Chapter 1

Tears kept slipping down my face as I stood alone in the hospital corridor.

My mind would not stop dragging me back through old memories.

After my father died in a mountain accident while trying to save me, my mother and sister never truly cared for me again.

From that day on, I became the son who had lived when the wrong man died, while the only one they ever loved was my older brother, Lucian Vieri, seven years older than me and, in their eyes, worth more than the rest of us put together.

When Lucian came of age, they threw him a lavish birthday party, invited nearly everyone at school, and ordered a ten-tier cake that stood in the center of the ballroom like a monument to how much he was adored. Whenever he got sick, my mother and sister took turns watching over him at his bedside. When I was hospitalized with pneumonia, no one came at all.

For a long time, I believed I deserved it. I thought that as the son who had cost our father his life, I had no right to ask for love.

Then came Lucian’s birthday banquet.

That night, he shoved me into the pool in front of everyone and laughed at me for being unwanted. I kept trying to drag myself to the edge, and his friends kept pushing me back under. By the time my lungs were burning and I could barely fight anymore, Serafina was the one who pulled me out.

She draped her coat over my shoulders, looked at the people mocking me, and said in a voice that turned the whole room cold, “Cassian is under my protection. If anyone lays a hand on him again, I won’t let it go.”

At the time, she felt like a miracle.

I fell in love with her almost instantly.

Even after we got married, I still had trouble believing it was real. Someone like Serafina, the sole heiress of the Valcieri family, had no reason to choose a man even his own family could barely tolerate. And yet she did. Or at least, that was what I told myself.

I truly believed she loved me.

Then, as I was heading back toward my hospital room, I heard Lucian’s voice coming from the lounge next door.

“I was never sick. The leukemia was fake.”

I stopped dead.

“I just wanted Cassian to give up for good. I wanted him to understand that Mom, Viola, and even Serafina would always choose me in the end.”

A chill ran through my whole body, so sharp it stole my breath.

“Especially Serafina,” Lucian said with a quiet laugh. “She still thinks I was the one who pulled her out under gunfire when she was kidnapped by a rival family at sixteen. Later, at that charity gala, she thought I was the one who made her stop and listen to that piano piece all the way through. She has no idea both times it was Cassian.”

There was a pause, then he added, almost lazily, “She thinks I’m the one she never forgot. The truth is, the person she could never get out of her head was always Cassian.”

“And luckily for me, she’s never going to find that out.”

I stood there in stunned silence.

So Lucian’s illness had been a lie.

So Serafina had been deceived from the beginning.

So all the times she had hurt me for Lucian’s sake, she had done it without ever knowing that the man who had truly stayed in her heart was me.

My fingers curled so tightly they hurt. That was when I realized my phone had somehow switched to recording mode. Every word Lucian had just said was preserved on the screen in front of me.

I stared at the file for a few seconds, then saved it and put my phone away.

After that, I called my lawyer.

“Prepare a divorce agreement for me.”

There was a brief silence on the other end.

“Mr. Vieri, are you certain?”

“Yes.”

He did not ask anything else. Less than half an hour later, he arrived at the hospital in person with the paperwork.

I took the file from him and walked back toward my room. Before I reached the door, Serafina appeared from the other end of the corridor.

She looked anxious, and the moment she saw me, relief flashed across her face. She came straight to me, took my hand in hers, and asked, “Where did you go? When I didn’t see you just now, I thought something had happened.”

There was a time when her touch would have calmed me.

Now it only hurt.

“You were worried about me?” I asked.

Her brows drew together. “You’re my husband. Who else would I worry about?”

Husband.

The word landed in my chest like a blade.

I felt my throat tighten. Serafina, were you really worried about me, or were you only afraid that if something happened to me, Lucian’s plan would fall apart?

I drew in a slow breath and handed her the file.

“There’s a document I need you to sign.”

“What document?”

She had barely lowered her eyes to the page when her phone rang.

“Serafina, come quickly. Lucian’s not feeling well again.” My sister Viola’s voice was soft, but I still heard every word.

Serafina’s expression changed at once. She answered quickly, murmured that she was on her way, then signed where I pointed without reading a single line.

“I need to go,” she said, handing the file back to me, her voice tight with urgency. “We’ll talk when I come back.”

Then she turned and left.

She never looked twice at what she had signed.

I lowered my eyes and opened the document.

The words Divorce Agreement blurred immediately as tears hit the page.

I stood there for a long time, staring at them.

At last, I folded the papers and put them away.

I could not stay here anymore.

I did not want this family anymore.

I was going to leave the Vieri family, and I was going to leave Serafina.

If no one had ever truly wanted me from the start, then I would be the one to walk away.