Desperate slut. Insatiable whore. The comments were endless. Meanwhile, Sebastian became the noble husband who'd been betrayed yet still took responsibility. And Narelle? She was celebrated as the brave woman who'd endured public scorn for true love.
Their fans flooded my phone with death threats. Funeral wreaths arrived at my door. Someone photoshopped my face onto escort advertisements, images so vile I couldn't look at them twice.
While I drowned, Sebastian took Narelle to every place I'd ever dreamed of visiting with him. Every single one.
And still—still—I couldn't let go.
How could I? In this entire world, after my mother, he was the only person who had ever truly loved me. The only one who'd been good to me.
I was eighteen when my father brought Narelle and her mother home.
One month later, at my birthday dinner, my mother pressed a blessing charm into my palm. Her hands were warm. Her smile was soft.
Then she walked to the rooftop and stepped off the edge.
Her diary told me everything. Pages and pages of deliberate humiliation. Narelle and her mother's calculated cruelty, their whispered campaigns to break her.
I brought the evidence to my father.