Chapter 1
PART 1 — THE MARRIAGE SHE NEVER CHOSE
Cecilia Underwood learned to hate 2 things: lies, especially the ones she was forced to live every day, and Gavin Hogan, her husband, who treated her like a queen in public and like something disposable in private.
The marriage was never meant to be real. It was business theater, a 1-year performance designed to calm investors and secure a merger between 2 powerful families. They were not supposed to love each other. They were not supposed to build a life. They were not even supposed to touch.
For months, they did not.
But on the night everything changed, when exhaustion, alcohol, and pain broke through the walls between them, Cecilia became pregnant. Before she could decide how to tell him, she heard Gavin speaking to his brother.
“Do you really think I’d be that stupid?” he said. “Have a child with a woman like her? She’s only good for what I need her for. That was carelessness. And I don’t make mistakes twice.”
After that, Cecilia decided he would never know.
She would run far away from him and carry the secret alone.
Before all of that,
before the pregnancy, before the whispered promises and cruel regrets, Cecilia stood at her father’s funeral in a black velvet dress that scratched her skin like a constant reminder that the day was real. The casket was lowered into cold ground, mourners murmured condolences, and still she could not cry. Maybe the shock had hollowed her out. Maybe the tears had dried somewhere between the hospital call and the cemetery.
Her mother, Katarina, stood beside her, pale and trembling, a soaked handkerchief clenched in her hands. She did not look at Cecilia, and that frightened Cecilia more than the funeral itself. There was a silence between them that felt like the moment before a storm.
When the ceremony ended and the crowd began to disperse, Katarina finally turned to her.
“Cecilia. We need to talk,” she said, her voice unsteady. “The lawyer is waiting now.”
Cecilia did not argue. Arguing
would only delay whatever was coming, and she was already too tired to fight.
She followed her mother to the family lawyer’s office, a dim room that smelled faintly of paper, coffee, and bad news. The lawyer was a middle-aged man with thin glasses and an expression too solemn to be reassuring. He offered coffee. Neither woman touched it.
Then he began speaking about debts, nervous investors, mergers, and guarantees. His words moved through the room like ghosts Cecilia could not fully grasp.
“Without your father,” the lawyer said, adjusting his glasses as he turned through documents that seemed to contain the ruins of her family’s future, “the investors are questioning the stability of the merger with the Hogans. They need guarantees. Something that demonstrates family commitment. Something beyond paperwork.”
Cecilia frowned, trying to understand where the conversation was going.
Her mother already knew. Cecilia could see it in the
way Katarina still would not look directly at her. A decision had already been made without her.
“I proposed a solution,” Katarina said at last, so quietly Cecilia almost missed it. “The Hogan family accepted.”
“What solution?” Cecilia asked, though some part of her already knew.
Katarina closed her eyes for a second. When she opened them, there were tears there, but also a cold determination that made Cecilia’s stomach turn.
“You and Gavin Hogan. Marriage. It will show the investors that the commitment between the families is real. That the merger is solid. It will calm the market.”
Cecilia stood so fast the chair nearly toppled backward.
“You’re selling me?” Her voice came out louder than she intended. She did not care. “Like I’m cattle?”
“Cecilia.” Katarina stood too, desperate now. “Without this, we lose everything. The company, the house, the family name. Your father left a mess, and this marriage saves both companies. It saves us.”
“And me?” Cecilia shouted, tears finally coming hot and furious. “My life? My plans? I’m not a bargaining chip.”
“It’s for 1 year,” Katarina said quickly. “Just 1 year. It’s a contract. Then you’re free, and you will have saved everything your father built.”
Cecilia laughed, but there was no humor in it. Only bitterness.
“One year of my life to save the legacy of a man who couldn’t even save himself.”
The silence that followed nearly suffocated her.
Then her mother spoke the words that broke something final.
“I already signed, Cecilia. The wedding is next week.”
For a moment, Cecilia felt as if the ground had been pulled away from beneath her feet.
“You didn’t even consult me,” she whispered. “You made this decision for me, as if I were your property.”
“I did this to protect you,” Katarina cried. “The choice was this or the street, for both of us. I couldn’t let you suffer. I couldn’t let everything we have disappear. Gavin seems like a good man. He promised me he wouldn’t do anything you didn’t want.”
Cecilia looked at her mother, the woman she had loved all her life, and felt completely alone.
She left the office without another word. There was nothing large enough to express the pain and anger inside her. She had lost her father. Now she was losing her freedom.
All in the name of a merger she had never asked for.
The following week passed in a blur of stylists, photographers, and event planners who treated her wedding like the social event of the year. Cecilia could barely look at the white dress hanging before the huge mirrors. It was all too elaborate, too polished, too false.
She knew Gavin Hogan only from corporate events. He was always immaculate, distant, and unreadable. His dark hair was always combed back. His eyes gave away nothing.
On the wedding day, Cecilia stood before the mirror in white and felt like a fraud. The dress was beautiful; she could not deny it. But the woman staring back at her seemed like a stranger. She practiced the smile she would need, the smile that said she was happy while she was dying inside.
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