Part 1The Wife He Burned Alive

I had been married to Donovan for almost five years, and tomorrow was our anniversary.

To surprise him, I had taken time off from the hospital, boarded a five-hour flight from Boston, and landed in Manhattan where his private equity firm was headquartered.

The moment I stepped through the revolving glass doors of his building, my phone buzzed against my palm. I had been pulled into a new iMessage group chat.

The screen immediately lit up with a flurry of activity. Row after row of messages flooded in—“Welcome to the inner circle, sister-in-law!”—and a sweet warmth bloomed in my chest.

We had been doing long-distance for three years. He always said the firm was bleeding him dry, that the deals were relentless. Our weekends together had dwindled to nothing; the last time I felt his arms around me was five months ago.

I hadn’t wanted to spend this anniversary alone in an empty house, so I flew out. I had been terrified he might have forgotten the date entirely in the haze of his work, but looking at my screen, I realized I’d been a fool. He hadn’t forgotten. He had orchestrated all of this.

Then, the screenshots started rolling in. His college buddies, the partners at his firm, were dropping massive wire transfer receipts into the chat.

But as I squinted at the screen, the breath caught in my throat. The account name wasn't mine. The money was being wired to an account under the name Sweet Briar.

Brad sent the first receipt: $100,000. The memo read: Welcome to the family.

Tyler followed with a $200,000 transfer. Welcome to the club.

Jax blew them out of the water with half a million. Welcome, sister-in-law.

…

* * *

The final notification was a transfer from Donovan.

He had wired this Sweet Briar an even one million dollars.

Time fractured. The air in the lobby turned to glass in my lungs. My hands shaking, I tapped on Donovan’s contact, my thumbs hovering over the keyboard to demand who the hell this woman was.

But before I could type a single letter, the screen shifted. I had been removed from the group.

It happened so fast it felt like a hallucination.

"Miss Gwendolyn? What are you doing down here?"

The voice jerked me out of my paralysis. The receptionist, who had been aggressively ignoring me a moment ago, was now practically glowing with deference as she rushed toward a woman standing just a few feet to my left.

"Mr. Warner was very clear," the receptionist cooed. "You're five months along now. You really shouldn't be on your feet."

I turned my head. Standing near the sleek marble front desk was a young woman in a flowing, cream-colored silk dress. Her baby bump pushed gently against the fabric. She was impossibly young, her profile soft and delicate, her eyes crinkling into crescents when she smiled.

She was beautiful. And she looked exactly like me, back when I was twenty-two.

"Where's Donny? Is he still locked in that boardroom?"

The young woman laughed, a light, musical sound, as she moved toward the plush leather waiting sofas. "It's fine, I'll just wait for him here. Don't tell him I'm downstairs, I don't want to break his concentration."

The receptionist practically fluttered around her, easing her onto the cushions. "Of course. Let me have the kitchen send down some of those macarons you like."

As the receptionist scurried away, the girl's gaze landed on me. "Oh, hi! Are you here to see Donovan too? He's tied up in a meeting, so you might be waiting a while."

I heard my own voice, brittle and thin, drifting out of my mouth. "Who are you to Donovan?"

"I'm his girlfriend," she said, her smile widening into something radiant and bulletproof. "Though, we're getting married soon."

She was practically glowing, suffocated by her own happiness. "You wouldn't believe it, but he just added me to this group chat with all his oldest friends. They sent me the craziest gifts! Like, actual money. Just to welcome me."

She leaned in, adopting a conspiratorial, friendly tone. "Listen, if you're here to pitch him a deal, you should really push for it. He's an incredible man. He works so hard, and every dollar he makes is blood, sweat, and tears."

Her hand drifted up to her collarbone. "But with me? He's a total softie. We've been together three years, and whatever I want, he gets it for me. No questions asked." She tapped a massive, staggering diamond pendant resting against her skin. "I saw this at a Sotheby's auction. He didn't even blink. Just bought it."

She let out a soft sigh, resting a hand on her stomach. "And last month, I just made an offhand comment about his penthouse feeling a little tight for a baby. The next day, he bought a multi-million dollar brownstone. Put the deed entirely in my name."

She clamped a hand over her mouth, giggling. "Oh my god, I am so sorry. Listen to me babbling. Are you a client? I don't think I've seen you at the corporate parties. I'm Megan, by the way. What's your name?"

Now I knew who she was. She was Sweet Briar.

And in that sterile, air-conditioned lobby, the remaining illusions of my life quietly bled out on the marble floor.

The man I had loved for ten years. The man I had been married to for five. The man I commuted across state lines for, who I rearranged my entire existence for, had been sleeping with someone else.

A girl barely out of college.

And she was pregnant.

I stood there, a bone-deep frost spreading through my veins.

Donovan had sworn, on his own life, that he would never betray me.

We had met in the wreckage of a car crash. I was a surgical resident on my way home; I had sprinted out of my car in the rain to stabilize a bleeding driver on the asphalt. He had been in town on a business trip, stuck in the traffic jam, watching me from the window of his town car.

He told me later that it only took one look.

He spent the next year relentlessly pursuing me. The flowers, the cars, the real estate deeds left on my doorstep—none of it moved me. I was exhausted, married to my hospital.

It wasn't until I collapsed in the OR hallway after a twenty-hour surgical rotation that he finally broke through. When I woke up, he was sitting by my hospital bed, his eyes red-rimmed and bloodshot.

“Camille, if you die, I’m following you right into the dirt,” he had whispered, his voice cracking.

I had pressed my ear to his chest, listened to the frantic, terrified beating of his heart, and finally surrendered. I said yes.

After the wedding, my career kept me in Boston, while his empire kept him in New York. Even when he was running on three hours of sleep, he would charter a flight to my city every single weekend just to wake up next to me.

How could the man who cried at my hospital bed, who promised me forever on his knees, do this?

"Hey, are you okay?"

Megan reached out, her soft hand patting my shoulder. Her brow furrowed in genuine concern.

"I'm fine."

The ambient noise of the lobby vanished. A high-pitched ringing filled my ears. I shook my head, feeling as though someone had taken a hunting knife, slid it neatly between my ribs, and twisted it until I was entirely numb.

"Megan? What did I tell you about wandering around the city by yourself? You're going to give me a heart attack."

The voice was a low, familiar rumble. I turned my head. My eyes locked onto Donovan's.

The indulgent, adoring smile on his face instantly crystallized into something horrified.

"Camille," the name slipped from his lips, breathless. "What are you doing here?"