Chapter 1 - The Wedding That Died Before Sunrise
My Fiancé Cheated the Night Before Our Wedding, So I Married His Father Before He Could Win Me Back
I was still wearing my engagement ring when I heard my best friend ask my fiancé whether he planned to keep cheating after he married me.
I had gone looking for Dylan because the photographer wanted one final picture before dessert.
Instead, I found him behind the closed door of a private study at the Hawthorne Hotel in downtown Chicago, laughing softly with Sophie Reed, the woman who had stood beside me through college, my mother’s funeral, two apartment moves, and every stupid fight Dylan and I had survived in fourteen years.
“What happens tomorrow?” Sophie whispered.
A pause.
Then Dylan said, “Tomorrow I marry Eve.”
“And me?”
“You’ll still be you.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“Come on, Soph.”
“No. Tell me.”
I should have walked away.
I should have opened that door immediately.
Instead, I stood there with my palm pressed against the cold brass handle, listening to the man I had loved since I was seventeen explain my future as if I were a piece of furniture already purchased.
“Eve forgives everything,” he said.
Sophie laughed once, but there was no humor in it.
“You sound proud of that.”
“She knows me.”
“No, Dylan. She trusts you.”
Silence.
Then Sophie asked the question that destroyed whatever was left of my denial.
“Was I the only one?”
My fingers went numb.
Dylan did not answer.
That was his answer.
I pushed the door open.
Sophie stepped away from him so quickly she hit the edge of the desk.
Dylan’s shirt was unbuttoned at the collar.
Her lipstick was on his mouth.
For a few seconds, nobody spoke.
Beyond the study, a string quartet played something soft and expensive for the two hundred guests celebrating our wedding weekend.
Dylan looked at me as if I had walked into the wrong room.
“Eve.”
“How many?”
Sophie’s face went pale.
Dylan took one step toward me.
“Not here.”
I almost laughed.
“Interesting. Because apparently here was private enough for you to cheat.”
“Nothing happened tonight.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
People had begun appearing in the hallway behind me.
My aunt.
Two of Dylan’s college friends.
The wedding planner.
A server carrying champagne.
Dylan glanced past me and lowered his voice.
“Everyone is watching.”
I turned toward the hallway.
Then I looked back at him.
“They were invited to watch me promise you the rest of my life tomorrow. They can watch me decide not to.”
His face changed.
For the first time, he understood I was serious.
“Eve, don’t do this.”
I slid the ring from my finger.
Sophie whispered my name.
I looked at her.
She had cried with me when I buried my mother.
She had helped me choose my wedding dress.
Three weeks earlier, she had stood in my kitchen drinking wine while I practiced my vows.
“You knew,” I said.
She covered her mouth.
“I’m sorry.”
“How long?”
She looked at Dylan.
That hurt more than the answer.
Even now, she needed permission from him.
“Six months,” she whispered.
My knees almost failed.
Dylan reached for me.
I stepped back.
“Don’t touch me.”
“It wasn’t six months like you’re thinking.”
I stared at him.
He actually said that.
“What version of six months do you think would help?”
“It wasn’t serious.”
Sophie flinched.
I noticed.
So did he.
“You’re the woman I’m marrying,” Dylan said desperately.
I laughed then.
It came out broken.
“You thought that sentence would save you?”
“Fourteen years, Eve. You’re going to throw away fourteen years because I screwed up?”
“You had fourteen years to learn how not to humiliate me.”
I placed the ring on the desk between them.
Then I walked out.
Dylan followed me through the ballroom.
“Eve!”
Guests turned.
I kept walking.
He caught up near the elevators.
“You’ll come back.”
That stopped me.
Not because I doubted myself.
Because of the certainty in his voice.
He wasn’t begging.
He wasn’t apologizing.
He believed he already knew the ending.
I turned.
“Keep waiting.”
Then the elevator doors closed.
By midnight, half of Chicago’s wealthiest people knew the wedding was canceled.
By one in the morning, photographs of me leaving the hotel alone were online.
By two, I was sitting at the bar of a quiet private club three neighborhoods away, staring at a glass I barely remembered ordering.
That was where I met Adrian Vale.
I didn’t recognize him at first.
I knew Dylan’s father, obviously.
Or rather, I knew the idea of him.
Adrian Vale had missed birthdays, graduations, dinners, holiday weekends, and nearly every important moment in Dylan’s adult life.
In fourteen years, I had seen him in person maybe six times.
He was fifty-five now, tall, broad-shouldered, silver beginning at his temples, wearing a charcoal suit with no tie. He owned Vale Rowan Holdings, a private logistics and real estate company whose name sat on buildings from Chicago to Milwaukee.
People called him ruthless.
Dylan called him absent.
I had always believed Dylan.
That night, through blurred vision and exhaustion, Adrian was just a stranger sitting three stools away.
He watched a man I didn’t know move closer to me.
“You came alone,” the man said.
“I’m leaving alone.”
“You don’t look like you should.”
I reached for my purse.
My hand missed it.
Something was wrong.
“I said no.”
The man grabbed my wrist.
Then a second hand closed around his.
