They laughed together. It was a synchronized sound, a harmony of cruelty that I had listened to for twenty-six years. They laughed like I wasn’t even in the room. Like I was furniture. A prop in the main character’s life.

They didn’t know.

No one in that house—not my brother Brandon, the golden child; not my dad, who hid behind newspapers to avoid conflict; not the cousins; and certainly not Danielle, the high-maintenance bride-to-be—knew the one thing I’d kept hidden for over a year.

I was already married.

And not just married. I was secretly married to a man whose name appeared in financial journals they didn’t read and on buildings they couldn’t afford to enter. Nathaniel Ward. A billionaire who chose to stay out of the spotlight, largely by my choice.

I had wanted to protect our peace. I hadn’t wanted this toxic ecosystem of a family leeching off him the way they leeched off each other. I wanted one thing in my life that was pure, untouched by their judgment or their greed.