Chapter 2

Sebastian's hand closed around the back of my neck, his grip hard enough to bruise. There wasn't a trace of the man who had once loved me left in his eyes.

"Revenge. What else?"

His voice was cold.

"You wanted another man so badly? Fine. Then I'll make sure you spend the rest of your life as my wife in name only."

He leaned closer, his breath brushing my ear.

"Joy, I want you to hurt. A hundred times, a thousand times worse than I'm hurting right now."

The next morning, Sebastian took Narelle to the Maldives.

It was supposed to be our honeymoon.

Sebastian had always hated cameras. In our years together, even people close to the Gilbert Family knew better than to photograph him without permission.

But for Narelle, he hired a private photographer.

Hundreds of photos appeared on her social media. Sebastian watching her on a white sand beach. Narelle leaning against his chest beneath the sunset. His arm around her waist as they stood beside the ocean.

By then, what had happened at our wedding had already spread through New York's underworld.

Everyone knew that Sebastian Gilbert's new wife had supposedly slept with a man from an enemy Family the night before their wedding.

Slut.

Whore.

Traitor.

Those words followed me everywhere.

Meanwhile, Sebastian became the man everyone admired for honoring the marriage despite my supposed betrayal. Narelle was painted as the woman brave enough to stand beside him while the entire underworld whispered about their relationship.

People flooded my phone with threats.

Funeral wreaths were delivered to the Gilbert estate in my name.

Someone even put my face on escort advertisements and circulated them through private clubs and Family circles.

I became a joke.

While I was drowning in humiliation, Sebastian took Narelle to every place I'd once told him I wanted to visit with him.

Every single one.

And still, I couldn't let him go.

How could I?

After my mother, Sebastian was the only person in this world who had ever truly loved me.

I was eighteen when my father brought Narelle and her mother into the Harding estate.

Her mother had been his mistress for years.

A month later, on my birthday, my mother pressed a small blessing charm into my palm.

Her hands were warm.

Her smile was gentle.

That same night, she climbed to the roof of the estate and stepped over the edge.

Her diary told me what no one else would.

Page after page documented the humiliation she'd endured. Narelle and her mother had deliberately tormented her, taunting her with my father's betrayal and slowly driving her to the edge.

I took the diary to my father.

Narelle cried.

Her mother cried harder.

My father believed them.

I was thrown out of the Harding estate that same night.

That winter was brutal.

I had no money, nowhere to go, and no one in the Harding Family willing to risk my father's anger by helping me.

I was only hours away from spending the night on the street when Sebastian found me.

He had sent Gilbert men across the entire city looking for me.

The moment he saw me, he pulled me into his arms so tightly I could barely breathe.

"Why didn't you come to me?"

There was anger in his voice, but beneath it was something that sounded almost like fear.

He lifted my chin and forced me to look at him.

"Joy, remember this. Even if everyone else abandons you, I won't."

His eyes never left mine.

"I will always want you."

After that, Sebastian gave me everything.

He brought me into the private academy attended by the sons and daughters of New York's most powerful Families.

Everyone there knew who I was.

They knew my father had thrown me out. They knew my mother was dead. They knew I no longer had the protection of the Harding Family.

They waited for me to break.

At the opening ceremony, Sebastian took the stage as the student representative.

He was supposed to deliver a speech about the new academic year.

Instead, he looked directly at me.

"Joy Harding is under my protection."

The entire hall fell silent.

Then he added, "Anyone who touches her answers to me."

After that, no one dared openly humiliate me again.

Sebastian took care of everything.

He cooked for me whenever he could because I had become painfully thin after my mother's death. He made sure I ate properly and watched until the color slowly returned to my face.

Whenever the luxury houses released a new collection, clothes, shoes, and jewelry would arrive at the estate before I'd even seen the catalogs.

Once, after a trip to Disneyland, I casually told him that I'd always wondered what it would be like to live in a castle.

Sebastian remembered.

He bought a secluded piece of land outside the city and built me an estate there.

A place that belonged only to us.

Everyone connected to the Five Families knew how Sebastian Gilbert treated me.

The future head of the Gilbert Family, a man feared even by people twice his age, treated Joy Harding like the most precious thing in his world.

With him beside me, I slowly became myself again.

I laughed again.

I became confident again.

Maybe he even spoiled me a little.

But there were still nights when I dreamed about my mother falling from that rooftop.

I'd wake up shaking, convinced that sooner or later Sebastian would leave me too.

Sometimes grief made me unreasonable. Sometimes I'd cry and accuse him of promises he hadn't even broken.

Sebastian never lost patience.

He would pull me into his arms and hold me until I stopped shaking.

Then he'd tell me the same thing every time.

"Don't be afraid, Joy."

He'd kiss my forehead.

"Unless I'm dead, I'll never stop loving you."

How was I supposed to let go of a man who had once loved me like that?

So when Sebastian returned from the Maldives with Narelle, I swallowed what little pride I had left.

I went to him.

I begged him to listen.

I brought the medical records from the private clinic that had examined me after I woke up beside Hubert. The bloodwork proved I'd been drugged. The examination supported everything I'd told him.

I placed every document in front of Sebastian.

He didn't even pick them up.

His eyes swept over the papers before returning to me, cold and contemptuous.

"Fabricated evidence."

His mouth curled into a bitter smile.

"Joy, is there anything you won't do?"