Adrian’s voice was quiet.
“She said no.”
The stranger turned.
“Who the hell are you?”
“Someone offering you the chance to walk away.”
There was something in Adrian’s face that made the man reconsider every decision that had brought him to that stool.
He left.
I tried to stand.
My legs folded.
Adrian caught me before I hit the floor.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“Worst night of my life.”
“That’s not a name.”
“Tonight it is.”
He almost smiled.
Then his expression hardened as he looked at my glass.
“You drank one?”
“Maybe two.”
“You’re not acting like someone who had two drinks.”
That was the last thing I clearly remembered.
I woke beneath a white comforter in a bedroom I had never seen.
My head felt split open.
I sat up too quickly.
A chair scraped across the floor.
Adrian stood near the window.
I screamed.
“Get out!”
He immediately turned toward the door.
“You’re in my bedroom.”
I froze.
“My bedroom?”
“My house.”
I looked down.
I was wearing a clean T-shirt and loose sweatpants.
My dress hung over a chair.
Panic ripped through me.
“What happened?”
“You passed out. Your drink had something in it.”
He kept his hands visible, his expression controlled.
“I brought you here because you were unconscious and I didn’t trust the people at the club.”
“You changed my clothes.”
“No. My housekeeper did. She’s upstairs.”
I pulled the blanket tighter around myself.
“Why am I here?”
“Because you were about ten minutes from waking up in an ambulance.”
“Did you call one?”
“You told me not to.”
“I told you?”
“You were awake for about thirty seconds in the car. You said you didn’t want anyone taking pictures of you.”
I pressed my fingers against my temple.
Fragments surfaced. A car door. Rain. Adrian’s voice. My own broken laugh.
He walked toward the bedroom door.
“I’ll give you privacy.”
“Wait.”
He stopped.
“Why did you help me?”
He looked over his shoulder.
“Because no one deserves what happened to you tonight.”
My throat tightened.
“You know what happened?”
“The whole city probably knows by now.”
He opened the door.
“Your wedding was canceled.”
“You sound like you expected it.”
“I didn’t.”
“Did Dylan call you?”
His jaw tightened.
“Yes.”
“What did he say?”
“That you were upset.”
I stared at him.
“Upset.”
“He didn’t tell me about Sophie.”
A strange silence settled between us.
Then Adrian said something that made me look up.
“Eve, there is something you need to know about my son.”
I laughed bitterly.
“Tonight is not the night for a father to defend his son.”
“I’m not defending him.”
He looked directly at me.
“I’m warning you.”
Before he could say anything else, a voice came from downstairs.
“Dad!”
Dylan.
My entire body stiffened.
Adrian closed his eyes for a brief second.
“He followed you?”
“I don’t know.”
Then we heard footsteps.
Dylan appeared at the end of the hall.
His hair was wet from rain. His face looked wrecked.
He saw me.
Then he saw his father.
Everything changed.
“Eve.”
Adrian stepped between us.
“You need to leave.”
“This is between me and my fiancée.”
“She stopped being your fiancée when you cheated.”
Dylan’s eyes flashed.
“You don’t know anything.”
Adrian’s voice became dangerously calm.
“I know enough.”
Dylan looked at me.
“Eve, please.”
Fourteen years ago, that voice had made me forgive anything.
That morning, it only made me tired.
He reached into his coat.
For one terrifying second, I thought he had a weapon.
Instead, he pulled out my wedding vows.
The pages were bent.
He must have taken them from the hotel.
“I read them,” he said.
I stared at the folded paper.
“You had no right.”
“I know.”
“Give them back.”
He did.
I took them and held them against my chest.
“I thought I knew you.”
“You did.”
“No. I knew the version of you that you wanted me to know.”
He looked toward Adrian.
“You poisoned her against me.”
Adrian gave a humorless smile.
“You did that yourself.”
Dylan’s face hardened.
“I’ll fix this.”
I looked at him.
“How?”
“I’ll end things with Sophie.”
I almost laughed again.
“That’s your plan?”
“I love you.”
“You loved me while you were sleeping with her.”
“I made a mistake.”
“You made a series of choices.”
He moved closer.
“I’ve been scared.”
“Of what?”
He hesitated.
Then his answer came.
“My father.”
My heart stopped.
Adrian’s expression did not move.
“What does that mean?”
Dylan looked at him.
“He wanted you away from me.”
I turned to Adrian.
He said nothing.
That silence was louder than anything Dylan could have said.
“Is that true?”
Adrian looked at me.
“Yes.”
The room seemed to shrink.
“Why?”
“Because I knew you were walking into something you didn’t understand.”
“What?”
He glanced at Dylan.
“My son has spent years making you believe our family is complicated.”
Dylan whispered, “Dad.”
Adrian ignored him.
“It isn’t complicated.”
He looked at me.
“It is dangerous.”
I should have left then.
Instead, I asked the question that would change the rest of my life.
“Why would you say that to me now?”
Adrian’s gaze dropped to my hand.
To the empty finger where the engagement ring had been.
“Because after tonight, the danger is no longer just your broken heart.”
May you like
He paused.
“It’s your name.”
