Chapter One
Vivienne
"I'm going to kill him. I mean it. I'm going to cut off his balls and wear them as a necklace!"
Mia's shriek burst from the speaker, grinding against my nerves like a rusty chainsaw.
I groaned and pulled the scalding phone a half-inch away from my ear. The hangover had left my mouth feeling like it was stuffed with a wad of dust-covered cotton, and my stomach was staging a full-scale revolt.
I forced one eye open, struggling to focus. What greeted me was the cold, hard, disinfectant-scented synthetic leather seat of McCarran International Airport's departure lounge, surrounded by scattered fast-food wrappers littering the floor.
"Mia, keep it down." My voice came out hoarse, like sandpaper scraping glass. "Unless you want me to have a brain aneurysm right here in this departure hall that reeks of year-old french fries."
"And you still have the nerve to talk about dying, Vivienne Cole?" Mia's voice didn't soften in the slightest—in fact, it cut through even sharper. "Do you have any idea what time it is? I called your apartment twenty times! Your flight was supposed to land in Washingtonfive hours ago! And now you're telling me you're still sprawled out in the Las Vegas airport like a homeless drifter?"
I fumbled for my purse on the floor, knocked over a half-empty water bottle, and finally fished out a pair of oversized sunglasses with some unidentifiable smudge on the lenses. I shoved them onto my nose, trying to block out the harsh fluorescent lights overhead.
"I missed my flight, Mia." I rubbed my splitting temples, my silk slip dress wrinkled like a dried-up pickle, the oversized denim jacket half-sliding off my elbows. "Who cares? Even if I'd made it back to Washington on time, there's no wedding waiting for me anyway."
Dead silence on the other end, followed by Mia's heavy breathing.
"Don't use that tone, V." Mia's voice came through clenched teeth. "That son of a bitch, Derek—how dare he?"
"How dare he?" I let out a bitter laugh, a wave of sourness rising in my throat. The rage and humiliation I'd temporarily drowned in alcohol last night surged back up like lava. "Oh, he dared just fine. He didn't even have the decency to call me. One text, Mia. Three years of my life, and all I got was one goddamn text!"
"I swear I'm going to hire someone to break his legs—no, and his pathetic little dick too!"
Mia was still cursing on the other end, but her voice sounded muffled, like it was coming through thick water.
"The bride's been replaced, V. Don't blame me, but if you could lose some of that extra weight, maybe you'd photograph better."
For the first time in my life, I hated my photographic memory with a burning passion.
"Lose the extra weight"—those words drove into my deepest insecurity like a poisoned ice pick.
For three years, how many times had I stood in front of dressing room mirrors, desperately sucking in my stomach, drowning in self-doubt just to squeeze into dresses he deemed "decent enough"?
For a moment, that familiar, suffocating self-loathing nearly drowned me.
Could it really be because I'm too fat? Was I simply not goodenough? Is that why he went off with that plastic-looking model whose ribs practically doubled as a washboard?
Like my softness was some kind of original sin. Like my natural curves were something I needed to apologize for.
My heart pounded violently in my chest, trembling. But then, a fury mixed with humiliation erupted like lava through that fragile layer of insecurity.
No. This wasn't my fault.
What kind of delusional bullshit was this?
Derek didn't just cheat. He chose the most brazen, most absurd, most self-destructive arrogance.
He'd watched me stress over wedding details, fly to Vegas—this place reeking of cheap perfume and strip clubs—to research venues and earn extra money for the final payment. Meanwhile, he was out shopping for a prettier "replacement," then had the nerve to blame it on my body.
As if the past three years—when he'd put his hands on me like he'd hit the damn jackpot—were all just my pathetic delusion!
Fury burned through my veins, scorching, controlled, and sharp enough to cut throats.
I'd planned to marry him, and he'd tossed me aside like unwanted baggage that didn't look good enough to take out.
