She made me soup the next night when the fever hit. Yelled at the housekeeper for keeping the AC on too long. Sat by my bed and dozed off with her hand on my arm, as if just holding me was enough to anchor her.
Then there was that one night–God, I’ll never forget it. She stumbled into my
room,
drunk on aged scotch and fury, eyes glassy.
“I’m tired of pretending,” she whispered.
“Scarlett-”
She kissed me.
Sloppy, raw, desperate. And I knew I should’ve stopped it. She was the boss’s daughter. I was the poor bodyguard. Except I wasn’t. I was rich as sin, playing
poor.
Then that night turned into a blur of skin and gasps and desperate hands.
She kissed down my neck like I belonged to her.
She moaned my name like a prayer.
We broke the bed frame. After that? There was no turning back.
We did it everywhere…
In her sports car while the engine cooled.
On the marble kitchen island while the soup boiled.
Behind the garden hedges during her mother’s charity gala. And it wasn’t just
sex.
It was something ugly and divine.
Something I never had with Alina–who was all style and silk and social -climbing.
Scarlett gave me fire. Blood. A reason to wake up.
One night after we’d finished, she curled against my chest and whispered,
“If you leave me, I’ll hunt you.”
I laughed.
She didn’t.
I kissed her forehead,
“I’m not going anywhere, baby.”
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And I meant it.
Until Alina came back. Until everything changed.
Until I changed.
But now–watching Scarlett belong to someone else- Holy Mary help me… I
wish I never did.
***
SCARLETT’S POV
The news flickered in the dark, voices low, the screen casting a faint silver hue across the hotel walls. We’d just finished dinner–steak, rosé, silence–and for once, Zacharias wasn’t fighting sleep or asking about the hospital. He was watching the screen like it might cough up answers.
And it almost did.
There we were–me in my signature black sharp like a blade, and him in his tailored charcoal suit, looking too regal for a man who only woke up from a coma a week ago. The wedding announcement played again, clipped and dramatic. “Business tycoon Zacharias Velenzi stuns public by marrying heiress Scarlett Royce after awakening from long coma. Sources say…”
But it wasn’t us who caught his eye.
It was her.
Alina, standing a few feet away in the background during that same event. The camera panned over her too slowly, like it was fate taunting me. She wore that signature nude lipstick and an off–white gown too close to bridal for my liking. And for a moment, Zacharias stared at her too long.
His brows pulled together. “Who is she?”
I dried my wine glass slowly with the hem of my silk robe, my eyes never leaving his. “She’s no one important,” I said first. But he turned toward me, and I knew lying fully would only make it worse.
So I gave him a version of the truth. Not all of it. But just enough.
“That’s Alina,” I said quietly. “My half–sister. Your original fiancée, technically.”
He blinked, Sat still.
Didn’t pull away.
“But after your accident… she left.” I let the weight of those two words settle. “She left, Zacharias. Didn’t even stay through the second surgery. I did.”
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His mouth parted like he was trying to form something–anything–but couldn’t. I moved closer, brushing my fingers against the inside of his wrist.
“I married you,” I whispered. “Not out of pity. Not even out of strategy. I did it because I refused to let you rot in a hospital room alone. I stayed when she didn’t.”
He looked down at my hand covering his. And then…
He kissed it. Slowly.
“I don’t care who she is,” he murmured, voice low and rough. “She left me when I was nothing. You took me when I was broken. And now that I’m whole again…” He looked up, eyes deeper than the ocean. “You deserve the best of me. If I ever loved anyone–if there was even a chance–it must’ve been you.”
God, why did that sting? I should’ve felt victorious. Triumphant. I had him. The crown. The empire.
But that look in his eyes…
That aching sincerity- It made my throat tight.
Because it wasn’t supposed to feel this… intimate.
He leaned in closer, our foreheads brushing. His fingers trailed along my jaw as if memorizing me anew.
“Tell me how we met,” he whispered. “Even if I’ve forgotten… make me remember.”
I smiled. Soft, seductive. Controlled. “We met at a lecture hall,” I said, spinning the memory I stole. “You were late, and I was furious because your team took the front seats. I called you a spoiled bastard before I even knew your name.”
He laughed. Holy moly, that sound–he laughed like a man who didn’t know what darkness tasted like. “That sounds like you.”
“You looked at me like I was crazy,” I continued. “Then you followed me out in the rain. You said I was the most beautiful disaster you’d ever seen. And then you kissed me. Just like this-”
I leaned in and brushed my lips over his. Soft. Lingering. Laced with sin and
sugar.
He groaned softly into it, pulling me closer. “It’s starting to come back,” he whispered. “That night… rain… your laugh. I think I remember.”
My smile trembled. Just a bit.
Because none of that was real.
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It was Alina in that lecture hall.
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Alina he kissed in the rain. Alina he once chased like a starving wolf. But now
it’s me.
And I don’t care how many fake memories I have to build brick by brick-
I will be the woman he remembers.
I will be the queen of his mind.
Even if I have to burn Alina’s truth to the ground.
****
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The next day…
