HER VENGEFUL PERSUIT

Chapter 1

The mirror showed Olivia a woman she hardly knew. Her white dress sparkled under the lights of the bridal suite at Silverstone Heights, the diamond necklace crushing against her collarbone like a beautiful shackle. She traced the pearls sewn into her veil with trembling fingers, each one representing another expectation, another sacrifice made to reach this moment.

"Hold still, Olivia," her mother snapped, jamming another pin into her scalp. "We can't have anything out of place. The Hughes family expects perfection."

Olivia nodded and held her breath as her mother worked, swallowing the scream building in her throat. Her stomach wasn't just in knots, it was being shredded from the inside. This wasn't pre-wedding jitters. It was her body trying to warn her, trying to make her run before it was too late.

"Remember when you first met Nathan?" Mother asked, her smile not reaching her eyes. "You were sixteen, and your father and I knew immediately he would be perfect for you."

Perfect for their family's crumbling finances, Olivia thought bitterly. The acid taste of resentment flooded her mouth, but she swallowed it down like she'd been taught. Always swallow your true feelings. Always smile. The Parkers needed this marriage desperately. Everyone in their social circle whispered about how the Hughes family controlled half the business deals in the city. This wedding wasn't about love, it was a corporate merger with flesh and blood as collateral.

Through the window, Olivia watched guests arrive in luxury cars that cost more than most people's homes. Women dripping in jewels they'd wear once and forget. Men in suits tailored to hide their expanding waistlines and shrinking morals. Five hundred strangers coming to witness her parents' greatest achievement: selling their daughter to the highest bidder.

She closed her eyes, letting memories crash over her like a tidal wave, drowning her in what her life had been. A rehearsal for this moment.

Age five: Mother slapping her hand when she used the wrong fork at dinner while other little girls built sandcastles and skinned their knees.

Age sixteen: Father gripping her shoulder too tightly as he introduced her to Nathan's parents, his fingers digging into her skin when she stuttered.

Age seventeen: Tears soaking her pillow after being forced to attend etiquette classes instead of the school dance because "Hughes men marry women who know how to behave in society."

Age twenty: Her art school acceptance letter burning in the fireplace as Father explained that "a future Hughes wife doesn't need a career. She needs to be available."

Each memory wasn't just a brick in the wall they built around her, it was a nail in the coffin of who she might have been. A perfect casket for their perfect daughter.

"Where's Sophia?" Olivia asked suddenly, realizing her twin sister's absence like a phantom limb pain.

Her mother's face hardened, checking her diamond watch with a sharp flick of her wrist. "She should be here by now. Probably making a scene somewhere. You know how she is."

Yes, Olivia knew. Sophia was everything she wasn't allowed to be. The twin who screamed when Olivia whispered. The daughter who broke rules while Olivia followed them. While Olivia became their puppet, Sophia became their shame. Olivia both worshipped and resented her freedom, even as she ached at the coldness their parents showed her.

"I'm sure she'll turn up soon," said Melissa, smoothing her blue bridesmaid dress with nervous hands. "Maybe she's checking on the flower arrangements?"

But something dark and heavy settled in Olivia's chest. Sophia had promised to help her get ready. Despite the growing distance between them lately, the strange glances, the abrupt ends to conversations when Olivia entered rooms, she wouldn't miss this moment. Not when they'd shared every significant moment of their lives, even when sharing meant one of them got hurt.

"I need to find her," Olivia said, standing up so quickly her knees nearly buckled under the weight of the dress. Sixty pounds of expectations sewn into silk and lace.

Mother grabbed her arm, her fingernails digging crescents into Olivia's skin. "Absolutely not! It's bad luck for anyone to see the bride before the ceremony, especially the groom."

"I'll be careful," Olivia promised, the lie slipping out smoothly after years of practice. "I just need some air. I can't breathe in here."

After more arguing, Mother finally relented with a list of warnings that faded into background noise. Olivia slipped out, gasping once the door closed behind her, like a diver breaking the surface after nearly drowning.

