Chapter 3I Left Before the Vows

She was wearing the wedding-night set I'd picked out for her. It was unbearable to look at now.

She glanced down, saw the autopsy report in my hand, and something guilty flickered in her eyes.

So everything Miles said was true.

I held the report up with shaking hands, still clinging to one thin scrap of hope.

"You knew the truth about how my mother died? The whole time?"

I wanted her to tell me none of it was real.

The guilt crossed her face and vanished. She started picking her words.

"Miles had already been through so much. Was I supposed to stand there and watch a boy that young go to prison?

"Julian, it's over and done with. Can't we just look forward?"

My eyes went wide and nothing came out of my mouth.

All those nights I couldn't sleep, she'd stayed up with me and talked me down until morning.

I thought we were on the same side.

She'd known from the very beginning. And she was one of the reasons my mother was dead.

She could say it this calmly.

Right then Miles came stumbling in and threw himself into her arms.

When he looked at me, he was crying like he was the one who'd been wronged.

"Julian, I know you hate how close I am to Vanessa, but you didn't have to send the autopsy report to the press."

I had no idea what he was talking about.

He pulled up a link on his phone. Every headline called him a murderer.

The next second, Miles grabbed a paring knife off the tray, pressed it to the artery in his neck, and tipped his face up.

"If killing me is what it takes, I'll save you the trouble. Just stop tearing down my name."

He started pushing the point into his skin.

"Don't! Miles, I'll make him apologize right now."

I turned my head and looked at Vanessa, stubborn about it.

"You don't believe me either?"

She didn't answer. The disgust in her eyes had ice in it.

"Julian, this happened years ago. Do you really have to keep hounding him?

"You want him gone. You want me all to yourself, and you'll take him apart to get it."

I stood there with no idea what to do with my hands.

My mother and I were the ones this had been done to. Why were we the ones carrying it?

I moved toward Miles to force the truth out of him, and he drove the knife into the right side of my abdomen.

Blood came fast.

Then he backpedaled, arranging his face into terror.

"Julian, please don't hit me. I swear I'll never come between you and Vanessa again."

Vanessa's face changed completely.

"This is my fault. I spoiled you until you lost all sense of where the line was, and now you think you can do whatever you please."

Then she turned and called for her security team. "Get in here. A hundred slaps. Nobody stops until the count is done."

Three big men closed in and I backed away. "It wasn't me. I swear it wasn't—"

The blows started falling before I finished, one after another.

When I could lift my head again, Vanessa was gently soothing the person in her arms.

It was as if I weren't in the room.

I clamped a hand over my stomach and watched the blood run out between my fingers.

I shut my eyes and rode out more slaps than I could count.

Eighty-eight, eighty-nine, ninety...

Only when the sound stopped did Vanessa spare me a glance, the way you'd toss someone a coin.

She saw my swollen face, saw me kneeling in a pool of my own blood, and her breath caught.

Right on cue, Miles let out a small whimper and pulled her attention back.

Through a haze, I watched her take his arm and walk out without a second of hesitation.

The next morning, the messages from the person coming to collect me got more urgent by the hour.

I packed quietly and got ready to leave the Carrington estate.

Then an anonymous video landed on my phone.

A bulldozer was rolling into the cemetery where my mother was buried.

I hadn't recovered from the shock before cheerful music erupted downstairs.