###Chapter 11
Colin used to say he didn’t want kids. That it wasn’t the right time, that we should wait. That his parents wouldn’t approve yet. So he put things in my drinks. Quiet, tasteless little pills that made my body easier to manage. Easier to control.
But today, I suppose something broke inside him. Or snapped awake.
He’d never drug me again. Not after this. Not after the look he had on his face when he screamed for them to stop talking about me like I was nothing. He wanted a future with me now. With real children, loud children, messy children… ours.
Funny how people only start dreaming of forever after they’ve set fire to the present.
I’d left a little surprise in his inbox. It was playing out live now, like theater.
Piper lips parted-stunned-before panic took over. She lunged for him like she was drowning. “Colin,” she sobbed, clinging to his arm, mascara melting into tears. “You promised… You swore you wouldn’t let her bastard child take anything from our son! You said he’d inherit everything!”
His response was immediate. Violent.
“Shut up!”
He yanked his arm away with such force she stumbled back, heels skidding, nearly crashing to
the floor.
When he turned on her, he wasn’t the man who used to soften at her whiny voice. He looked at her like something rotting.
“Anne’s child is my child,” he said, voice low and cold. “And that makes them precious. Not a bastard. Don’t you ever speak bad about her again.”
That was the first time, he really saw her.
Not the sugar-sweet girl who used to trail after him calling him sweetly-but the woman she’d become. Twisted by greed, puffed up on manipulation and hungry for a crown she hadn’t earned.
Even her tears looked fake now.
I wondered if the room could see it too. The raw disgust on his face. The way he barely kept himself from retching.
But Piper-cornered and unraveling-kept going, her voice high and hysterical.
“You promised me, Colin! You said our baby would be the heir to the Marks Family! You told me
-!”
Then it happened.
One notification. Then another. Then dozens. A chorus of alerts slicing through the chaos like knives.
Colin’s phone buzzed. He looked down. A single message.
A video.
He opened it.
And suddenly, every screen in that room lit up with the same thing. His body. A woman’s body. Entwined. Sweaty. Loud. No filters. No modesty. Just raw, graphic truth. It was him and Piper. And it was very, very clear.
For a moment, the world went silent.
Then someone dropped a phone. Someone gasped. Then the tide broke.
“Oh my God-did everyone get this?!” a woman near the bar shouted, frantically grabbing for her phone again.
“Holy-who the hell films that kind of thing and sends it out?!” another voice chimed in, eyes wide, scanning the room like the culprit might still be there.
“Is that… Colin? With her? And she’s pregnant?” a guy near the back muttered, inching closer to his friend’s screen.
“And he was supposed to marry someone else today?!” someone else added, half-horrified, half-thrilled.
The gossip came fast and vicious. Someone even laughed.
“Please. Rich people always keep mistresses. That’s practically tradition.”
Colin stood frozen. Eyes locked on the screen like it might disappear if he stared long enough. Like if he blinked, maybe it would be gone.
But it wasn’t.
He looked like someone had ripped his skin off and left him there, exposed and raw. His whole world, built on appearances and legacy, was cracking like cheap porcelain.
Then he screamed.
‘What is this?! Who filmed it?! Who sent it?!”
But everyone was already watching him with the same expression:
Pity. Disgust. And worst of all-amusement.
The prince of the Marks Family, reduced to a sideshow in his own wedding.
Then his phone buzzed again. Just once.
He looked down.
An email. No name. No subject line. Just a blinking message waiting to be opened.
He tapped it with shaking fingers.
Only one sentence greeted him:
[Do you like your wedding gift?]
That was all it took to freeze the blood in his veins.
And then, it hit him.
The butler’s words from the day before, almost casual at the time: “She wanted to go finish preparing a surprise for your wedding tomorrow.”
Now he understood.
The world tilted. His balance slipped. He swayed on his feet like someone had shoved him off a cliff.
“No… no,” he whispered, his voice cracking, broken. “Annelise… did you do this?”
His lips trembled as he said my name.
pm
12
