Chapter 1

The door to the stairwell swung open with a soft click. I hurried back up half a flight of stairs and pressed my back against the cold wall.

It wasn't until Hector Greene's and Giselle Lloyd's footsteps gradually faded into the distance that I realized I was trembling all over.

By the time I returned to the private dining room in the restaurant, Giselle was already seated beside our mother. She beckoned me with a smile and said, "Oh, I got caught up talking to Mom that I forgot you were waiting downstairs, Evelina. Well, since you're here, let's just stick around a little longer, okay?"

She reached out to straighten the turned-up collar of my coat for me. When her fingers brushed my neck, I instinctively flinched.

Startled, Giselle asked, "Why are you so cold?"

The concern in her eyes was so genuine that I almost convinced myself everything I'd witnessed in the stairwell had been a figment of my imagination. She raised a hand to feel my forehead. As she did, her sleeve slipped down, revealing a faint white scar on her wrist.

She'd gotten it while protecting me when we were children.

Mom had punished me by locking me out of the house, forcing me to spend the night on the porch. Giselle had secretly brought me some candy, and when she was caught, she'd taken a slap meant for me. She'd struck her wrist against the stone steps and ended up bleeding profusely.

Despite the pain, she hugged me and said, "Even if no one else wants you, Evelina, I do."

Two decades had passed, yet she still remembered that I got cold easily and that I tended to go quiet whenever I was upset.

And yet, she could also watch me spend two years obsessively investigating my husband like a madwoman, only to turn around and erase every trace of the woman having an affair with him—because it was her.

I lowered my eyes and avoided her hand.

"I'm fine."

Giselle was about to press me further when Hector opened the door. He sat down beside me, his expression completely natural, as though he hadn't been the one desperately begging Giselle to make their relationship public just moments ago.

"I had to deal with some work," he said.

"What work?" I asked quietly.

Hector's movements faltered, but Giselle had already smiled and pushed a bowl of soup toward me.

"Hector is a busy man. Don't interrogate him."

The two of them played off each other so smoothly that it felt like they'd rehearsed it countless times.

When the birthday celebration ended, we gathered for a family photo. A piece of confetti had gotten caught in Giselle's hair, and Hector instinctively reached over to remove it. She tilted her face up to look at him. His fingers lingered in her hair, and they both froze.

I was standing right beside them.

Giselle was the first to look away, and Hector casually withdrew his hand after.

Just as everyone was leaving, Giselle suddenly braced herself against the wall and said her ankle hurt. Hector dropped into a crouch almost immediately.

"Did you twist it earlier?"

He held Giselle's ankle, his brows furrowed tightly, as if he were the one injured.

When Dad called my name, the two of them seemed to recall that I was standing right beside them.

Hector straightened and said reproachfully, "Giselle's hurt. Why didn't you think to help her?"

I looked at him without saying a word. In the end, he insisted that since Giselle had hurt her foot, he should take her home first. I took a cab home instead.

Not long after I got into the cab, two messages came in almost simultaneously.

The one from Giselle read, "Hector has dropped me off. Please don't argue with him because of me."

Hector's message came next. "Giselle has always looked out for you. Stop hurting her with your paranoid suspicions."

I stared at the timestamps. The messages were only three seconds apart. Right from the moment they left, they'd been together the whole time.