Semua Bab My Three Fiances Betrayed Me, So I Married the Heir: Bab 1 - Bab 10

On the night of my twenty-sixth birthday, Julian put the moonstone crown he had promised me on my sister Vivian's head.The ballroom went quiet all at once. Everyone there knew the crown had been made as my birthday gift. A year ago I had sketched a crescent moon on one of Julian's design drafts on a whim, and he flew to Sri Lanka to choose the rough stone himself, then brought in a Paris jeweler to rework the setting seven times over. Alexander and Nathan had argued more than once about which of them would place the crown on my head, and in the end Julian laughed them both off and said no one was allowed to fight over it, that he would be the one to hand this moon to me.But now the cold white moonstone sat against Vivian's long black hair, glowing quietly.Vivian reached up to touch the crown without thinking, her eyes bright with delight and unease. "I've never owned anything this expensive," she said softly. "Foster families don't throw you birthday parties. I don't even know what

Six days out from the Black Harbor wedding, Alexander, Nathan, and Julian owed me three dates we had already set.After Vivian's breakdown cut my birthday party short, Alexander had promised to come to my fitting for the winter charity ball. Nathan had promised to check the old injury in my hand. Julian had booked the entire observatory and promised to give me a second birthday celebration. Every one of those invitations had come from them.Monday morning I arrived at the dress studio on time. The tailor pinned the hem into place, and I stood in front of the full-length mirror for a solid forty minutes. Alexander never appeared.In the end, his assistant called. "Mr. Grant gave your appointment to your sister, Vivian. She has never attended a formal public ball, and he felt she needed the practice in front of the cameras more than you did."I looked down at the unfinished silver-gray gown. At seventeen, at my first charity dinner, I was so afraid of the reporters' cameras that nothing

The year I turned eighteen, the three of them gave me a red button.It was linked to their private lines, the trackers in their cars, and the family security system. Alexander told me that whatever happened, if I pressed it they would be at my side immediately. Once I set the alarm off in my sleep, and in under ten minutes Alexander's car came tearing up the drive, Nathan hadn't even had time to change out of his scrubs, and Julian was still in evening dress. The three of them stood around me while I lay perfectly fine in bed, and though their faces were furious, not one of them said a word of blame.Julian told me then that pressing it by mistake didn't matter, that they would rather come running a hundred times for nothing than miss the one time it was real.And now the top priority contact in that emergency system had quietly been changed to Vivian. Nobody told me.I only found out four days before the wedding.That afternoon Vivian couldn't find my mother anywhere on the estate, an

Before I left, I asked the three of them to meet me at the private club.My mother and the three men had already chartered a plane for two days later to take Vivian to Canada. Once Vivian was out of the country, Black Harbor couldn't enforce the engagement. Everyone was busy planning her escape, and no one knew I had already signed.I brought three boxes with me.The first held the silver pen Alexander gave me. At sixteen, when I was accused of cheating at school, he wrote the appeal with that pen himself and told me that no matter how the whole world judged me, he would always be on my side.The second held the old stethoscope Nathan used as a student. The first time I had a panic attack and was taken to the hospital, he pressed it into my hand and made me listen to his steady heartbeat, and told me that as long as it was beating he would never walk away from me.The third held a music box Julian made by hand. It played my favorite song from childhood, and inside the lid he had engrav

On the morning of the wedding, Julian came to the Winter House looking for me with the new nameplate in hand. Alexander and Nathan were right behind him. Alexander brought the unfrozen black card, and Nathan had reset the red button to the highest priority.In their minds, once they handed back everything that had been mine, I would slot back into place the way I always had.The moment the door swung open, all three of them froze. The wardrobe was bare, the shelves stripped, every drawing gone from the worktable. On the desk sat the three old gift boxes, the red alarm button, and the silver nameplate I had salvaged.The new nameplate fell out of Julian's hand and clattered on the floor. "Evelyn?"The room was dead quiet. No answer.Nathan was the first to notice the bloodstained gauze in the wastebasket. He took out his phone and played the voicemail from the night of the elevator again, and this time he didn't hit mute two seconds in.My voice came through the speaker, strained but st