Chapter 2

For a second, my mind went completely blank.

Then, every voice around me seemed to recede until it sounded as though everyone were speaking from somewhere far away.

A fake marriage certificate?

Victor and Denise had lost their parents when they were young. My parents had brought the two of them into our home and raised them as if they were their own children.

The three of us had grown up together.

On my 18th birthday, Victor had bought sparklers and taken me to the beach. With their lights flickering around us, he'd kissed me on the forehead.

"Alyssa, let me protect you for the rest of my life."

I'd believed we would stand beside each other until we were old.

Then, Rebecca spoke.

"You can't force someone to love you, Alyssa. Yes, your family did a lot for Victor, but that doesn't mean you get to make him spend the rest of his life repaying you. That's incredibly selfish."

I stared at her in disbelief. Then, I slowly looked at everyone else.

These were the people I'd loved most in the world, yet I was standing completely alone now, while every one of them had chosen the other side.

"Victor, do you think so, too?" I asked.

He looked away. For a long time, he said nothing.

When he finally met my eyes again, the guilt was gone. All that remained was exhaustion and a brutal honesty that cut far deeper.

"Alyssa, I'm grateful to you. I respect you. And I… did love you once. But being with you slowly became exhausting. I felt like I couldn't breathe.

"You're good at everything, and no matter what you do, you have to come out on top. After a while, I couldn't even tell whether I loved you or whether I just admired you."

Then, he glanced back at Colette, his expression softening.

"But Colette is different. She's not as capable as you are. She gets scared just hearing thunder during a storm. Every time she runs into my arms, all I can think is that I want to spend the rest of my life protecting her."

For a moment, the yard around me disappeared.

I was back on that beach at 18.

As it turned out, those words had never been special.

He could say them to me, and he could say them to her.

A painful ache tightened in my chest, and before I realized what I was doing, I took one step toward him.

"Don't come any closer!"

Victor recoiled as though I were about to attack him and shoved me with both hands.

He didn't hold back.

Caught completely off guard, I stumbled several steps before my back slammed hard against the iron gate.

The gunshot wound in my chest, which still hadn't healed, tore open.

Blood immediately soaked through the bandage and spread across my white shirt.

Cold sweat broke out over my body as pain ripped through me. My legs gave out, and I slid to the ground, pressing a hand to my chest while blood seeped between my fingers and dripped onto the pavement.

Colette screamed at the sight of it and staggered backward.

"Colette!"

Victor's face fell.

He caught her in his arms and covered her eyes with one hand. "Don't look."

I watched him comfort another woman while somehow making me the problem.

Suddenly, compared with the pain tearing through my heart, the wound in my chest barely seemed to hurt.

"Do you have any idea that Colette faints at the sight of blood?" Victor snapped. "She's pregnant! What if something happens to the baby?"

A chill ran down my spine.

They were already expecting a second child.

I forced myself to stay upright and looked at him. "Do you know that we once had a—"

Before I could finish, Denise stormed over and spat at me in disgust.

"Look at you! You're built like a linebacker. All you do is chase criminals and get into fights. You're no woman! No wonder Victor couldn't stand you! Who would want to come home every night to some trigger-happy woman who could pull a gun at any second?"

Noah Ashford ran toward me as well.

He raised his water gun, aimed it directly at the wound in my chest, and started spraying.

The icy water struck the torn skin and mixed with the blood, dripping steadily to the ground.

"Noah, honey, come back. Don't touch her. She's filthy."

Rebecca gently lifted him into her arms and carried him away.

Then, she looked back at me with a weary sigh.

"Alyssa, enough. Do you really have to make such a spectacle out of this? Victor doesn't owe you anything anymore. You're the one who keeps refusing to let go. At this point, you're only humiliating yourself."

I opened my mouth, but no words came.

For the first time in 20 years, I felt as though I didn't know her at all.

We'd met in elementary school.

When some boys bullied her, I'd planted myself in front of her and chased them off with my fists.

From that day on, we'd been inseparable.

Two decades had gone by just like that.

The pain in my chest gradually faded into numbness. I braced myself against the gate and forced myself back to my feet.

Then, police sirens suddenly sounded outside the yard.

Two squad cars pulled up in front of the house, and several uniformed officers hurried through the gate.