Chapter 21

~ ASHLEY ~

From the moment Nathan first mentioned her name to me, I hated Kimberly Hayes.

Seeing her standing in his room that day in that wedding dress only made the hatred burn deeper.

And I hated her even more now, watching her stroll through the garden with his ring on her finger like she owned the place.

Standing by my bedroom window in the guest wing with my fingers resting against the cold glass, I watched her walk around like a woman who had already won.

She held a cup of coffee, strolling along the stone path leisurely. The morning sun caught in her hair as she paused near the rose bushes, breathing in the air and looking completely at ease.

My jaw tightened. A bitter taste settled in my mouth.

I had returned from Boston only days ago. The semester had just ended, and I had been looking forward to coming home more than usual this time. Being away at school for months had been exhausting, and the thought of spending the summer here again—of seeing Nathan every day—was the one thing that had kept me going through the final weeks of exams.

But the moment I stepped through the front door, he shocked me with the news.

He was getting married. Just like that.

There’d been no warning. No time to even process it. The next thing I knew, I was sitting in the front row of his wedding, smiling at the slut when all I wanted to do was rip her apart with my bare hands.

The whole thing still seemed like a dream to me. How could he have gotten engaged and married so quickly?

For years after Evelyn, Nathan hadn’t been interested in being with anyone.

Everyone in the family knew the damage that woman had done to him. She had broken something inside of him that had never quite healed.

After the breakup, he stopped looking at women the way other men did. He kept his distance, never letting anyone get too close.

For a long time, I thought that meant I still had a chance. Because if no woman could reach him anymore… then maybe the right one simply hadn’t tried hard enough.

And I had tried. God, I had tried.

I paid attention to all the things he liked, from the wine he preferred at dinner to the kind of books he read. I started reading them too.

I studied the kind of women he seemed drawn to—the way they dressed, the way they carried themselves—and I tried to shape myself into the same kind of woman.

I found excuses to spend time with him wherever he was. On most nights when he came home late from work, I lingered in the living room waiting for him, just so we could talk for a few minutes before I went to bed.

Countless times, I sat at the kitchen counter with him when he made late-night coffee, hoping to steal a few minutes of conversation before he went upstairs.

But Nathan never noticed. He never noticed me or how much I wanted him.

To him, I was still just Ashley. His step-sister. The girl who had grown up in the same house. The one he ruffled on the head sometimes, like I was still sixteen.

Every time he did it, it made something twist painfully in my chest. I wasn’t a kid anymore. And yet he had never once looked at me the way he looked at her.

Down in the garden, Kimberly lifted her face toward the sun for a moment before taking another sip of coffee. She looked… happy.

The sight made my fingers curl against the window frame.

A gold digger. That was what she was. She had to be. What else could explain it?

Nathan was a billionaire. Women constantly chased after him. Models, actresses, socialites… Women who actually belonged in his world.

Yet somehow this… nobody had appeared out of nowhere and married him. Just like that.

It was still a mystery to me how she’d managed to accomplish what I’d been trying to achieve for years, all in the space of a few months.

I bit my lip hard, remembering the wedding and how terrible I’d felt watching both of them together. I’d masked all my feelings well behind a pretty smile, even though all the while I’d felt like dying.

The wedding night had been worse. I couldn’t sleep. The guest wing of the mansion had been too quiet, the walls too still. My mind had refused to shut down. I had spent hours staring at the ceiling, listening to the silence of the house, while I kept imagining what was going on in Nathan’s bedroom.

At a point, I couldn’t take it anymore. I got out of bed without thinking, slipping into the hallway before my mind had time to stop me.

The mansion had been dark and silent as I walked through it, heading for Nathan’s room. I knew that door better than anyone. When I reached it, I stopped. My hand lifted slowly.

I wasn’t even sure what I was planning to do. Knock, maybe. Say something stupid about needing something. Anything.

Anything that would make him open the door. Anything that would stop whatever was happening inside.

My fingers hovered inches from the wood, then froze as a sound reached me through the door.

At first, the sound was soft, almost too faint to recognize. Slowly, I pressed my ear against the door, then I heard it again—Kimberly’s breathless moans of pleasure. The kind of sounds a woman makes when she’s completely lost in the moment.

I stood there longer than I should have, listening, my heart twisting, breaking in my chest. Every sound from inside the room felt like a knife sliding deeper under my ribs.

That should have been me, I kept thinking. He was supposed to want me. He was supposed to marry me, not her!

A sudden wave of anger rushed through me so quickly I had to clench my fists just to stay still.

Finally, I stepped away from the door, my chest tight as I walked back to my room.

But the sounds followed me. Even after reaching my room. Even after I lay down in bed. And even now, standing at the window the next morning, I could still hear those moans.

Down in the garden, Kimberly and Nathan were together now. I watched him hold her, kiss her, both of them looking happy together. So happy, it made me sick.

“Just look at her,” I muttered, my voice laced with venom. “She must think she has everything now.”

The words slipped out before I realized someone had entered the room.

My mother stepped beside me quietly, her hand resting lightly on my shoulder as she followed my gaze down into the garden. She studied them for a moment without speaking.

“Mum, did we really have to stay in the guest wing?” I asked bitterly. “We’re not guests. This is our house too.”

Deborah’s lips curved faintly. She looked at me. “Patience, Ashley.”

Her voice was calm and steady, the way it always was when she was thinking ten steps ahead of everyone else.

“Remember what I told you?”

I frowned.

“Make her feel comfortable,” she continued softly, her eyes drifting back to Kimberly. “Women like her are easier to deal with when they think they’re safe.”

I let out a frustrated breath. Our gaze returned to Nathan and Kimberly. They were talking, completely unaware that we were standing above them, watching.

“Let her enjoy the illusion while it lasts.” Deborah’s lips curled into a knowing smile. The look in her eyes sent a small thrill down my spine.

“The more comfortable she becomes…” she said quietly, “…the easier it will be to get rid of her… permanently.”