Chapter 1

We met at five. I "married" him at twenty-five. Adrian Chase guarded me for twenty full years.

I said I wanted the stars, and the next day he bought the naming rights to an asteroid.

Everyone said I was the love of his life.

Until the lawyer slid a document across the table. "Miss Winters, legally speaking, you are not married."

In the spouse column, a different name was printed clearly: Luna Sterling. My housekeeper's daughter.

Date of registration: the day after our wedding that shook the entire city.

So for five years, I'd been sleeping in someone else's marriage. Loving someone else's husband.

Worse still, while I lay on an operating table clutching my belly, miscarrying, he was on his knees before another woman, sliding the ring that should have been mine onto her finger.

He accused me of framing Luna. "Iris Winters, when did you become so vicious?"

I smiled.

He asked why I didn't explain. Why I didn't fight. Why I didn't beg.

Explain what? That those twins in my belly were killed by his own hands?

Or that Luna, the fragile woman trembling at his side, didn't even share his blood type?

But I said none of it.

I disappeared from his world just like that, as cleanly as if he'd never loved me at all.

So tell me, Adrian, now that I'm gone, why are you tearing the world apart looking for me?