Chapter 6: Minutes Before the Wedding.

Karen was locked in her room when soft knocks echoed through the door.

“Miss?” A female voice, polite but cold. “I brought some things for you.”

Karen hesitated, but then opened the door just a crack. A middle-aged maid stood on the other side, holding an expensive shopping bag—the kind of place Karen passed by at the hotel and would never dare to enter.

“Don’t worry about it,” Karen said quickly, feeling the heat rise to her neck. “I have clothes.”

The maid looked at the wrinkled blue dress Karen was still wearing—the same dress she had chosen for dinner with Peter, the one she had run through parking lots in, the one that bore the marks of everything that had happened in the last twenty-four hours.

“Mr. Sebastian asked me to let you know,” the maid said, and there was something in her tone, “that your clothes are dirty.”

The look she gave Karen was unmistakable. Karen had seen that look before—at the orphanage, when families came to choose children to adopt and passed right by her. At the hotel, when wealthy guests treated her like part of the furniture. It was the look of someone who thought they knew exactly who you were and how much you were worth.

Contempt.

As if Karen were something dirty that needed to be cleaned before she could exist in the same space as people like Sebastian Sterling.

“Thank you,” Karen forced the words out, taking the bag. It wasn’t the maid’s fault. She was probably just doing her job, following orders.

The woman nodded briefly and walked away, her shoes clicking on the marble as she disappeared down the hallway.

Karen closed the door and stood still, holding the expensive bag. Her hands were shaking.

She walked over to the king-size bed—bigger than any bed she had ever slept in—and emptied the contents of the bag. New clothes fell out. A simple but elegant dress, a cream-colored blouse. Shoes, lingerie are too expensive to be worn by someone like her.

Karen picked up the blue dress she was still wearing—wrinkled, with a small stain from when she bumped into someone in the parking lot—and compared it to the new clothes on the bed.

The difference was striking.

One was who she had been. The other was who Sebastian thought she needed to be. 

Karen sat on the bed, the blue dress clenched between her fingers.

Was she making the right choice? Or was she just acting on impulse, out of fear, out of desperation?

Sebastian was a stranger. She knew his name; she knew he had lived in the same orphanage; she knew he had money and power. But she didn’t know him. Not really. And he was Peter’s brother—the man who had orchestrated months of lies just to steal a piece of her body.

They were brothers.

If Peter was capable of such a heinous act, what would Sebastian be capable of?

The only thing she and Sebastian had in common was a tattoo on her wrist. Two numbers in black ink. A shared mark of abandonment.

But was that enough? Did that justify marrying a stranger?

But the worst part...

Karen closed her eyes, feeling hot tears threaten to fall.

The worst part was that she still loved Peter Sterling.

Even knowing the truth—about the kidney, about Lindsay, about all the cruel manipulation—a foolish, stubborn part of her still felt that tightness in her chest when she thought of him. She still remembered how he smiled when she told him something funny. How he held her hand when they met. How he made her feel, for the first time in her life, that she mattered to someone.

It was all a lie.

But the heart didn’t care about truths. It continued to bleed even when the brain already knew what was best.

Karen pressed the blue dress against her chest, allowing herself a moment—just one—to feel everything. The pain, the anger, the betrayal. The stupid, persistent love that refused to die even when it should have.

Peter.

She was sure he would ask her to be his girlfriend that night. She had rehearsed what she would say when he asked. Yes. Of course. I love you.

She felt like an idiot.

And in a few hours, she would be married to his brother.

A marriage that meant nothing. A paper agreement. Temporary protection until... until what? Until Peter gave up? Until she, Lindsay, died, or she had enough money to disappear?

Until Sebastian got what he wanted from her?

Karen opened her eyes, staring at the high, ornate ceiling of the room. She wasn’t naïve enough to think Sebastian was doing this out of pure kindness. No one helped for free. She had learned that in eighteen years at the orphanage.

There was always a price. She just didn’t know what it was. Yet.

A knock on the door pulled her out of her thoughts.

“Miss Karen?” The maid’s voice again. “You said the judge will be here in an hour. You need to get ready.”

“I’m coming,” Karen replied, her voice firmer than she expected.

She got up, leaving the blue dress on the bed as if it were a corpse that needed to be abandoned. Perhaps it was. The funeral of the girl who had been Karen—naïve, hopeful, passionate.

She picked up the new clothes. The new dress was simple but well cut. It would probably look nice. She took a quick shower, letting the hot water wash away the last traces of tears.

When she came out of the bathroom shrouded in steam, Karen looked at herself in the mirror. The new clothes transformed her into someone different. Someone who belonged in that place of marble and crystal. Someone who could marry a billionaire and not look completely out of place.

But underneath the expensive dress, she was still just Karen. Girl number 125478. The orphan who never had anything and probably never would.

She sat on the bed again, waiting to be called, and allowed the memories of Peter to flood her mind.

First date at the hotel café. Peter asking for her number with that charming smile. Second week. He showed up with flowers at the end of her shift.

First kiss in the parking lot, under the neon lights of Vegas.

The way he said her name—Karen—as if it were special.

All lies. Every moment, every touch, every whispered word. He was just making sure that kidney compatibility came with willing cooperation.

But God, how it hurt.

Karen held her left wrist, where the tattoo 125478 SM marked her skin forever. Sebastian had 385900 SM. Different numbers, two different lives, but the same story of abandonment.

Another knock on the door.

“Miss Karen. It’s time.”

Karen stood up, smoothed her dress, and took a deep breath. She was about to marry a man she didn’t love, to escape a man she still loved despite everything.

And the scariest part was that she saw no other way out.

“I’m leaving,” she said, opening the door.

The maid was waiting for her in the hallway, that look of contempt still present but hidden behind a mask of professionalism.

“This way, miss.”

Karen followed, each step bringing her closer to a choice she could not undo.

Somewhere in that penthouse, Sebastian Sterling was waiting to make her his wife.

And Karen didn’t even know if she was walking toward salvation or toward a prison even worse than the last one.