The church corridor stretched before her, silent except for the distant, mournful notes of the string quartet playing for guests, a funeral march disguised as wedding music. Her dress whispered against the floor as she moved, searching for the one person who was supposed to always be on her side.

Then she heard it. Voices from a storage room down the hall, hushed but unmistakable. That laugh, she knew that laugh intimately. It was the laugh of the man who had proposed to her beneath fireworks on New Year's Eve, his eyes calculating even as he slid the family heirloom onto her finger.

"Stop it, Nathan," a woman's voice giggled, breathy with desire. "Someone might come looking for us."

Olivia's heart didn't just freeze, it shattered, sending ice shards through her veins.

She moved toward the partially open door as if pulled by an invisible thread, her hands trembling so violently she had to press them against her stomach. Through the crack, the scene unfolded like a nightmare she couldn't wake from.

Her fiancé, Nathan Hughes, had her twin sister Sophia pressed against the wall, his hands tangled in her hair. Hair identical to Olivia's. His hands that had always touched Olivia with such careful restraint. Sophia's blue bridesmaid dress was hitched up around her waist, pale legs wrapped around him with desperate need. They kissed like they were devouring each other, nothing like the clinical, closed-mouth kisses Nathan had always given Olivia.

The world tilted sideways. A high-pitched ringing filled her ears. She couldn't move, couldn't breathe, couldn't look away from this car crash of betrayal.

"We should get back," Sophia whispered, though her actions contradicted her words as she arched against him. "Your bride is waiting."

Nathan laughed, a rich, genuine sound Olivia had never once heard directed at her. "Let her wait. You know this has always been a business arrangement. The Parker name opens doors I need for the expansion."

"Poor, sweet Olivia," Sophia said, Olivia's name in her mouth like poison. "She actually thinks you love her. That you want her."

"Love doesn't build empires," Nathan replied, his teeth grazing Sophia's neck in a way that made her gasp. "But don't worry, we'll have plenty of time together after the honeymoon. She'll be too busy planning charity luncheons to notice where I spend my nights. Or with whom."

They laughed together, the sound tearing through Olivia like barbed wire being dragged through her insides. The sister who shared her face. The man who was supposed to share her life. Laughing at her. Betraying her. Planning to continue betraying her for years to come.

She should have collapsed. Should have screamed until her throat bled. Should have burst through the door and clawed their eyes out. But something else happened instead, something terrifying and exhilarating.

Twenty-five years of suppressed rage crystallized in her chest, forming something hard and sharp and dangerous. All those years of being the perfect daughter, the compliant girlfriend, the ideal society bride, for this? To be the punchline in their cruel joke?

Olivia stepped back, her mind suddenly clear, like emerging from a lifelong fog. The wedding would start in thirty minutes. Five hundred guests waited in the church. Her father had spent a fortune on this day that was supposed to secure their family's position.

But as she stood there in her white dress that suddenly felt like a shroud, watching her twin sister and her fiancé through that crack in the door, a revelation hit her with the force of a speeding train:

She had never been the perfect bride they wanted.

She had never been the perfect daughter they demanded.

She had never been the perfect woman Nathan needed.

She had been nothing but a pawn in everyone's game.

And perhaps, for the first time in her life, it was time to flip the board.

The room spun around her as she watched them through the crack, their bodies moving together in a rhythm that spoke of practice, of history. Each moan from Sophia's lips, each hungry growl from Nathan's throat, they weren't just betraying her now. This had been happening for months, maybe years. While she planned seating charts and tasted wedding cakes, they had been laughing behind her back.

Something primal and dangerous unfurled inside her, spreading through her veins like wildfire. She'd spent her entire life being Olivia Parker: the good girl, the obedient daughter, the perfect society bride. But in that moment, watching the two people she trusted most betray her so completely, twenty-five years of perfect obedience shattered inside her, breaking into a million razor-sharp pieces.

And she wanted to use every single one to make them bleed.