lies.