Mitchell's POV
The scream that ripped from my throat wasn't a question, it was anger. "What in the hell is happening here?"
My own voice sounded foreign, shredded. Mitchell Turnerstone. The name felt like a costume I was wearing, one that no longer fit. The adopted daughter. The placeholder. The "countryside duck" they'd all so cleverly decided I was the moment the real swan, Clara, fluttered back into her gilded cage on her twenty-third birthday.
And there she was. In my bed. Well, one of the many guest beds in the Turnerstone mansion, but it might as well have been mine. It held the man who was supposed to be mine.
Donald. Donald Williams. My childhood sweetheart , my two-year anchor in the storm of my family's chilling indifference. His blond hair was mussed, his back muscles taut as he moved over her. And Clara… her dark hair fanned out on the silk sheets, her eyes—so like Father's—locked on mine. A slow, vicious smirk curled her lips as Donald moved. She let out a deliberate moan, her fingers digging into his shoulders, claiming him.
"Mitchell, what's the big deal?" Donald grunted, not even stopping. His gaze, when it flicked to me, was hazy with lust and annoyance. "I was schemed against last night. Clara… helped me out." He said her name like a caress, a secret between them, before he slammed into her again. I've never felt so humiliated.
The air vanished from the room. The ornate wallpaper, the crystal chandelier, the Turnerstone crest above the bed—they all swam in a nauseating blur. I could feel the hot pressure behind my eyes, the treacherous sting of tears. Don't you dare let them see. The command to myself was the only thing holding me together.
I stood there, a statue of foolish agony, as his rhythm grew frantic. I knew that tell. The slight tremor in his thighs, the choked breath. He was close. We'd never… I had saved that. A gift for our wedding night. A stupid, romantic notion for a man who'd grown colder by the day, who'd only asked me out after Clara returned, as if securing the backup prize.
And now he was spending himself in my sister, who was screaming his name with a piggish glee that didn't match her delicate, stolen-princess face.
Through the roaring in my ears, a sliver of cold, hard clarity emerged. Thank goodness. The thought was a lifeline. Thank goodness I videoed all this secretly. Last month, after Clara had "accidentally" spilled red wine on my mother's—no, her mother's—favorite gown and pointed the blame flawlessly at me, I'd started carrying a tiny, old phone in my pocket. Voice recorder always on. Tonight, guided by a gut-deep dread, I'd fumbled it onto the dresser, camera lens peeking from behind a vase. The blinking red light was a tiny, steady heartbeat in the corner of my vision.
It would be a lie to say I wasn't hurt. The pain was so damn real, a blade twisting deep in my chest, serrated with every memory of us as children, of his shy smile when he first held my hand, of the fleeting warmth before Clara came home and he became someone else. He was a handsome CEO, a prize. And I was the envy of socialites who didn't see the emptiness behind his eyes when he looked at me.
Since when has this been happening? The question was a poison, spreading through my veins. Was it always? Were the coldness, the excuses, the late nights at the office all just a prelude to this? Was I not just the adopted daughter, but the unwitting beard for the real heir and her chosen consort?
Donald shuddered, a final, guttural sound escaping him as he collapsed onto Clara. She wrapped her arms around him, her triumphant gaze never leaving mine. Her smile was a victory flag planted in the ruins of my life.
The tears didn't fall. They froze somewhere inside, hardening into something new. Something sharp. Something that felt dangerously like resolve.
I took one last, long look at the tangled, sweaty scene of my betrayal. I didn't say another word. I simply turned, my heels clicking on the tiled floor with a finality that echoed in the hollowed-out space where my heart used to be. I walked out, leaving the door open behind me.
The wedding was in a week. Yes, you heard me right. A wedding with this scum bag. But as I walked down the grand staircase, the secret phone a heavy, burning weight in my pocket, I knew one thing with absolute certainty.
I have no place in his heart.