Scarlett pov

I was in my room—a cramped, airless chamber tucked near the servants' quarter, furnished with nothing but a narrow bed and a broken cupboard, with no window to let in even a thread of light.

I had lived here for seven years now, ever since my mother took her own life when I was thirteen, leaving me to drift through this house like a ghost no one bothered to see.

Father brought his mistress, Margret, into our home soon after, along with her daughter, Sofia.

I watched from the shadows as he built a new family before my eyes.

I was his legitimate daughter, born of his lawful wife, yet I never once saw him look at me with the warmth he gave so freely to her.

I had always known he married my mother for her company, for the fortune and connections she brought him, but some foolish, desperate part of me still hoped I might earn a scrap of his affection.

Just once. Just enough to feel real.

But now I had Marcus.

He was gentle, unwavering, the kind of man who saw me when no one else bothered to look, who steadied me when the ground beneath my feet crumbled into nothing.

He had stood beside me through the worst of it, through nights when I thought I might unravel completely, and today I was going to repay even a fraction of that kindness.

It was his birthday.

I had planned a surprise for him, something small and secret and wholly his.

I chose the dress he had given me, the one that made me feel seen, and I spent an hour at the mirror, pinning my hair, smoothing the fabric, tracing my lips with color I rarely wore.

I wanted to be beautiful for him.

I wanted to be worth what he seemed to believe I was.

I reached his home with the key heavy in my palm, certain he would still be out with his friends, already imagining the flicker of delight on his face when he walked through the door to find everything transformed.

I would string the lights, arrange the candles, make this place feel like somewhere love could actually survive.

That was when I heard it—low, ragged moans bleeding through the walls of his bedroom.

My feet carried me forward before my mind could catch up, and then I was standing in the doorway, the key still clutched in my hand like some cruel joke.

Marcus. Sofia. Her body arching beneath his, his hands gripping her hips with a hunger I had mistaken as something he saved only for me.

I went still, rooted to the floor, the air turning to glass in my lungs.

I did not scream. I did not cry out.

I simply stood there, bleeding out in silence, while Sofia turned her head and met my eyes.

She smirked. She winked.

The gesture curdled something inside me, a revulsion so deep it felt like my very soul recoiling.

When I finally turned away, Markus lifted his head, and I saw the moment realization crashed over him—the color draining from his face, his mouth forming my name.

He knew. He knew I had seen everything. And I knew, with a terrible, crushing certainty, that nothing would ever be clean again.

"Baby, please—try to understand," he said, his voice cracking, hands reaching for me like a drowning man grasping at shore. "I don't know how it happened, it just—please, I won't do it again, I promise, don't leave me."

I looked at him. I smiled. It felt like glass shattering behind my teeth.

"I have no right to stay," I said, each word calm, measured, a blade I turned slowly in the wound.

"You were never mine. So there is no reason to remain." My gaze drifted to Sofia, still tangled in the sheets, watching us with that lazy, satisfied hunger of hers.

"She loves taking what is mine. She always has, and she always wins. Now she has you."

I held the keys out, let them dangle from my fingers for one long, breathless moment before pressing them into his palm.

"Don't worry. I won't come between the two of you. Consider that my birthday present to you."

I turned. I walked. I did not look back.

I didn't go home.

I went straight to a bar, the kind with sticky floors and neon that hummed like a dying insect, and I sat in the corner with drink after drink, alone as I had always been, as I had always known how to be.

When I finally stood, the room tilting gently like a ship at sea, I stumbled straight into a wall of a man.

He was striking—dark, severe, the kind of handsome that felt like a warning more than an invitation.

He gave me an angry look first, sharp and impatient, and something inside me snapped. Today had already unraveled into ruin.

My boyfriend's betrayal still sat raw in my chest, and now this stranger couldn't even muster basic decency.

"Hey, mister," ," I said, louder than I meant to, the alcohol braiding courage through my veins. "You should be nice to people. Someone could be having a terrible day. Don't make it worse."

His expression shifted, something almost like amusement flickering across his face.

Beside him, a man—friend or bodyguard, I couldn't tell—stepped forward with a cold, assessing stare. "Do you know who you're talking to?"

I laughed. It came out hard, brittle, broken. "No one cares who he is. No one cares what he could possibly do to me." I spread my arms wide, swaying slightly. "I am already destroyed."

Then he moved. His hand closed around my waist, firm and sudden, pulling me toward him with a force that should have frightened me but didn't.

I was too numb. Too far gone.

"Okay, little girl," he murmured, his voice low, rough velvet against my ear. "Tell me what happened."

He made me sit. He turned a chair toward me, leaned in, and waited.

And I—who had held everything inside for so long, who had learned to swallow my own voice until it turned to poison in my gut—I unraveled.

I told him everything. The room. The betrayal. The wink.

The keys pressed into a palm that no longer deserved them.

I poured it all out onto this stranger with the angry eyes and the patient silence, and he listened like he had nothing else in the world to do but watch me fall apart.