After the divorce from Everett Harrison was finalized, I wasn't in a hurry to leave the city. I stayed for another six months, long enough to sell off the house entirely, before finally booking my flight home.

During those few months, the wedding between Everett and Hailey Silva took place. They had set the date within the first month of my divorce. It was a far more lavish affair than the wedding Everett and I had shared, but I understood why. After all, the Harrison and Silva families were perfectly matched in every way that mattered to them.

I spent my final days there draped in the designer clothes, handbags, and jewelry I had acquired during my three years with Everett. That marriage taught me one cold, hard truth: being good to others is a waste of time compared to being good to yourself. And looking beautiful for someone else? It doesn't hold a candle to looking beautiful for your own sake. I didn't need to do anything anymore; I just needed to be happy.

Before I left, news reached me that Hailey was pregnant. For a moment, I just stared into space, stunned.

I remembered one of the conditions Victoria Harrison had forced upon me before she would consent to my marriage with her son: I was strictly forbidden from getting pregnant for the first three years.

"You aren't the daughter-in-law I wanted," she had told me, her voice cutting like glass. "And any child you bring into this family won't be welcomed by me."

I didn't want to bring a child into a home where their own grandparents wouldn't love them. At the time, blinded by what I thought was love, I ignored the red flags. Even when Everett swore to me that we would be together forever, I had agreed to her terms without a second thought.

Once I was back home, I bought a new house in my parents’ city. Fearing I was drowning in grief, they took me on a trip across the country for the better part of a year.

Just like Victoria, my parents had never truly supported my marriage to Everett. They warned me that the gap between our family backgrounds was a chasm, one that would inevitably lead to endless, quiet indignities—the kind of grievances that Everett, in his arrogance, would never even notice.

They were right. For three years, I had shouldered the weight of those humiliations alone, and Everett hadn't seen a single one of them.