Adrian staggered backward, the sickening realization hitting him like a freight train. “Emma… you’re my…” He choked on the words, staring in sheer horror at the woman he had nearly made his wife.
On the sunlit grass, Victoria wailed, clutching Emma like she might vanish all over again. “My baby! My beautiful baby!”
Emma collapsed into the embrace, burying her face in Victoria’s neck. “Mother!” she cried, her voice trembling with perfect, agonizing relief.
But the moment Victoria’s face was hidden in the torn white lace, Emma’s heavy sobs abruptly stopped. Her tear-streaked face flatlined into a cold, terrifyingly calm stare.
Over her newfound mother’s trembling shoulder, Emma looked past the gagging groom. Her eyes bypassed the stunned guests and locked onto the VIP front row—straight into the eyes of Adrian’s father, Victoria’s billionaire husband, Richard Ashford.
Richard sat paralyzed, the color completely drained from his face. His hands gripped his knees so tightly his knuckles were bone-white.
Emma’s silver starfish necklace gleamed in the bright sun. She had worn it on purpose. She had chosen the fragile, easily torn lace on her right shoulder on purpose. She had deliberately provoked Victoria for months, knowing exactly how the protective matriarch would snap at the altar.
Holding Richard’s terrified gaze, Emma let a slow, chilling smirk spread across her lips. Without making a sound, she mouthed two perfectly clear words to the man who had paid a smuggler to make his wife’s firstborn child disappear twenty-two years ago:
*I remember.*
Emma hadn’t spent the last year seducing Adrian out of love. She didn’t come to marry an Ashford heir. She came to inherit the empire, and bury the man who tried to erase her. The wedding was never a romance. It was a trap.