The Scarf That Broke Us

"Either get married to me or lose everything." Those were his exact words. It's cold. Correct. Terrible. That is how Julian Blake, the wealthy CEO who smirked and fired me once, asked me to marry him. I never thought I'd agree to get married if I didn't believe in it. However, I had no choice when my dad's business failed and our house was taken away. Julian offered to save me. On paper. No feelings. Don't get close. It was only a six-month deal to save his fortune and keep me in line. But living in that glass tower with him... Asleep just inches from his evil grin, those dangerous hands, and his fiery eyes? The rules became less clear. And the lines we said we wouldn't cross? I gave in to him that night and burned to ash. Right now, I'm keeping a secret from you. He is also hiding something worse, something that could kill both of us. But what if the person I thought was my enemy was actually the only person who could keep me safe? He has no idea that I'm pregnant. Someone wants to bring him down, even if it means bringing me down with it.

I donated my kidney to save my fiancé's sister. For three years, I loved him, cared for her, and planned our future, never knowing the life I was building was a lie. Then, a text from an unknown number arrived. It was a picture of a marriage certificate from two years ago. Groom: my fiancé, Dock. Bride: his "sister," Brianna. He admitted it all when I confronted him. He was already married to her when he proposed to me. My love, my sacrifice, was just a way for her to get on his insurance to cover the transplant. He told me she was coming home from the hospital, and I needed to pack my things and leave. Just hours before, my own doctor had called. The donation had put me at high risk, and now I had aggressive, terminal cancer. As I drove away from the house we shared, my phone buzzed again. Pictures from Brianna. Them kissing on a beach. A positive pregnancy test. I had given them my health, my future, and my heart, and they had left me with nothing but a death sentence. The world spun into a blur of headlights and screaming metal. But when I opened my eyes again, I wasn't in the wreckage. I was in a hospital bed, a dull ache radiating from my side. The anesthetic from my kidney donation surgery was just wearing off. Through the door, my fiancé walked in, his face a perfect mask of concern. This time, I knew the truth.

For three years, I was James Cole's wife, a title he forced on me. But his relentless, obsessive love started to win me over. I was even pregnant with our child, finally daring to hope for a future together. But the day I got the positive pregnancy test, the man who had been obsessed with me was gone. He began publicly chasing a young intern, Janay Rodgers, showering her with the same grand romantic gestures he once used to win my heart. To win her over, he leaked a twisted story about my mother abandoning me, turning the public against me. He accused me of poisoning Janay and sided with his father to force me into a risky paternity test that threatened our baby's life. He orchestrated a live TV interview where my own mother was paid to call me a gold-digger, all to make Janay look like a triumphant hero. When I collapsed in pain on stage from the shock, he ignored my pleas for help. He was too busy comforting Janay, who had a "broken wrist." I lost our child that day. Lying alone in the hospital, I heard his father demand he divorce me. His brother brought me the papers. I signed them without a second thought. I didn't want his money or his apologies. I just wanted to disappear from his life forever.

For five years, I was the perfect husband to my wife, Jorja. I was the man who supposedly healed her broken heart after her first love, Cale, left her. Now Cale was back, and she insisted we all have dinner together. Suddenly, a fight broke out at the next table. A man flung a bowl of steaming hot soup, and it flew directly towards us. In that split second, I watched my wife lunge. Not towards me, but towards Cale, shielding him with her own body. The scalding liquid hit my arm and chest, the pain searing through me. While I gasped in agony, Jorja fussed over a tiny splash on Cale's hand. "We need to go to the emergency room right now!" she cried, rushing him out the door. She paused only to look back at me. "I'm so sorry," she said. "You can take a taxi to the hospital, right?" After five years of selfless care, of giving up my art scholarship to Paris to be her live-in cure, I was abandoned, covered in second-degree burns. As I sat alone in the ER, an email arrived. My scholarship had been reinstated. That night, I didn't go back to her house. I went to start the life she had stolen from me.

My fiancé, Floyd Meyers, announced he was canceling our engagement. He was proposing to Jaylah Ryan, an heiress, all because a psychic claimed I was the cause of his misfortune. Jaylah then falsely accused me of tearing her expensive gown. Floyd ordered his guards to slap me fifty times and forced me to kneel in the snow all night to mend it. When Jaylah's mother needed an emergency transfusion of my rare blood type, he dragged me to the hospital to be used as a living blood bag, without anesthetic. He threatened my mother and my dog, forcing me to repair an architectural model for him. When Jaylah engineered another incident, he threatened to burn my mother's hands unless I confessed to a crime I didn't commit. My own mother, terrified, screamed at me to sacrifice myself. With a numb heart, I chose my own hands, enduring the searing agony of hot coals until they were ruined and blackened. As I lay dying, he appeared only to snarl, "I hope you die and rot in the ground. I never want to see your face again." The truth shattered me when the psychic confessed Floyd had paid her to lie. He had orchestrated my downfall from the start. When I confronted him, he forced champagne down my throat and drowned me in the pool. But I woke up again, back on the day I first met Floyd Meyers.

"I need the money, Jaida. My mom's in the hospital." My plea was met with a sneer from my ex-fiancé, Kirk Knapp, who then dropped a thick file on the table, detailing every single dollar he'd spent on me during our relationship. Then it got worse. "One box of tampons, $8.99. One pack of birth control pills, $50. A lace nightgown from Victoria's Secret... $78." He announced I owed him $200,000, which he generously reduced to $150,000 since I was trying to collect a debt from his niece. My humiliation was a spectacle for his wealthy friends, who then suggested I "work it off on my back." Kirk, enjoying my torment, offered an alternative: drink ten bottles of whiskey for the money. I did it, desperate for my mother's surgery. I rushed to the hospital, cash in hand, only to be told by the doctor, "An hour ago, we received a call from Mr. Knapp. He instructed us to halt all life-sustaining treatment for your mother. He said you could no longer afford it." My world shattered. I screamed into the phone at Kirk, "Why would you do that?" His cruel laugh echoed, "Because you dared to bother Jaida. This is your punishment, Holly. Her life is on you." My mother was gone. I didn't understand why he would do something so monstrous. Why would he take away my last hope, my last family, for a petty revenge? With nothing left to lose, I accepted an offer to join a national research project, determined to build a new life, free from his shadow.