Chapter 2

At 1:17 a.m., I walked into a deserted café to meet the man who claimed my fiancé had stolen twelve years of my life.

He was already waiting for me.

Adrian Cross sat alone in the corner booth, a faded brown folder on the table in front of him.

He looked nothing like a man delivering a prank.

He had calm, steady eyes that saw right through my panic.

I didn't sit down.

"Who are you?"

His gaze dropped briefly to my left arm, where the scars disappeared beneath my sleeve.

Then he looked back at me.

"You already know Damian didn't carry you out of that fire," he said.

My stomach tightened.

"What you don't know," Adrian continued, "is why everyone needed you to believe he did."

I stared at him.

"Everyone?"

He didn't answer immediately.

Instead, he asked me a question.

"Does your right shoulder still hurt when it rains?"

I froze. My breath caught in my throat. Damian never asked me that. He always focused on my left arm, where the scars were visible. But the falling beam in the fire hit my right shoulder first. Only the person who physically carried me out would know that.

Adrian slid a faded brown folder across the table.

"Look at them," he said quietly.

I opened the folder with trembling fingers. They were original emergency room records from twelve years ago.

It was a copy of the emergency intake record from the night of the fire.

Patient: Evelyn Hart.

Arrival time: 11:47 p.m.

Patient arrived unconscious, carried in by an unidentified male suffering severe burns to both hands and forearms.

The male refused treatment until the patient was admitted. He left before identification could be completed.

I read the last three lines again. Then I looked at Adrian.

Slowly, he rolled up his sleeves.

Old burn scars covered both his forearms.

My breath stopped.

Damian had one scar on his shoulder. The man who carried me into the hospital had burned both hands and arms getting me out.

For twelve years, I had never once thought to ask why those injuries didn't match.

Adrian looked at me steadily.

"This doesn't prove I was that man," he said.

"No," I whispered.

My eyes remained on his scars.

"But it proves Damian wasn't."

For twelve years, I had believed one scar on Damian's shoulder was proof of everything.

Proof that he had walked into the flames for me.

Proof that I owed him my life.

Proof that no matter how coldly he treated me, I had no right to complain.

Now, one hospital record had shattered all of it.

But another question immediately took its place.

I looked up at Adrian.

"If you were there that night, why did you disappear?"

Adrian’s jaw tightened. "I tried. I went to the hospital, but your people stopped me. They told me you refused to see me. Then, they filed a police report claiming I stole your jewelry from the fire scene."

I stared at him in horror. "I never said that! I was unconscious!"

"I know," Adrian said.

A cold, biting anger pierced through my despair. It wasn't just Damian.

Someone had spoken in my name while I lay unconscious.

Someone had told Adrian I refused to see him.

Someone had accused him of stealing from me.

And afterward, Damian had stepped into my hospital room with a burn scar on his shoulder and allowed me to believe he was the man who saved my life.

My fingers curled around the medical record.

"Who did this?"

Adrian's eyes darkened.

"I don't know yet."

But strangely, I trusted it more than a convenient lie.

For twelve years, everyone had handed me certainty.

You killed Lila. Damian saved you. You owe him your life.

Now, for the first time, someone was admitting that he didn't know everything.

I looked at the clock above the counter.

2:03 a.m.

In less than ten hours, I was supposed to marry Damian.

"Tomorrow is my wedding day," I said.

Adrian remained silent, waiting.

"I have a church. I have guests. I have a dress," I continued, my voice steady. "Tomorrow, are you willing to be my groom?"

Adrian didn't laugh. He simply looked at me for several long seconds.

Then he said: "I am."

My heart gave a strange, violent beat.

"But understand something, Evelyn." He leaned slightly forward. "I pulled you out of that fire because you were dying. I am doing this because you need help. Not because you owe me anything. "

For twelve years, Damian had used one supposed act of heroism to collect payment from me every day.

And now the man claiming he had actually been there was asking for nothing.

I nodded, ready to fight. "What else do you know?"

Adrian's expression turned deadly serious. "I don't know what happened between you and Lila in those final minutes," Adrian said. "I didn't see what happened before she ran."

My fingers tightened around the medical record.

"But I heard her last words before she went back inside."

I stopped breathing.

Adrian looked directly at me.

"And Evelyn—she wasn't calling your name."