Chapter 2

I was, by nature, a timid person. Yet for Victor, I'd been brave more times than I could count.

I was born in Southbrook, raised like a precious orchid by my parents.

People always said the best reincarnation lottery in this life was to be born an only daughter in Harbor City or Hillford.

I'd hit the jackpot on both counts. My father was the only son of a Harbor City family; my mother, the only daughter of a Hillford one. And they had produced me, their sole heir.

Two generations above me had cherished me like the apple of their eye.

Before I started dating Victor, I had never washed so much as a single pair of socks.

I attended university locally. Every weekend, my parents drove to campus to bring me home themselves. When it came to domestic tasks, I was essentially useless.

Growing up, we'd always had a cook, a housekeeper, a driver, the full complement. I never worried about a thing.

Our family estate was a traditional three-courtyard garden residence, every step revealing a new scene of quiet elegance. Yet all that refinement had raised me into nothing more than an incurable romantic.

The first time my mother laid eyes on Victor, she frowned.

He was wearing the standard-issue uniform from freshman orientation, and on his feet were those green military-style sneakers the entire class had been required to buy for training.

"What exactly do you see in this boy?" she asked.

Back then, I was drunk on the idea of love, convinced I was the heroine of my own story, a pure-hearted warrior charging into battle for romance.

I blinked my eyes and told her I loved Victor for his integrity in poverty, his proud brilliance, the unbending spine of a man who refused to be diminished by circumstance.

My mother bit back whatever she wanted to say. Later, deciding my life had been too comfortable for me to understand what class truly meant, she rallied the entire family to slash my allowance.

Yet I felt neither weary nor deprived. After graduation, I followed Victor to Northvale without a backward glance to build our company from nothing.

My savings evaporated in no time. My parents had steeled their hearts. They refused to send another cent, determined to let me taste hardship on my own.

Gradually, I learned to cook. I learned to wash dishes. I could even coax something extraordinary out of a five-dollar crucian carp.

My mother came to see me once. She found me in that shared basement room, less than fifty square feet, scrubbing Victor's clothes by hand.

She burst into tears and slapped me across the face.

She said, "Your father and I raised you, spent a fortune on you, not for payback, but so you wouldn't degrade yourself into someone's washerwoman.

"You need to understand what you're worth! This is our fault. We shielded you too well.

"Charlotte, let me tell you something: everyone meets their reckoning eventually. You just wait."

At the time, I believed true love could conquer anything.

Eileen Green once wrote a line that became my mantra through those years.

[When she saw him, she became very low, very low, low as the dust. But her heart was glad, and from that dust she wished to bloom.]

I wanted to prove my mother wrong, that even she could misjudge someone.

I told her, "Victor is not the penniless nobody you think he is. He's a diamond in the rough. He has what it takes. We will succeed."

I held my ground, refusing to bow to her.

I poured every ounce of myself into the business, pitching clients in person, courting investors, driving the technical development.

And finally, a few years later, I scratched off my own winning ticket.

A heavyweight investor took notice of the company and injected a thirty million dollars. When it came time to negotiate the equity split, it was the investor's wife who stepped forward, the woman I now knew as Nancy.

Her smile was gentle, as though we were old friends catching up. "Whether we invest or not comes down to a single word from me. My husband adores me, you see.

"I'm doing this because I find you honest and straightforward. That's the only reason I'm willing to put money behind you.

"I don't trust anyone else. Only if you hold the shares can I feel at ease. You'll represent me and the founding team as the shareholder of record. That's not a problem, is it?

"I take ninety-five percent. You take five. How you split your portion with the team is your business.

"And don't think five percent is small. For pure sweat equity and technical contribution, you're lucky to get anything at all."

There was a note of finality in Nancy's voice that brooked no argument.

A shadow I'd never seen before fell across Victor's eyes, something murky and unreadable. But he couldn't bring himself to let this opportunity slip away.

His voice was slightly choked, yet resolute. "It's fine. What's yours is mine. You hold the shares. We're grateful to Nancy for giving us this chance.

"The company operations will continue following the original plan your team laid out."

Behind Nancy's eyes, a shrewdness flickered that I couldn't decipher.

Her words flattered Victor, but her gaze held undisguised contempt.

"The capable belong center stage. Mr. Graham, you're remarkably sharp for your age. The CEO position is yours. As for annual dividends, you'll receive three percent of total equity, deposited directly into your personal account.

"The remainder, my share and the team's dividends stays in an account under Charlotte's name. But no distributions without my explicit approval. Those are the rules.

"Mr. Graham, your employment contract will be for twenty years. With dividends that generous, we'll set your base salary at seven hundred, a token gesture befitting a CEO. Acceptable?"

Nancy clasped my hand, her eyes glinting with something almost hypnotic.

"Girl, that boyfriend of yours is quite something. You can just sit at home and enjoy the good life. Don't you think so, Mr. Graham?"

After that, Victor coaxed me home with honeyed words to play the supportive partner behind the scenes.

His excuse was that Nancy didn't think I was capable enough.

I was the one who'd personally assembled the technical team. I was the one who'd begged for the investment single-handedly. And yet, I was the first person pushed out.

From that day forward, he grew busier and busier, too busy to spare me a thought.

I became his full-time domestic servant, washing clothes, cooking meals, serving dishes, scrubbing plates, pressing suits, polishing shoes.

In the dead of night, I wept until my ribs ached, unable to understand how I'd ended up living like this, unable to locate where my worth had gone.

I began to think that perhaps my mother had been right all along. My current misery was the karmic price of my blind love.

And yet I blamed no one but myself.