Chapter 4I Left Before the Vows

Miles stood at the center of the ballroom in a tailored suit, Vanessa at his side, guests crowding in with birthday wishes.

He shot me a satisfied look, waiting for me to detonate.

I understood instantly. He'd sent the video.

With every eye in the room on me, I walked toward the center.

Vanessa opened her arms, assuming I'd pull her in and ask to make up, the way I always had.

Not this time.

I went around her and stopped in front of Miles.

"Miles. What was that message supposed to mean?"

Vanessa yanked me back by the arm, disgust all over her face.

"Look at the state of you. You've got no dignity left. Is this the man who's supposed to head the Carrington family?"

Under the guests' contemptuous stares, I turned and found myself in a mirror.

I looked like hell. Hollowed out, shaking so hard I couldn't stop it.

These past few years I'd seemed to gain everything while losing everything.

I stepped back and forced myself steady under Vanessa's unsettled gaze.

"Vanessa. Make Miles leave my mother alone."

She frowned, confused. Miles came toward me with a show of concern.

"You okay, Julian? How could I possibly do anything to your mother? She's been gone for years."

As he got closer, his expression twisted into something ugly.

"Vanessa promised to sign me a plot of land for a haunted house. I just had to help myself to your mother's grave first.

"And think about it. She got branded a homewrecker for nothing. All that resentment still down there. It's going to make the place so much better."

My eyes went wide.

Before I knew what I was doing, both my hands were locked around his throat.

"Why can't you leave her alone? Why—"

Vanessa wrenched me off and threw me aside, then stood over me.

"Julian, you've gone way too far.

"What do you get out of ruining Miles's birthday? All you're doing is making me hate you more. You push me further away every time."

I'd lost control completely, and what came out of me was barely a voice.

"Vanessa, I'm not marrying you. Not ever."

Her whole expression tightened.

"You can actually say that out loud? Julian, have you taken a single thing about us seriously?"

Then Miles started coughing hard, clutching his throat, unable to get a word out.

I was shoved out of the way, and Vanessa took him and left without hesitating.

Miles looked back at me with a look of pure triumph.

His phone lay forgotten on a table, still playing the footage of a bulldozer grinding my mother's headstone flat.

Whatever was left of me broke right there.

A month later, while Miles was overseas with friends, Vanessa threw herself into planning another ceremony.

The groom never came. What arrived instead was formal notice that the engagement and the wedding had been called off unilaterally.

"What?"

At that moment Eleanor Carrington came storming in with an envelope in her hand.

"Vanessa. Look at what you've done."

She tore it open, and her breath stopped.