Chapter 3

Kennedy POV:

The wave of nausea hit me so hard I had to grip the taxi's door handle to keep from doubling over. The entire ride home was a silent film of my own humiliation playing on a loop in my head. Every polite smile from Corbin, every seemingly thoughtful gesture, was now tainted, revealed as a calculated step in his elaborate dress rehearsal.

I paid the driver and stumbled out of the cab, my leg aching in its cast, a dull, forgotten pain compared to the sharp, fresh agony in my chest.

I wanted to run. Flee the country. Disappear. But as I fumbled for my keys, I saw her.

Annis Holder was standing by the entrance to our building, looking up at the penthouse lights. She must have seen the taxi pull up.

"Kennedy," she said, her voice soft and laced with what sounded like concern. "I saw you leave the restaurant. Is everything alright? Your leg..."

The sight of her, the very picture of innocent concern, sent a surge of pure, unadulterated rage through me. I ignored her, pushing past her towards the door.

Her phone rang. She answered it, her voice changing, becoming brighter. "Corbin? Yes, I'm just getting some air... Oh, you're the best! I'll be right there."

She hung up and turned to me, a triumphant little smile playing on her lips. But before she could say whatever venomous, pitying words she had prepared, an arm snaked around my waist.

It was Corbin. He must have parked the car and come looking for Annis.

He glared at me, his grip on my waist painfully tight. "What are you doing here, Kennedy? Are you following us? I knew I shouldn't have trusted you."

The accusation was so absurd, so utterly divorced from reality, that I couldn't help but laugh. It was a hollow, broken sound. "You're right, Corbin," I said, my voice trembling with suppressed fury. "You shouldn't trust me. You shouldn't trust anyone who isn't your precious Annis."

He looked genuinely confused, as if I were speaking another language. "What are you talking about?"

Just then, the fire alarm in the building shrieked to life, a deafening, piercing wail. People began to pour out of the lobby, their faces masks of panic. The sudden surge of the crowd knocked me off balance. My bad leg gave way, and I was instantly swallowed by the stampede.

I fell, hard. A sharp pain shot through my cast as someone's heel came down on it. The crowd swirled around me, a chaotic river of legs and feet. I was going to be trampled.

Through the forest of panicked limbs, I saw him. Corbin. For a heart-stopping second, I thought he was coming for me. His eyes met mine.

But then his gaze shifted, landing on Annis, who was being jostled near the edge of the crowd.

He didn't hesitate. He plowed through the throng, his face a mask of primal fear, and wrapped his arms around her, shielding her with his body. He half-carried her away from the building, away from the chaos, away from me.

He didn't look back. Not once.

He left me on the ground, at the mercy of the stampeding crowd, as another person's foot connected brutally with my ribs. A cry of pain was torn from my throat, but it was lost in the noise.

The world began to blur, the shrill alarm fading into a dull buzz. The last thing I registered before I lost consciousness was the sight of Corbin holding Annis, whispering reassurances into her hair, keeping her safe.

I woke up in the same hospital, in the same antiseptic-smelling room. The pain in my leg was now joined by a searing agony in my side.

"You're lucky to be alive," a new doctor told me, his face grim. "You have two broken ribs, and the fall re-fractured your tibia. The swelling is severe. We need to operate immediately to prevent permanent damage."

"Do it," I said, my voice a hoarse whisper. "Whatever it takes. Get the best surgeon. I don't care what it costs." The Pitts family name still carried weight, even when its heiress was broken and alone.

Just as the nurses were prepping me for surgery, the door burst open.

Corbin stormed in, but he wasn't looking at me. He was carrying Annis, bridal style. She was pale and trembling, but I could see she was physically unharmed.

"I need a doctor!" Corbin roared, his voice bouncing off the sterile walls. "Now! She has hemophilia! She was in a crowd, she could be bleeding internally!"

My doctor and the nurses exchanged a look. "Sir," the doctor said calmly, "we have another patient here with critical injuries who needs immediate surgery."

Corbin's eyes, blazing with an arrogance I knew all too well, landed on the doctor. "I am Corbin Franco," he said, his voice dangerously low. "That woman," he gestured to Annis, "is my priority. Your patient can wait. Get her a room, get her a full diagnostic work-up. Now."

He was using his name, his power, to push me aside. His own wife.

The doctor, intimidated but trying to hold his ground, looked at me. I just stared back, my heart a dead, heavy stone in my chest.

The hospital administrator was called. Arguments were made. But Corbin's influence, his sheer force of will, won out.

From my gurney in the hallway, where I had been moved to make way, I watched them rush Annis into a private suite. I saw Corbin pacing outside her door, his phone pressed to his ear, barking orders.

My emergency surgery was cancelled.

The pain in my leg and ribs was a raging inferno, but it was nothing compared to the cold, dead certainty that settled in my soul.

He didn't love me. He had never loved me. It wasn't that he loved Annis more. It was that in the universe of his heart, I didn't even exist. I was just static. An inconvenience.

I was nothing.