It was tiny in the preview, but clear enough. It wasn’t just a photo. It was a screenshot of a ledger. Financial documents. And below that, a photo of Rafie, years younger, in a compromised situation that looked distinctly illegal—drugs, perhaps, or something worse. But it was the financial documents that mattered. Aribba had proof of something Rafie had done, perhaps early in his career, something that could send him to prison and shatter his empire.

She wasn’t marrying a man she loved. She was marrying a hostage.

My breath didn’t hitch. My heart didn’t race. I simply stared at the truth I had already begun to suspect. Aribba had trapped him. She had dug up dirt, likely using the private investigator she had bragged about hiring “for fun” months ago, and she was blackmailing him into a marriage that would secure her financial future and social status.

So the perfect bride wasn’t perfect at all. She was a predator.

And he knew. But he didn’t know that I had seen.

I walked away quietly, my socks sliding silently on the hardwood floors. Knowing changes a person. It sharpens you. It turns your grief into ammunition.