My husband’s pregnant mistress sent out invitations to a corporate gala with one cruel rule: “BACKLESS DRESSES ONLY.” She was sure the severe burn scars on my back would force me to hide at home.

The panic that rippled through the Grand Ballroom was instantaneous and brutal.

"Preston! Is this true?" shouted Arthur Davies, one of Vance Capital’s largest institutional investors, pushing through the circle. "Are the algorithms offline? What about our leveraged positions in the Nikkei futures?"

"They’re... they’re fine! Arthur, listen to me, it’s a clerical error!" Preston shouted, sweat beginning to pour down his temples, ruining his expensive grooming. "Cassidy, call the trading desk! Tell them to execute the manual overrides!"

"There are no manual overrides, Preston," I said, my voice cool and surgical. "I wrote the architecture. I deleted the backdoor access thirty minutes ago. Vance Capital has forty-five million dollars in unhedged options expiring at midnight. Without Chimera to balance the delta, your margin will be breached before the Asian markets close."

"You bitch!" Cassidy screamed, losing all semblance of high-society poise. She lunged toward me, her manicured nails aimed at my face. "You ruined us! You jealous, deformed monster, you ruined my baby’s future!"

She didn't make it two feet.

Gideon’s hand intercepted her wrist in mid-air with the speed of a striking cobra. His grip was steel, his eyes burning with absolute, lethal disgust.

"Do not touch her," Gideon snarled, casting her hand aside with such force that Cassidy stumbled backward, falling awkwardly onto the plush carpet of the ballroom floor.

Gasps echoed across the room. Several society matrons pulled their skirts back, looking down at Cassidy as if she were a roach that had crawled onto the dance floor.

"Preston! Help me!" Cassidy sobbed from the ground, clutching her stomach with theatrical desperation. "The baby! Preston, my baby!"

"Speaking of the baby," Marcus Vance interjected, stepping up beside the fallen woman and dropping a medical folder onto her lap. "Perhaps you’d like to explain to your 'fiancé' why the embryo transfer you underwent at the Sandy Crest Clinic in Barbados lists an anonymous Danish track athlete as the biological donor, dated two months before you ever met Preston Vance?"

Silence—complete, suffocating, and absolute—fell over the room.

Preston froze. He looked down at Cassidy, his face turning an ashen shade of gray that made his tuxedo look almost colorful.

"What?" Preston whispered, his voice cracking like thin glass. "Cassidy... what did he say?"

Cassidy frantically tried to shove the papers beneath her dress, her tears turning from theatrical grief to pure, undiluted panic. "Preston, it’s a lie! It’s a setup! Vivian forged it—she paid them off!"

"The records are certified by the Barbadian Ministry of Health and authenticated by federal subpoena," Marcus said smoothly. "You used Vance Capital corporate funds to pay the clinic fees, Cassidy. That’s wire fraud and corporate embezzlement. The gentlemen standing behind me are Special Agents Miller and Ross from the Southern District of New York."

The two men in dark suits stepped forward, flashing their credentials.

"Cassidy Vaughn? You are under arrest for securities fraud, grand larceny, and corporate embezzlement," Agent Miller said, pulling a pair of steel handcuffs from his jacket.

"No! Preston! Tell them! Preston!" Cassidy shrieked as the agents hauled her up from the carpet, snapping the cuffs around her wrists in full view of forty society photographers whose cameras were firing without mercy.

Preston didn't move. He didn't say a word. He stood there, completely hollowed out, watching the woman he had traded his wife for being dragged across the ballroom floor like a common criminal.

Then, he turned slowly back toward me.

His eyes fell on the gold leaf burning across my back, on the diamond ring flashing on my finger, and finally on Gideon Ashford, who stood beside me, his arm wrapped possessively, protectively, around my waist.

"Vivian..." Preston whispered, dropping to his knees on the marble floor, entirely heedless of the hundreds of cameras capturing his degradation. He reached out with trembling hands, trying to touch the hem of my midnight-blue gown. "Vivian, please. I was blind. I was manipulated by that woman! You know I love you. You know everything I built was for us! Don't do this to me. Please... save me."

I looked down at the man who had abandoned me in a burning hospital room, the man who had called my skin repulsive, the man who had tried to leave me with five million dollars and a gag order while he paraded his stolen glory before the world.

I didn't feel rage. I didn't feel hatred.

I felt nothing at all.

"I already saved you once, Preston," I said, my voice echoing in the dead silence of the ballroom. "Five years ago, from that burning house. And you spent five years proving that you weren't worth the scars."

I stepped back, pulling my hem out of his reach.

"The difference between you and me, Preston, is that when you burn, you turn to ashes. But when I burn..."

I paused, looking over my shoulder, letting the gold and diamonds blazing across my back catch the full, blinding glare of the chandeliers.